Places of interest in the Death Valley area Places of interest in the Death Valley area Places of interest in the Death Valley area are mostly located within Death Valley National Park in eastern California. Artist's Drive rises up to the top of an alluvial fan fed by a deep canyon cut into the Black Mountains. Artist's Palette is an area on the face of the Black Mountains noted for a variety of rock colors. These colors are caused by the oxidation of different metals (iron compounds produce red, pink and yellow, decomposition of tuff-derived mica produces green, and manganese produces purple). Called the Artist Drive Formation, the
Death Valley basins down the Owens River Valley through Searles and China Lakes and the Panamint Valley to the immediate west. As the area turned to desert, the water evaporated, leaving the abundance of evaporitic salts such as common sodium salts and borax, which were later exploited during the modern history of the region, primarily 1883 to 1907. Death Valley has a subtropical, hot desert climate (Köppen: "BWh"), with long, extremely hot summers and short, mild winters, as well as little rainfall. As a general rule, lower altitudes tend to have higher temperatures. When the sun heats the ground, that heat is