368 Adventures in Scenery 



Rose Valley adjoins the extreme northwest corner of Indian 

 Wells Valley, along the western edge of which the highway has 

 led. Rose Valley is connected with Indian Wells Valley by a 

 canyon south of Little Lake station, through which, during the 

 Pleistocene (glacial) epoch, a river flowed from Owens Lake. 

 Alluvial cones built out from the Sierra Nevada Mountains now 

 block drainage from the north. A small "dry lake" north of 

 Little Lake station is caused by the deposition of alluvial mate- 

 rial from the Sierra Nevada. 



In or between the Haiwee Reservoirs is the divide between 

 Rose Valley and Owens Valley. Owens Valley is a long open 

 trough-like depression lying immediately east and at the very 

 foot of the highest part of the Sierra Nevada Range. It is a 

 vast basin, about 140 miles long and 20 to 40 miles wide. 

 Owens River, which runs through the valley, is one of the few 

 large perennial streams of the Great Basin region. It ends in- 

 gloriously in the briny basin of Owens Lake. Its sparkling 

 comparatively pure water (which is not diverted), derived 

 principally from the rains and snows of the high Sierra Range, 

 is lost under the blazing sun on the flat salt-white bottom of 

 Owens Lake Basin. 



Water from Owens River is diverted by means of Tinemaha 

 dam, 43 miles north of Owens Lake, and an aqueduct intake 

 five miles south of the dam, and conveyed 250 miles to Los 

 Angeles. That part of the water of Owens River which is not 

 diverted enters Owens Lake. Owens Lake is a saturated salt- 

 brine. Haiwee Reservoir, 10 miles south of Owens Lake, is 

 supplied from the river above the lake by an aqueduct around 

 the salt basin. 



All land waters contain some mineral impurities. While 

 the water of Owens River is essentially pure (339 parts per 

 million total salts), coming from the heights of the snow- 

 capped mountains, yet when the waters of Owens Lake fell by 

 evaporation below the level of overflow over the divide to the 

 south the waters of the lake became increasingly, though very 



