TITUS CANYON
The most breathtaking entrance into Death Valley is Titus
Canyon, a picturesque & often narrow canyon carved into the Grapevine
Mountains of southeastern California. The road is one-way only (heading
downhill, heading westward), so Titus Canyon can only be approached from the
east. Titus Canyon Road is accessible from Rt. 374, a little southwest of
Beatty, Nevada. The road goes up Titanothere Canyon on the eastern side
of the Grapevine Range, and then starts descending through Titus Canyon on the
western side. The road even goes through a real-life ghost town called
Leadfield (not much to see there, though).
Above:
thick succession of carbonates of the Bonanza King Formation (Cambrian).
The Death Valley area has a very thick
Neoproterozoic-Cambrian section. The Death Valley region is a classic
area for seeing Snowball Earth glacial units, cap carbonates, stromatolites,
late Neoproterozoic shelly fossils, Ediacaran soft-bodied fossils, and the
Precambrian-Cambrian transition.
Above:
Cambrian sedimentary rocks on the northern side of Titus Canyon, Grapevine
Mountains, California.
The
three pics above are from a famous geology stop in Titus Canyon. This is
the most spectacular breccia outcrop I've ever seen. It consists of huge
angular blocks of gray limestone in a whitish calcite cement. There are
two hypotheses about its identity. It is either a fault breccia or a debris
flow breccia. Middle pic: Jung
Jikhan (South Korea) for scale. Lower pic: Rodolfo Gozalo (Spain)
for scale.
Above:
western terminus of Titus Canyon at western face of the Grapevine Range.
Looking ~NE.
Titus Canyon ends at Death Valley, where a large
alluvial fan has formed. The topographic transition between the Grapevine
Mountains and Death Valley is abrupt, and represents the approximate location
of a significant normal fault. The Grapevine Range has been uplifted
(it's a horst) & Death Valley has been downdropped (it's a graben), typical
for Basin & Range tectonics.
Above:
view of the northern end of Death Valley, as seen from the Titus Canyon
alluvial fan. Looking ~S.
Above:
Two large alluvial fans deposited on the edge of Death Valley, at the base of
the Cottonwood Mountains. Looking ~W from Titus Canyon alluvial fan.