Describing Death Valley brings a potpourri of superlatives: hottest, driest, lowest. In 1913, the valley hit a record 134 degrees Fahrenheit! But despite its brutal image, Death Valley is a beloved mecca for geologists and other nature lovers. It also has a colorful history of ghost towns!

Death Valley measures approximately 3,000 square miles. It spans the border of California and Nevada and is the principal feature of the Mojave and Colorado Deserts Biosphere Reserve, which is devoted to ecological conservation. The diverse landscape features desert sand dunes, snow-capped mountains, and a vast expanse of multi-hued rock. It is also home to uniquely adapted plants and animals. Among the mammals, for example, are the black-tailed jackrabbit, the long-tailed pocket mouse, and the chisel-toothed kangaroo rat!

Death Valley is surrounded by several mountain ranges, including the Sierra Nevadas, the Amargosa Range, the Panamint Range, and the Sylvania and Owlshead Mountains. Encircled by peaks, the valley has the lowest dry elevation in North America at 282 feet below sea level. (The continent’s lowest point overall can be found at the bottom of Lake Superior, but Death Valley contains the lowest spot on dry land.)

The valley is especially noted for its geologic splendor. The cliffs reveal rock layers spanning from Precambrian to modern times. By studying the layers, geologists learn about the earth’s condition in the distant past. For example, layers from the late Pleistocene reveal that the valley was once filled by a freshwater lake, now dubbed Lake Manly. The valley was partly filled again during flash flooding of 2004 and 2005. Still, at that time the water was only two feet deep; before the last ice age, it measured 800 feet!

The 19th century saw many mining camps set up when rock layers revealed valuable minerals. Men were drawn to gold and silver discoveries in the 1850s, and they mined Borax in the 1880s. They gave their camps names like Chloride City, Skidoo, and Panamint City. The mining camps usually became ghost towns within a few years.

In most cases, little remains of these Death Valley mining towns besides stories about their lively inhabitants. Skidoo, for example, is marked only by a sign. It once had a population of 700 and is infamous for having the only hanging in the valley. The hanged man was Hootch Simpson, a down-on-his-luck saloon owner who tried to rob the town bank. He was foiled and later returned to kill an employee! The townspeople hanged Hootch that night. In fact, according to legend he was hanged twice: once for real and once again for the benefit of photographers.

Visitors to Death Valley can ssee a few ghost town ruins, such as those of Panamint City. Panamint was reputedly the roughest town in America! Its founders were outlaws hiding from law enforcement. Although 2,000 people eventually resided there, Wells Fargo refused to open a Panamint bank because of the inhabitants’ lawless reputations.

Although prospectors left the valley when mining became unprofitable, Native Americans have lived in Death Valley for more than 1,000 years. Timbisha families, who are part of the Shoshone tribe, still reside at Furnace Creek. They received 7,500 acres of ancestral homeland with the Timbisha Shoshone Homeland Act of 2000. As of 2000, only 31 people lived at Furnace Creek, setting the record for lowest census in the nation.

Death Valley National Park is open year-round, but considering the summer heat, most people find the valley’s winter climate more comfortable.Since 1933 Death Valley National Park has offered extensive public works for visitors’ comfort. These include developments such as campgrounds, picnic facilities, and hundreds of miles of paved roads.

By December of 1620, after a long Atlantic voyage, the English Separatist William Bradford and his crew had explored several landing spots along the North American coast. They’d rejected various locations after having conflicts with indigenous people. Finally, according to legend, Bradford and his party disembarked on a large boulder, which would eventually be known as Plymouth Rock. They soon declared the surrounding area suitable for their New World settlement, Plymouth Colony.

Although the rock has much historical significance, evidently none of the Pilgrims mentioned it in their writings. Knowledge of its location was traditionally passed from parents to their children. In 1741, the 94-year-old Elder Faunce identified Plymouth Rock as the stone his father had pointed out years earlier. Faunce was a somewhat credible source; he had been Plymouth’s record keeper for many decades. Still, his father had not been among the original Plymouth settlers; he’d arrived three years later in 1623 and heard the Plymouth Rock story from others. Nevertheless, people accepted Faunce’s
story and the identified rock took on great patriotic significance.

It’s estimated that the rock weighed about 20,000 pounds when Bradford and 101 other Mayflower passengers left their ship in 1620. Since then, the rock has lost many sections to souvenir-hunters. It’s also been accidentally split in two and eventually reunited.

How did Plymouth Rock become split? In 1774, as the Revolutionary spirit took over in Massachusetts Bay Colony, a group of people “animated by the glorious spirit of liberty” intended to move the entire rock to the Plymouth Meeting House. Colonel Theopolis Cotton and a group of “Liberty Boys” prepared a carriage drawn by oxen. As they pulled the rock from the ground, it was unintentionally cracked it in two!

Superstitious townspeople believed the divided rock was symbolic of the British Empire. They left the “British half” of the rock in the water. Only the top “liberty half” of the rock was then moved. It soon rested beneath a Meeting House flagpole and a flag that declared “Liberty or Death”. The remainder of the rock stayed embedded in the wharf. The next year, a colonial revolutionary would capture British soldiers and, for his amusement, have them step onto Plymouth Rock, a symbol of American independence.

The two parts of the rock have experienced a few changes since the 1774 division. In 1834, the top section of the rock was removed to Pilgrim Hall (a museum) and put under the auspices of the historical Pilgrim Society. In 1859, the Pilgrim Society began building a Victorian canopy to cover the piece of rock left at the wharf. The canopy was completed in 1867. Since many bits of the rock were being taken by travelers and shopkeepers for profit, an iron gate was soon erected. In 1880 the top of the rock was moved back to shore and affixed to the bottom portion with cement. At this time, the
landing date 1620 was carved.

In 1920 the rock was moved yet again. In honor of the 300th anniversary of the Plymouth Rock landing, the entire Plymouth waterfront was redesigned with a promenade and seawall. The cemented rock was moved to the waterfront and a portico was erected for viewers. Today the rock is managed as part of Pilgrim Memorial State Park. Tourists can visit the rock for free year-round. From May through Thanksgiving, staff members are on hand to tell visitors about Plymouth Rock’s history.

The Liberty Bell in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania is a familiar symbol of independence, freedom, and justice in America. Originally called the State House Bell, it was commissioned in 1751 by colonial representatives. The bell has been tolled on important days from the colonial era to modern times. After enduring cracks, repairs, and an exciting hideout from the British, the bell is now on display. It is rung every Fourth of July.

In 1751, three men representing the Pennsylvania Assembly wrote a letter to their colonial agent in London. On the fiftieth anniversary of William Penn’s Charter of Privileges, they requested a bell for Philadelphia’s State House steeple. The agent arranged for casting at London’s Whitechapel foundry, and the bell was delivered in 1752.

The bell was met with much excitement. First of all, it weighed an impressive 2,080 pounds! More importantly, it was a solid, solemn symbol of what the Pennsylvania Assembly hoped to uphold. William Penn had been especially progressive with religious freedom, Native American rights, and democracy overall. The bell was inscribed with a Biblical passage to capture this spirit: “Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof.” However, early on the bell cracked! Historians disagree about the source of the fissure. In any case, the London foundry set about casting another bell. Meanwhile, two Philadelphia men (John Pass and John Stow) attempted to repair the one that had cracked. They figured that the alloy had been too brittle, so they added more copper. This healed
the wound, but people disliked the bell’s new tone. (They were aiming for a pleasant E note.) The men tried again, and their second attempt was hung in the State House in 1753. When the re-ordered British bell arrived, it was placed elsewhere in the State House to sound the hours. Today, the State House is known as Independence Hall.

The State House bell was rung on many famous occasions in US history. It called the Assembly together and summoned townspeople for special announcements. It tolled when Benjamin Franklin headed for England to address colonists’ grievances; it tolled for discussion of the Sugar Act in 1764 and again for the Stamp Act in 1765; and it rang again for the First Continental Congress in 1774. The bell continued to signal important events, and many events were deemed important during the Revolution. A group of citizens who lived near the bell actually petitioned for less tolling, stating that they were inconvenienced and stressed! Suddenly, in 1777, the city’s bells were all removed. The British would soon be occupying Philadelphia, and surely they’d melt the bells for cannon fodder. The State House bell and more than a dozen others were moved to Zion’s Reformed Church in Allentown, Pennsylvania for safekeeping. They remained hidden beneath church floorboards until after the occupation in 1778. After its reemergence, the bell continued to sound for important events such as elections and the Fourth of July.It was referred to as the Independence Bell or the Old Yankees’ Bell until 1837 when abolitionists noted its relevance to slavery and freedom. The bell’s Leviticus inscription can be interpreted as a call to end enslavement. For example, the entire passage from
Leviticus 25:10 includes, “And ye shall… proclaim liberty throughout the land… and ye shall return every man unto his family.” Abolitionists adopted the bell as their symbol, and since then it’s been known as the Liberty Bell.

By 1846, the Liberty Bell had developed a thin crack that was affecting its sound. It was repaired in time for George Washington’s birthday that year, but when rung on his birthday, it cracked severely. A replica “Centennial Ball” was given to the city in 1876. The original bell is now on display in a new pavilion, the Liberty Bell Center. The Centennial replica is hung in the steeple of Independence Hall, and a third bell – the “Bicentennial Ball” granted by Queen Elizabeth — hangs in a nearby tower. The original bell is still rung, though gently, every July 4th. Young descendents of famous revolutionaries are invited to tap the bell thirteen times in celebration of the original thirteen states.

In 1927, workmen with lively nicknames like “Whiskey Art”, “Palooka”, and “Hoot” quit their regular jobs. They were among the 400 people invited to create Mount Rushmore, a massive mountainside carving of four United States presidents in the Black Hills of South Dakota. The work would be on-and-off labor lasting fourteen years.

Mount Rushmore was conceived by the South Dakota state historian Doane Robinson in 1923. He had learned of a similar project underway in the southern US. Just east of Atlanta, the sculptor Gutzon Borglum had been commissioned to carve into Stone Mountain the likeness of Confederate General Robert E. Lee and a column of soldiers. The historian thought a similar undertaking by Borglum could draw tourists’ dollars to the Black Hills region.

To help maximize tourism interest, Borglum suggested that South Dakota choose a theme of national significance. The men settled upon the first 150 years of United States history, with four presidents being selected to represent the nation’s development. These include George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt. Collectively, these men symbolized the country’s founding, expansion, and unity. The project received approval from Congress and President Calvin Coolidge.

As the project began in 1927, Lakota Sioux people and their supporters opposed the undertaking. Traditionally, they had called the mountain Six Grandfathers Mountain and traveled it for spiritual journeys. Following the Black Hills War of 1876-1877, the Treaty of Fort Laramie granted the land to the Lakota in perpetuity. Now, the land had again been taken. Furthermore, the creation of 60-foot faces of United States presidents, symbols of their oppression, would forever mar the sacred landscape. The fact that Borglum was a Ku Klux Klan member added to the insult! Six Grandfathers was first informally called Mount Rushmore during an 1885 expedition. Charles Rushmore, a wealthy New York lawyer and prospector, suggested giving the mountain his name. However, it was also known to white Americans as Cougar Mountain, Sugarloaf Mountain, Slaughterhouse Mountain, and Keystone Cliffs.

The United States Board of Geographic Names officially named Mount Rushmore in 1930. Borglum chose this particular mountain for two reasons. First, its face met with sunlight for most of the day. Second, it was composed of smooth granite. The rock would be conducive to carving, and the material erodes very slowly (about an inch every 10,000 years). Nonetheless, over fourteen years of labor the faces suffered minor cracks. Fractures were sealed with pegmatite and are evident in lighter streaks on the presidents’ foreheads.

As the project went on, some people continued to question what the faces were symbolizing, and whether the monument should be considered racist given the history of US expansion through native lands. In 1937, before the project was finished, a bill in US Congress proposed adding the face of Susan B. Anthony, a symbol for civil rights. However, federal funds were ultimately refused.
Members of the American Indian Movement occupied the monument in 1971. The Lakota holy man John Fire Lame Deer said that the protestors formed a symbolic shroud over the presidents’ faces, “which shall remain dirty until the treaties concerning the Black Hills are fulfilled”. (A monument to the Native American leader Crazy Horse, first proposed in 1939, is being constructed eight miles away. It is also controversial.) Of some solace to opponents is that the monument, already six stories tall, was intended to be much larger but lacked funding. The original project cost just under $1 million
during the Great Depression. (The largest single donation came from Charles Rushmore
himself, who gave $5,000.) Borglum had hoped to depict the presidents from head to waist. The artist also intended to chisel an expansive panel in the shape of the Louisiana Purchase. This would include gilded words commemorating founding documents and territorial expansion; imagine the golden 8-foot tall letters “U. S. Constitution” carved into a mountainside. Instead, similar information is now engraved on porcelain panels inside a vault installed behind the faces in 1998. The engravings include the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, biographies of the four presidents, and a history of the United States.

A 1998 update to the Visitor Center cost $58 million. The renovation added the porcelain panels, expanded visitor parking, and created a Lincoln Borglum Museum.