BACK TO OUT WEST

The newspaper that roams

Death Valley National Park is eerie but beautiful By Chuck Woodbury editor, Out West Death Valley is one of my favorite places. Perhaps it has something to do with being in the middle Death Valley is the lowest spot in the Western Hemisphere of nowhere. I like the name Death Valley, and the other place names in Death Valley National Monument: Hells Gate, Dry Bone Canyon, Stovepipe Wells, Furnace Creek, Blackwater Gulch, Badwater, Coffin Peak and Devils Cornfield. A park ranger told some visitors yesterday that she works in Death Valley because “a test I took in high school told me I should be either a park ranger or a mortician. So I ended up as a park ranger in Death Valley.” Park rangers report that the architects who designed the National Monument Visitor’s Center purposely shapedthe theater in the shape of a coffin. Strangely, though, it’s said that only one person actually died in Death Valley before it was named. Apparently, the fellow was already A typical July temperature. sick when he arrived. So maybe Death Valley should be called Hot Valley. That would be appropriate. On July 10, 1913, the temperature in Death Valley reached 134 degrees. A spot in Libya reached 136 degrees once, but Death Valley has the consistently highest temperatures in the world. In the summer, the ground temperature can exceed 200 degrees. Try walking on that in your bare feet. To illustrate how hot it gets in Death Valley, here’s a story a park ranger told me: “Visitors come up to me and say it’s not so hot here. They say where they live they can put a frying pan out in the sun on a hot summer day, crack an egg, and fry it right up. Well, I explain that we can do the same thing here, only we can do it in the shade.” Some people don’t realize that Death Valley is in California. It doesn’t seem to fit into a state known for smog, cellular telephones, beaches and traffic jams. This morning I phoned a man in Toronto, Canada. He asked me where I was calling from, and I said Death Valley. “That’s in Utah, isn’t it?” I told him no. “Gee,” he said, “I always think of the big salt lake there in Utah and imagine Death Valley being somewhere around there.” Related story: Death Valley Scotty 's castle was built on a foundation of lies.