Zabriskie Point
Encyclopedia
Zabriskie Point is a part of Amargosa Range
located in east of Death Valley
in Death Valley National Park
in the United States
noted for its erosion
al landscape. It is composed of sediment
s from Furnace Creek Lake, which dried up 5 million years ago — long before Death Valley came into existence.
The location was named after Christian Brevoort Zabriskie
, vice-president and general manager of the Pacific Coast Borax Company
in the early 20th century. The company's famous, iconic twenty-mule teams were used to transport borax
from its mining operations in Death Valley.
(see Geology of the Death Valley area
), another lake covered a large portion of Death Valley including the area around Zabriskie Point. This ancient lake began forming approximately nine million years ago. During several million years of the lake's existence, sediment
s were collecting at the bottom in the form of saline
mud
s, gravel
s from nearby mountain
s, and ashfalls
from the then-active Black Mountain
volcanic field
. These sediments combined to form what we today call the Furnace Creek Formation. The climate
along Furnace Creek Lake was dry, but not nearly as dry as in the present. Camel
s, mastodon
s, horse
s, carnivore
s, and bird
s left tracks in the lakeshore muds, along with fossil
ized grass
and reeds
. Borate
s, which made up a large portion of Death Valley's historical past were concentrated in the lakebeds from hot spring
waters and alteration of rhyolite
in the nearby volcanic field. Weathering
and alteration by thermal waters are also responsible for the variety of colors represented there.
Regional mountains building
to the west influenced the climate to become more and more arid
, causing the lake to dry up, and creating a dry lake
. Subsequent widening and sinking of Death Valley and the additional uplift
of today's Black Mountains tilted the area. This provided the necessary relief to accomplish the erosion
that produced the badlands
we see today. The dark-colored material capping the badland ridges (to the left in the panoramic photograph) is lava
from eruptions that occurred three to five million years ago. This hard lava cap has retarded erosion in many places and possibly explains why Manly Beacon, the high outcrop
to the right, is much higher than other portion of the badlands. Manly Beacon was named in honor of William L. Manly
, who along with John Rogers, guided members of the ill-fated Forty-niners out of Death Valley during the gold rush
of 1849.
The primary source of borate minerals gathered from Death Valley's playas is Furnace Creek Formation. The Formation is made up of over 5000 feet (1500 m) of mudstone, siltstone, and conglomerate. The borates were concentrated in these lakebeds from hot spring waters and altered rhyolite
from nearby volcanic fields.
is also the name of a 1970 movie by Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni
, notable for its soundtrack featuring music by British band Pink Floyd
and Jerry Garcia
.
The philosopher Michel Foucault
called his 1975 acid trip at Zabriskie Point the greatest experience of his life.
This location is featured prominently on the cover of U2
's album The Joshua Tree
.
This location was used to represent the surface of Mars in the film Robinson Crusoe on Mars
.
Zabriskie Point was mentioned in the cult horror film Dog Soldiers.
Zabriskie Point is the name of Radio Massacre International
's album released in 2000.
Zabriskie Point is a Soviet Code for a location on the Surface of Moon
in Omon Ra
, a dystopian thriller novel by Pelevin
, a small town 30 km west from Bogotá, Colombia. This is a desertic area that presents the same erosional patterns seen at Death Valley, and it is frequently used to extract sand and sandstone widely used at construction. The dry weather and the landscape, very alike to the place at Death Valley, gave name to this other Zabriskie Point.
Amargosa Range
The Amargosa Range is a mountain range in Inyo County, California and Nye County, Nevada. The range runs along most of the eastern side of California's Death Valley, separating it from Nevada's Amargosa Desert...
located in east of Death Valley
Death Valley
Death Valley is a desert valley located in Eastern California. Situated within the Mojave Desert, it features the lowest, driest, and hottest locations in North America. Badwater, a basin located in Death Valley, is the specific location of the lowest elevation in North America at 282 feet below...
in Death Valley National Park
Death Valley National Park
Death Valley National Park is a national park in the U.S. states of California and Nevada located east of the Sierra Nevada in the arid Great Basin of the United States. The park protects the northwest corner of the Mojave Desert and contains a diverse desert environment of salt-flats, sand dunes,...
in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
noted for its erosion
Erosion
Erosion is when materials are removed from the surface and changed into something else. It only works by hydraulic actions and transport of solids in the natural environment, and leads to the deposition of these materials elsewhere...
al landscape. It is composed of sediment
Sediment
Sediment is naturally occurring material that is broken down by processes of weathering and erosion, and is subsequently transported by the action of fluids such as wind, water, or ice, and/or by the force of gravity acting on the particle itself....
s from Furnace Creek Lake, which dried up 5 million years ago — long before Death Valley came into existence.
Name
Christian Brevoort Zabriskie
Christian Brevoort Zabriskie was an American businessman and former vice president of Pacific Coast Borax Company...
, vice-president and general manager of the Pacific Coast Borax Company
Pacific Coast Borax Company
The Pacific Coast Borax Company was a United States mining company founded in 1890 by the American borax magnate Francis "Borax" Smith, the "Borax King".-History:...
in the early 20th century. The company's famous, iconic twenty-mule teams were used to transport borax
Borax
Borax, also known as sodium borate, sodium tetraborate, or disodium tetraborate, is an important boron compound, a mineral, and a salt of boric acid. It is usually a white powder consisting of soft colorless crystals that dissolve easily in water.Borax has a wide variety of uses...
from its mining operations in Death Valley.
History
Millions of years prior to the actual sinking and widening of Death Valley and the existence of Lake ManlyLake Manly
Lake Manly is a pluvial, former freshwater, endorheic, rift lake that filled the Death Valley basin of Inyo County, California through the Holocene before the area's climate changed to desert. Following its isolation from the Colorado River system, Lake Manly receded by evaporation with Badwater...
(see Geology of the Death Valley area
Geology of the Death Valley area
The exposed geology of the Death Valley area presents a diverse and complex set of at least 23 formations of sedimentary units, two major gaps in the geologic record called unconformities, and at least one distinct set of related formations geologists call groups...
), another lake covered a large portion of Death Valley including the area around Zabriskie Point. This ancient lake began forming approximately nine million years ago. During several million years of the lake's existence, sediment
Sediment
Sediment is naturally occurring material that is broken down by processes of weathering and erosion, and is subsequently transported by the action of fluids such as wind, water, or ice, and/or by the force of gravity acting on the particle itself....
s were collecting at the bottom in the form of saline
Salinity
Salinity is the saltiness or dissolved salt content of a body of water. It is a general term used to describe the levels of different salts such as sodium chloride, magnesium and calcium sulfates, and bicarbonates...
mud
Mud
Mud is a mixture of water and some combination of soil, silt, and clay. Ancient mud deposits harden over geological time to form sedimentary rock such as shale or mudstone . When geological deposits of mud are formed in estuaries the resultant layers are termed bay muds...
s, gravel
Gravel
Gravel is composed of unconsolidated rock fragments that have a general particle size range and include size classes from granule- to boulder-sized fragments. Gravel can be sub-categorized into granule and cobble...
s from nearby mountain
Mountain
Image:Himalaya_annotated.jpg|thumb|right|The Himalayan mountain range with Mount Everestrect 58 14 160 49 Chomo Lonzorect 200 28 335 52 Makalurect 378 24 566 45 Mount Everestrect 188 581 920 656 Tibetan Plateaurect 250 406 340 427 Rong River...
s, and ashfalls
Volcanic ash
Volcanic ash consists of small tephra, which are bits of pulverized rock and glass created by volcanic eruptions, less than in diameter. There are three mechanisms of volcanic ash formation: gas release under decompression causing magmatic eruptions; thermal contraction from chilling on contact...
from the then-active Black Mountain
Black Mountains (California)
The Black Mountains are located in the southeastern part of Inyo County, California, in southeast Death Valley National Park.-Geography:The Black Mountains are essentially a continuation of the Amargosa Range, and lie in a generally north-south direction at the south-southwest end...
volcanic field
Volcano
2. Bedrock3. Conduit 4. Base5. Sill6. Dike7. Layers of ash emitted by the volcano8. Flank| 9. Layers of lava emitted by the volcano10. Throat11. Parasitic cone12. Lava flow13. Vent14. Crater15...
. These sediments combined to form what we today call the Furnace Creek Formation. The climate
Climate
Climate encompasses the statistics of temperature, humidity, atmospheric pressure, wind, rainfall, atmospheric particle count and other meteorological elemental measurements in a given region over long periods...
along Furnace Creek Lake was dry, but not nearly as dry as in the present. Camel
Camel
A camel is an even-toed ungulate within the genus Camelus, bearing distinctive fatty deposits known as humps on its back. There are two species of camels: the dromedary or Arabian camel has a single hump, and the bactrian has two humps. Dromedaries are native to the dry desert areas of West Asia,...
s, mastodon
Mastodon
Mastodons were large tusked mammal species of the extinct genus Mammut which inhabited Asia, Africa, Europe, North America and Central America from the Oligocene through Pleistocene, 33.9 mya to 11,000 years ago. The American mastodon is the most recent and best known species of the group...
s, horse
Horse
The horse is one of two extant subspecies of Equus ferus, or the wild horse. It is a single-hooved mammal belonging to the taxonomic family Equidae. The horse has evolved over the past 45 to 55 million years from a small multi-toed creature into the large, single-toed animal of today...
s, carnivore
Carnivore
A carnivore meaning 'meat eater' is an organism that derives its energy and nutrient requirements from a diet consisting mainly or exclusively of animal tissue, whether through predation or scavenging...
s, and bird
Bird
Birds are feathered, winged, bipedal, endothermic , egg-laying, vertebrate animals. Around 10,000 living species and 188 families makes them the most speciose class of tetrapod vertebrates. They inhabit ecosystems across the globe, from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Extant birds range in size from...
s left tracks in the lakeshore muds, along with fossil
Fossil
Fossils are the preserved remains or traces of animals , plants, and other organisms from the remote past...
ized grass
Grass
Grasses, or more technically graminoids, are monocotyledonous, usually herbaceous plants with narrow leaves growing from the base. They include the "true grasses", of the Poaceae family, as well as the sedges and the rushes . The true grasses include cereals, bamboo and the grasses of lawns ...
and reeds
Phragmites
Phragmites, the Common reed, is a large perennial grass found in wetlands throughout temperate and tropical regions of the world. Phragmites australis is sometimes regarded as the sole species of the genus Phragmites, though some botanists divide Phragmites australis into three or four species...
. Borate
Borate
Borates are chemical compounds which contain oxoanions of boron in oxidation state +3. The simplest borate ion, BO33−, has a trigonal planar structure. Other borates are made up of trigonal BO3 or tetrahedral BO4 structural units, sharing oxygen atoms...
s, which made up a large portion of Death Valley's historical past were concentrated in the lakebeds from hot spring
Hot spring
A hot spring is a spring that is produced by the emergence of geothermally heated groundwater from the Earth's crust. There are geothermal hot springs in many locations all over the crust of the earth.-Definitions:...
waters and alteration of rhyolite
Rhyolite
This page is about a volcanic rock. For the ghost town see Rhyolite, Nevada, and for the satellite system, see Rhyolite/Aquacade.Rhyolite is an igneous, volcanic rock, of felsic composition . It may have any texture from glassy to aphanitic to porphyritic...
in the nearby volcanic field. Weathering
Weathering
Weathering is the breaking down of rocks, soils and minerals as well as artificial materials through contact with the Earth's atmosphere, biota and waters...
and alteration by thermal waters are also responsible for the variety of colors represented there.
Orogeny
Orogeny refers to forces and events leading to a severe structural deformation of the Earth's crust due to the engagement of tectonic plates. Response to such engagement results in the formation of long tracts of highly deformed rock called orogens or orogenic belts...
to the west influenced the climate to become more and more arid
Arid
A region is said to be arid when it is characterized by a severe lack of available water, to the extent of hindering or even preventing the growth and development of plant and animal life...
, causing the lake to dry up, and creating a dry lake
Dry lake
Dry lakes are ephemeral lakebeds, or a remnant of an endorheic lake. Such flats consist of fine-grained sediments infused with alkali salts. Dry lakes are also referred to as alkali flats, sabkhas, playas or mud flats...
. Subsequent widening and sinking of Death Valley and the additional uplift
Tectonic uplift
Tectonic uplift is a geological process most often caused by plate tectonics which increases elevation. The opposite of uplift is subsidence, which results in a decrease in elevation. Uplift may be orogenic or isostatic.-Orogenic uplift:...
of today's Black Mountains tilted the area. This provided the necessary relief to accomplish the erosion
Erosion
Erosion is when materials are removed from the surface and changed into something else. It only works by hydraulic actions and transport of solids in the natural environment, and leads to the deposition of these materials elsewhere...
that produced the badlands
Badlands
A badlands is a type of dry terrain where softer sedimentary rocks and clay-rich soils have been extensively eroded by wind and water. It can resemble malpaís, a terrain of volcanic rock. Canyons, ravines, gullies, hoodoos and other such geological forms are common in badlands. They are often...
we see today. The dark-colored material capping the badland ridges (to the left in the panoramic photograph) is lava
Lava
Lava refers both to molten rock expelled by a volcano during an eruption and the resulting rock after solidification and cooling. This molten rock is formed in the interior of some planets, including Earth, and some of their satellites. When first erupted from a volcanic vent, lava is a liquid at...
from eruptions that occurred three to five million years ago. This hard lava cap has retarded erosion in many places and possibly explains why Manly Beacon, the high outcrop
Outcrop
An outcrop is a visible exposure of bedrock or ancient superficial deposits on the surface of the Earth. -Features:Outcrops do not cover the majority of the Earth's land surface because in most places the bedrock or superficial deposits are covered by a mantle of soil and vegetation and cannot be...
to the right, is much higher than other portion of the badlands. Manly Beacon was named in honor of William L. Manly
William L. Manly
William Lewis Manly was an American pioneer of the mid-nineteenth century. He was first a fur hunter, a guide of Westward bound caravans, a seeker of gold, then a farmer and writer in his later years...
, who along with John Rogers, guided members of the ill-fated Forty-niners out of Death Valley during the gold rush
California Gold Rush
The California Gold Rush began on January 24, 1848, when gold was found by James W. Marshall at Sutter's Mill in Coloma, California. The first to hear confirmed information of the gold rush were the people in Oregon, the Sandwich Islands , and Latin America, who were the first to start flocking to...
of 1849.
The primary source of borate minerals gathered from Death Valley's playas is Furnace Creek Formation. The Formation is made up of over 5000 feet (1500 m) of mudstone, siltstone, and conglomerate. The borates were concentrated in these lakebeds from hot spring waters and altered rhyolite
Rhyolite
This page is about a volcanic rock. For the ghost town see Rhyolite, Nevada, and for the satellite system, see Rhyolite/Aquacade.Rhyolite is an igneous, volcanic rock, of felsic composition . It may have any texture from glassy to aphanitic to porphyritic...
from nearby volcanic fields.
In popular culture
Zabriskie PointZabriskie Point (film)
Zabriskie Point is a 1970 film by Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni, widely noted at the time for its setting in the late 1960s counterculture of the United States...
is also the name of a 1970 movie by Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni
Michelangelo Antonioni
Michelangelo Antonioni, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI was an Italian modernist film director, screenwriter, editor and short story writer.- Personal life :...
, notable for its soundtrack featuring music by British band Pink Floyd
Pink Floyd
Pink Floyd were an English rock band that achieved worldwide success with their progressive and psychedelic rock music. Their work is marked by the use of philosophical lyrics, sonic experimentation, innovative album art, and elaborate live shows. Pink Floyd are one of the most commercially...
and Jerry Garcia
Jerry Garcia
Jerome John "Jerry" Garcia was an American musician best known for his lead guitar work, singing and songwriting with the band the Grateful Dead...
.
The philosopher Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault , born Paul-Michel Foucault , was a French philosopher, social theorist and historian of ideas...
called his 1975 acid trip at Zabriskie Point the greatest experience of his life.
This location is featured prominently on the cover of U2
U2
U2 are an Irish rock band from Dublin. Formed in 1976, the group consists of Bono , The Edge , Adam Clayton , and Larry Mullen, Jr. . U2's early sound was rooted in post-punk but eventually grew to incorporate influences from many genres of popular music...
's album The Joshua Tree
The Joshua Tree
The Joshua Tree is the fifth studio album by rock band U2. It was produced by Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno, and was released on 9 March 1987 on Island Records. In contrast to the ambient experimentation of their 1984 release The Unforgettable Fire, U2 aimed for a harder-hitting sound on The Joshua...
.
This location was used to represent the surface of Mars in the film Robinson Crusoe on Mars
Robinson Crusoe on Mars
Robinson Crusoe on Mars is a 1964 Techniscope science fiction film retelling of the classic novel by Daniel Defoe. It was directed by Byron Haskin, produced by Aubrey Schenck and starred Paul Mantee, Victor Lundin and Adam West...
.
Zabriskie Point was mentioned in the cult horror film Dog Soldiers.
Zabriskie Point is the name of Radio Massacre International
Radio Massacre International
Radio Massacre International are a trio of British musicians, Steve Dinsdale , Duncan Goddard , and Gary Houghton . They specialize in improvisational experimental electronic music, utilizing vintage synthesizers and sampled sounds alongside electric guitar. They are also leading exponents of the...
's album released in 2000.
Zabriskie Point is a Soviet Code for a location on the Surface of Moon
Moon
The Moon is Earth's only known natural satellite,There are a number of near-Earth asteroids including 3753 Cruithne that are co-orbital with Earth: their orbits bring them close to Earth for periods of time but then alter in the long term . These are quasi-satellites and not true moons. For more...
in Omon Ra
Omon Ra
Omon Ra is a short novel by the modern Russian writer Victor Pelevin, published in 1992 by the Tekst Publishing House in Moscow. It was the first novel by Pelevin, who until then was known for his short stories....
, a dystopian thriller novel by Pelevin
Zabriskie Point, Colombia
There is another place called Zabriskie Point near Mosquera, CundinamarcaMosquera, Cundinamarca
Mosquera is a municipality and town of Colombia in the department of Cundinamarca. It lies near the national capital and has a population of a city of 90,000....
, a small town 30 km west from Bogotá, Colombia. This is a desertic area that presents the same erosional patterns seen at Death Valley, and it is frequently used to extract sand and sandstone widely used at construction. The dry weather and the landscape, very alike to the place at Death Valley, gave name to this other Zabriskie Point.