180 Adventures in Scenery 



of the Valley, between Big Pine Creek and Bishop Creek, and 

 north to big bend of Owens River, is so flat and even that the 

 streams pool their way across through ponds and marshes. The 

 flat even floor of the Valley varies in width from 2 to 8 miles. 

 The mountain walls on either side of the Valley rise to great 

 heights. The Sierra range in the vicinity of Mount Whitney 

 is 8,000 feet above the valley floor, and the Inyo range is nearly 

 as high. 



A Faulted Mountain Valley 



It is hardly necessary to state that the Valley, with its flat, 

 level, uniform floor and steep precipitous walls, is not a valley 

 of erosion, but is a structural valley. The walls on either side 

 are the faces of great fault blocks. To the eye they appear to 

 rise almost vertically from the valley floor to the high crests of 

 the mountain ranges on either side. The level floor of the val- 

 ley extends from the great lava plain on the north a distance 

 of nearly 80 miles southward, with steep fault escarpments on 

 either side. It is thought that the basin in which Owens Lake 

 lies is due to sinking of a fault block, thus causing the basin. 

 Owens River flows through the valley from the great lava 

 plateau to the north not as a drainage stream but pools its way 

 down the flat plain simply because water runs down hill. 



To the east of the Inyo range is Saline Valley, an arid basin 

 having a salt sink at its lowest point. Its floor is 2,500 feet 

 lower than that of Owens Valley west of the range. There is 

 no drainage connection between Saline Valley and Owens Val- 

 ley. East of Saline Valley is the Panamint range, which forms 

 the west wall of the north end of Death Valley. South and 

 east of the Panamint range is the Amargosa range. East of the 

 Amargosa range, rising in Nevada, is the Amargosa River, 

 which flows south 25 miles, then turns west and north around 

 the Funeral Mountains in San Bernardino County, and then 

 flows north and west and disappears in the sink of Death Valley. 

 (See Chap. X.) To the south and east of Owens Lake is the 



