Death Valley Death Valley Death Valley is a desert valley located in Eastern California, in the northern Mojave Desert bordering the Great Basin Desert. It is one of the hottest places in the world at the height of summertime along with deserts in the Middle East. Death Valley's Badwater Basin is the point of the lowest elevation in North America, at below sea level. This point is east-southeast of Mount Whitney, the highest point in the contiguous United States with an elevation of 14,505 feet (4,421 m). Death Valley's Furnace Creek holds the record for the highest reliably recorded air temperature on
Death Valley a mile-long shallow depression in the center of the valley, supports pupfish. These isolated pupfish populations are remnants of the wetter Pleistocene climate. Darwin Falls, on the western edge of Death Valley Monument, falls into a large pond surrounded by willows and cottonwood trees. Over 80 species of birds have been spotted around the pond. Death Valley is home to the Timbisha tribe of Native Americans, formerly known as the Panamint Shoshone, who have inhabited the valley for at least the past millennium. The Timbisha name for the valley, "tümpisa", means "rock paint" and refers to the red ochre paint