#amargosa valley

[zachbradleyphotography]

for you to find what I see in you

Amargosa Desert Memorial Cemetery

Amargosa Valley, Nevada

[eopederson]

Alien Cathouse Brothel,

Amargosa Valley, Nevada, 2020.

The real thing and legal!

[thorsenmark]

Sometimes You’re Sitting in a Parked Car and See Amazing Colors and Patterns on a Mountainside (Death Valley National Park) by Mark Stevens Via Flickr: While at the Death Valley Pay Station with a view looking to the southwest to a mountainside of the Amargosa Range. This is in Death Valley National Park. What I was attempting to do in capturing this image was finding a balance between the colors with the patterns and shapes on this mountainside and that of the skies above as a color contrast.

[pangeen]

" The Amargosa Valley " //© Austin Pedersen

Music: Tony Anderson - The King

[autotrails]

American Auto Trail-Death Valley National Park (Part 1) (Death Valley Jct to Furnace Creek Ranch CA)

American Auto Trail-Death Valley National Park (Part 1) (Death Valley Jct to Furnace Creek Ranch CA) https://youtu.be/O1No9NxMA3A Part 1 explores from Death Valley Junction, traveling into Death Valley National Park through the Eastern entrance.

[literatureonthepage]

2021

[gabrieldespinoza]

Family Establishes GoFundMe for Man Killed While Crossing Amargosa Road in Victorville

VICTORVILLE, CALIF. (VVNG.com) — Michael Pont, a 42-year-old local homeless man, was fatally struck by a vehicle at the intersection of Amethyst Road and Ironstone Ave on February 9th. Emergency services were called to the scene at around 8:01 p.m., where they found Mr. Pont with critical injuries. Despite the Victorville Fire Department and the Victorville Police Department’s efforts to save…

[swampwizards]

Ash Meadows Amargosa pupfish males (blue) competing for a female’s (gray/green) attention

these fish are related to the more famous devils hole pupfish, and both are found within the bounds of death valley national park. this fish is critically imperiled, with a small endemic range.

[chooh2]

AREA 51 ALIEN CENTER 👽 - Amargosa Valley, Nevada

Would YOU sit by Chuck?

Friend 8)

ft. Me but with a better lookin' face:

[plethoraworldatlas]

Hundreds of new mining claims have been staked within the community of Amargosa Valley, Nevada, on thousands of acres directly adjacent to Death Valley National Park.

These new mining claims, documented here for the first time, are staked above groundwater aquifers that feed the springs at Furnace Creek in Death Valley National Park and provide drinking water to the Timbisha Shoshone Reservation. Furnace Creek hosts the park’s visitor center, hotels and other tourist amenities.

“We are extremely concerned about this dramatic rise in mining activity directly adjacent to Death Valley National Park,” said Mason Voehl, executive director of the Amargosa Conservancy. “These claims were filed right next to people’s homes and businesses, and mining there would threaten the groundwater that communities and the environment rely on for survival.”

The new claims were filed by Canadian-based Rover Critical Minerals and follow a year of controversy over claims filed near Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge just a few miles away. The company's proposed mining project in that area sparked a lawsuit that led to the withdrawal of project approval and prompted efforts to secure a mineral withdrawal within the Amargosa Valley area.

Local governments, including the towns of Beatty and Amargosa Valley, have expressed support for pausing new mining claims in the area so that a mineral withdrawal planning process can be undertaken. The Timbisha Shoshone Tribe has also supported that proposal.

“Our national parks were set aside for future generations to experience abundant wildlife and iconic landscapes and learn from our rich cultural stories. These new mining claims are encroaching on our ability to tell that shared story across the California desert,” said Luke Basulto, California Desert program manager at the National Parks Conservation Association. “We have a fleeting opportunity to protect this place — Congress and the administration can act now to save Death Valley National Park, Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge and the rare waters that sustain them.”

The claims have not yet been registered in the U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s Minerals and Land Record System. But in recent field reconnaissance, local residents encountered hundreds of claim markers staked in the ground, with numbers indicated on the claim notices as high as 387. These claims appear to be blanketing an area of approximately 8,000 acres on the border of Nevada and California, just 1 mile away from the park.

Drilling and mining in the area could harm springs and groundwater wells in Death Valley and impair Timbisha Shoshone Tribal water rights. While new mine claims do not guarantee full-scale mining operations, lax regulation means that exploratory drilling alone, with limited regulatory requirements, can have an impact on scarce groundwater sources and natural resources.

“These new mining claims are a real escalation against our efforts to save Ash Meadows and the Amargosa River Basin,” said Patrick Donnelly, Great Basin director at the Center for Biological Diversity and a longtime resident of the area. “Now one of our country’s most beloved national parks and a sovereign Native American nation are also under attack. We need immediate action to pause further expansion of the mining industry in this sensitive region.”

[zachbradleyphotography]

how to fix everything

Ash Meadows, Nevada

[desertprincipessa]

amargosa valley. via flickr

[thorsenmark]

Morning Light Across Death Valley National Park by Mark Stevens Via Flickr: A setting looking to the west while taking in views across Badwater Basin and then to a more distant snowcapped mountain range while at Dantes View in Death Valley National Park.

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this story from Inside Climate News:

Eight thousand years.

That’s roughly how long it takes for snowmelt from Mount Charleston, north of Las Vegas, to reach the aquifer in the Amargosa Basin and Death Valley—the hottest and driest corner of the United States. The temperatures are among the hottest on Earth, with Death Valley potentially setting a world record of over 130 degrees Fahrenheit this summer. Rain is scarce, just a few inches a year in the basin. Its namesake river largely runs dry on the surface, the water hidden underground. The only sign of life across much of the valley adjacent to Death Valley National Park is the sea of creosote bushes, but islands of mesquite and cottonwood trees hide pools of water bluer than the sky above. 

And despite the harsh conditions, those scattered springs, streams and seeps have made this place—Ash Meadows—one of the most biodiverse places in the world. Often called the “Galapagos of the Mojave,” at least 26 endemic species here are found nowhere else, including the rarest fish in the world, the Devil’s Hole pupfish, which lives in a water-filled cavern where the temperature exceeds 90 degrees Fahrenheit.

Many species here have long teetered on the brink of extinction. Human activity in the later half of the 20th century nearly dried up the water supply vital to the area’s plants and animals until the Endangered Species Act, a Supreme Court decision and conservationists saved Ash Meadows by limiting groundwater pumping by local ranchers to maintain water levels critical to the endangered pupfish, eventually designating Ash Meadows as a wildlife refuge in the 1980s. 

That turned the pupfish into a hated pest for many area residents, as protecting it and other wildlife stopped development and economic opportunities faded away. But this past year, a new threat emerging just outside Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge transformed the fish from a villain to a hero.

Pickets across the valley mark mining claims to explore for lithium, the mineral critical to batteries for electricity vehicles and storage of the energy from wind and solar projects. Now, a broad coalition of residents, environmentalists, tribes and local leaders are counting on the Endangered Species Act, the refuge and the pupfish to save them from a proposed mine that they fear will further deplete their scarce water resources, threatening the life that has found a way to thrive in the hottest place in the world.

“We want to save Ash Meadows, but Ash Meadows is going save us,” said Carolyn Allen, chair of the Amargosa Valley Town Board, who is helping lead the fight against proposed mining activity.

Water has always been a priority, she said. Already, the aquifer is seeing too much groundwater pumping, putting the endangered species and community here at risk of extinction. Residents’ wells are running dry, spitting out nothing but sand, and a fix would cost tens of thousands of dollars. 

“It’s the desert,” she said. “Water is the lifeblood of everything.”

Exploratory Drilling and Endangered Species

No more than 1,500 feet away from the refuge’s northernmost spring, where on a hot summer day, schools of the colorful endangered Ash Meadows Amargosa pupfish and Ash Meadows Amargosa speckled dace swam, is a playa with a butte filled with lithium that’s attracted the attention of Rover Critical Minerals. The exploratory mining company is looking to drill in the area to research the potential for a mine here. But a study commissioned by the Nature Conservancy—which led the push in the ‘70s and ‘80s to create the refuge by buying up the land around Ash Meadows and transferring it to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service—found a mine in the area would cause the aquifer to drop 50 feet at the site of the dig, and between two and 30 feet throughout the entire refuge.

Rover was supposed to begin its exploratory drilling last summer, but the Bureau of Land Management, which controls roughly 95 percent of the land in the Amargosa Valley, approved the work without conducting an environmental review, leading the Amargosa Conservancy and Center for Biological Diversity to sue. The BLM pulled its approval of the project and began the review. But in May, locals awoke to claims staked right outside their homes. Rover also proposed exploring the mining potential farther from the refuge but closer to the town and Death Valley National Park.

The project is the latest in a series of environmental battles between mines seeking to dig minerals deemed critical for the renewable energy transition and communities and environmentalists opposing the projects due to their impacts on natural and cultural resources. But unlike many of those disputes, which typically pit mining companies, federal agencies and some local leaders against environmentalists and tribes, the Ash Meadows project has nearly zero local support.

[laur-kay]

The Amargosa Opera House, Death Valley Junction, California - Andrew Chamings for SFgate

[reinato]

Existe uma estrada que atravessa o Vale da Morte, um dos desertos mais inóspitos do mundo.

Quilômetros e quilômetros de asfalto atravessam o deserto e na falta de distratores e falta de curvas, a paisagem monótona do deserto extremo envolve os motoristas, provocando bocejos e sonolência, que pode ser muito perigosa, induzindo o sono.

O Vale de também pode parecer um pouco assustador, talvez talvez seja apenas o nome, mas ao percorrer esse caminho, os trailers lhes causa alguma inquietação.

Uma linha reta onde se deve dirigir 2 horas seguidas no meio dos desertos mais inóspitos do México e dos EUA é o terror dos caminhoneiros que lutam contra o sonho que os envolve sem sentir.

Esta estrada nacional que decorre de leste a oeste no estado da Califórnia atravessa o Parque Nacional do Vale da Morte, um deserto espetacular considerado um dos lugares mais quentes do planeta (temperaturas registradas acima de 54oC).

A partir de Las Vegas você pode chegar ao Vale de La Morte em menos de 2 horas, entrando por Amargosa Valley através da estrada estadual 95.