Title: Death Valley National Park - Wikipedia
Headings: Death Valley National Park
Death Valley National Park
Contents
Geographic setting
Climate
Human history
Early inhabitants and transient populations
Boom and bust
Early tourism
Protection and later history
Geologic history
Basement and Pahrump Group
Rifting and deposition
Compression and uplift
Stretching and lakes
Biology
Activities
See also
References
Explanatory notes
Citations
Bibliography
External links

Content: The largest salt pan in the park extends 40 miles (64 km) from the Ashford Mill Site to the Salt Creek Hills, covering some 200 square miles (520 km 2) of the valley floor. The best known playa in the park is the Racetrack, known for its moving rocks. Climate
A cross section through the highest and lowest points in Death Valley National Park
According to the Köppen climate classification system, Death Valley National Park has a Hot Desert Climate ( BWh ). The plant hardiness zone at Badwater Basin is 9b with an average annual extreme minimum temperature of 27.3 °F (-2.6 °C). Death Valley is the hottest and driest place in North America due to its lack of surface water and low relief. It is so frequently the hottest spot in the United States that many tabulations of the highest daily temperatures in the country omit Death Valley as a matter of course. On the afternoon of July 10, 1913, the United States Weather Bureau recorded a high temperature of 134 °F (56.7 °C) at Greenland Ranch (now Furnace Creek) in Death Valley. This temperature stands as the highest ambient air temperature ever recorded at the surface of the Earth. ( A report of a temperature of 58 °C (136.4 °F) recorded in Libya in 1922 was later determined to be inaccurate.) Daily summer temperatures of 120 °F (49 °C) or greater are common, as well as below freezing nightly temperatures in the winter.