Vol. 19: #41 • The Mojave Desert • Tidbits of Coachella Valley

The 20 million acres of the Mojave Desert touch four U.S. states – California, Nevada, Arizona, and Utah – but at the same time it is North America’s smallest arid desert. Here's a look at this unique geographic feature, and some of the interesting facts surrounding it.

• Two national parks are contained within the boundaries of the Mojave Desert – Death Valley National Park and Joshua Tree National Park, both established in 1994.

• More than 1.6 million tourists brave the heat every year to visit Death Valley. With 3.4 million acres, it’s the largest national park in the mainland United States. It is also the hottest and driest of all national parks, receiving less than two inches of rainfall a year. During the 24-year period from 1929 to 1953, Death Valley received absolutely no rainfall at all.

• In July 1913, the world’s hottest air temperature was recorded there, at 134° F. Ironically, Death Valley’s lowest temperature was also recorded, when it dipped to 15° F. earlier that same year.

• Although sand dunes occupy less than one percent of the Mojave, the ones they do have rise more than 680 feet in height. Located in the remote Eureka Valley in the northwest corner of Death Valley, they extend for a distance of three miles and are one mile wide.

Massive sand dunes in an area of Death Valley known as Eureka Valley.

• The lowest point in North America, the Badwater Salt Pan in the midst of Death Valley, has an elevation of -282 feet below sea level. The vast salt flats cover nearly 200 square miles, comprised primarily of simple table salt, sodium chloride, with surface crusts several inches thick. Summer visitors to this geologic phenomenon are likely to experience temperatures exceeding 120° F.

At an elevation of 282 ft. below sea level, the Mojave Desert's Badwater Basin is the lowest point in North America.

• The unusually shaped Joshua Tree grows only in the Mojave Desert. These plants aren’t really trees at all, instead a species of yucca in the same subgroup as orchids. They grow very slowly, just 1 to 3 inches a year, but their lifespan reaches 150 years.

Joshua Trees, like this one, grow only in the Mojave Desert.

• The uncomfortable heat of the Mojave didn’t deter miners and prospectors from seeking their fortune there for more than 100 years. Death Valley offered up deposits of gold, silver, copper, zinc, and lead beginning in the 1850s, until about 1915.

The remnants of an abandoned mine rust away in the Mojave Desert.

• But it was non-metallic minerals, such as borax, talc, salt, and sulfur that proved more profitable. The last active borax mine locked its doors in 2005. Remnants of several abandoned mine shafts and tunnels can be found by adventurous Death Valley explorers, along with the interesting California ghost towns of Calico, Oatman, and Kelso.

• About 2.5 million people live within the Mojave Desert’s borders, including Las Vegas, a portion of the Los Angeles’ metropolitan area, and the city of St. George, Utah. Death Valley lies just 130 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

• In the midst of the Mojave Desert lies the community of Baker, California, population 600, where you can view the world’s largest thermometer. Standing 134 feet tall, the thermometer was built in 1991 to honor Death Valley’s world record temperature of 134° F in 1913.

The world's tallest thermometer stands high above it all, in Baker, California.

• Between 1931 and 1935, 5,000 men worked around the clock in the Mojave Desert to complete Hoover Dam on the Colorado River between Nevada and Arizona. Accidents claimed the lives of 96 workers during construction.

C-3PO and R2-D2 in Death Valley, which was used as the filming location of planet Tatooine, in George Lucas' megahit movie "Star Wars."

• In 1977, film director George Lucas used Death Valley as the location of the fictional planet Tatooine in his megahit “Star Wars.” 