Welcome to Death Valley, a Land of Extremes, Part 1

VOICE ONE: This is Phoebe Zimmerman. VOICE TWO: And this is Steve Ember with the VOA Special English program EXPLORATIONS. Today we visit one of America's great national parks. It is a place of strange and silent beauty. As beautiful as this place is, its name provides evidence of very real danger. Come with us as we visit Death Valley. VOICE ONE: Death Valley is a land of beautiful yet dangerous extremes. There are mountains that reach more than three thousand meters into the sky. There is a place called Badwater that is the lowest area of land in the Western Hemisphere. If there were water there, it would be eighty-six meters below the level of the ocean. Death Valley can be dangerously cold during the winter months. Storms in the mountains can produce sudden flooding on the floor of the Valley. The air temperature during the summer has been as high as fifty-seven degrees Celsius. The sun can heat the ground so that the temperature of the rocks and soil can be as high as seventy-four degrees Celsius. The extreme heat of Death Valley has killed people in the past. It will continue to kill those who do not honor this extreme climate. Death Valley does not forgive those who are not careful. VOICE TWO: Death Valley is a good example of the violence of nature. It contains evidence of several ancient volcanoes that caused huge explosions. Evidence of one of these explosions is called Ubehebe Crater. The explosion left a huge hole in the ground almost a kilometer and a half wide. In many areas of Death Valley it is easy to see where the ground has been pushed up violently by movement deep in the Earth. This movement has created unusual and beautiful rock formations. Some are red. Others are dark brown, gray, yellow or black. Other areas of rock look as if some huge creature violently broke and twisted the Earth to create unusual, sometimes frightening shapes. In other parts of Death Valley there are lines in the rock that show clearly that this area was deep under an ocean for many thousands of years. Much of the Valley is flat and extremely dry. In fact, scientists believe it is the driest place in the United States. In some areas the ground is nothing but salt. Nothing grows in this salted ground. VOICE ONE: However, it would be wrong to think that nothing lives in Death Valley. The Valley is fully of life. Wild flowers grow very quickly after a little rain. Some desert plants can send their roots down more than eighteen meters to reach water deep in the ground. Many kinds of birds live in Death Valley. So do mammals and reptiles. You might see the small dog-like animal called the coyote or wild sheep called bighorns. Other animals include the desert jackrabbit, the desert tortoise or turtle and a large reptile called a chuckwalla. Many kinds of snakes live in the Valley, including one called the sidewinder rattlesnake. It is an extremely poisonous snake with long sharp teeth called fangs. Death Valley is a huge place. It extends more than two hundred twenty-five kilometers across the southern part of the state of California, and across the border with the state of Nevada. Death Valley is part of the Great Mojave Desert. VOICE TWO: The area was named by a woman in eighteen forty-nine. That was the year after gold was discovered in California. Thousands of people from other parts of the country traveled to the gold mining areas in California. They were in a hurry to get there before other people did. Many people were not careful. They made bad choices or wrong decisions. One group trying to reach California decided to take a path called the Old Spanish Trail. By December they had reached Death Valley. They did not have to survive the terrible heat of summer, but there was still an extreme lack of water. There were few plants for their work animals to eat. The people could not find a pass through the tall mountains to the west of the Valley. Slowly, they began to suffer from a lack of food. To survive, they killed their work animals for food and began to walk out of the Valley. As they left, one woman looked back and said, 'Good-bye, death valley.' The name has never been changed. Source: Voice of America