The Death Valley expedition 1891, with Descriptions of New Species"". The Death Valley expedition The Death Valley expedition was an 1891 expedition to discover the geographic distributions of plants (phytogeography) and animals in California's Death Valley. It was the first of a series of expeditions funded by an 1890 act of the United States Congress. The expedition included biologists, naturalists, botanists, and zoologists. They produced valuable reports of historic significance in several fields, including ""Botany of the Death Valley Expedition"", "“The Death Valley Expedition: A Biological Survey of Parts of California, Nevada, Arizona, and Utah”", and ""Annotated List of the Reptiles and Batrachians Collected
Places of interest in the Death Valley area takes some time for waves to gnaw away terraces like the ones seen on Shoreline Butte, so these benches provide records of times when the lake level stabilized long enough for waves to leave their mark on the rock. The highest strandline is one of the principal clues that geologists use to estimate the depth of the lake that once filled Death Valley. Shorelines of ancient Lake Manly are preserved in several parts of Death Valley, but nowhere is the record as clear as at Shoreline Butte. Several lakes have occupied Death Valley since the close of the Pleistocene epoch