Word: valleyful
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Dead wrong. The 3.3 million-acre Death Valley National Park--about 300 miles northeast of Los Angeles and 120 miles northwest of Las Vegas--is a major tourist attraction set in one of the most beautiful and varied terrains known to man. It's filled with Wild West history, year-round social activities and amenities ranging from campgrounds for the RV crowd to the historic Furnace Creek Inn & Ranch Resort for first-class comfort and Old World charm...
...million people make the pilgrimage to Death Valley each year, many as returnees. During a recent visit, I spotted signatures in the hotel registry from Massachusetts, Tennessee, Michigan, Nevada, California and Australia. I ran into a Russian couple on a hiking trail, a German family in the visitor's center and a French family in my hotel. "Because there is no desert in Europe, Europeans come to experience the extremes," says Toni Jepson, manager of public relations for Furnace Creek Inn & Ranch. "They are almost disappointed if they don't feel 120º...
Although there are plenty of activities for the young--bike trips, hikes in the numerous canyons and swimming at the family-oriented Furnace Creek Ranch--Death Valley has become especially popular with middle-age vacationers and retirees. The 45-and-older set represents the majority of the 500 residents who work as store clerks, waiters, registrars, maids and guides. "The young look for excitement, the older for peace," says Jepson, 60. Jepson and her husband Calvin, 57, the Inn & Ranch's general manager, came to work for only two years but decided to stay indefinitely. "We grew to love...
Serenity was not what the original visitors found when they entered the valley in December 1849 looking for a shortcut to California's gold. Bound in by mountains and running out of supplies, most of the would-be miners and their families hunkered down for the winter, while a two-man scouting party forged westward for help. Returning in late January, the scouts found that one man had died. The rest of the group survived by burning their wagons and slaughtering the oxen. The valley got its name, according to legend, when one woman looked back as the party...
...region was eventually developed by miners, but not the Forty-Niners. You can still find remains of a few short-lived gold, silver and copper mines in the mountains, but the real fortunes in Death Valley were made with "white gold": borax. The first big operation, the Harmony Borax Works (1883-88), led to the settlement of Furnace Creek. Borates were scraped off yellow badlands in nearby Mustard Canyon, refined by Chinese laborers and pulled 165 miles to market in Mojave on the famous 20-mule-team wagons. Remnants of the original wagons, with their giant, 7-ft.-high wheels...