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 Fault. The eastern end of the left lateral Garlock Fault intersects the Death Valley Fault. Furnace Creek and the Amargosa River flow through the valley but eventually disappear into the sands of the valley floor. Death Valley also contains salt pans. According to current geological consensus, at various times during the middle of the Pleistocene era, which ended roughly 10,000–12,000 years ago, an inland lake referred to as Lake Manly formed in Death Valley. Lake Manly was nearly long and deep, the end-basin in a chain of lakes that began with Mono Lake in the north and continued through multiple