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Artist’s Palette
BW6. Location/Access:(36o 21.674’N, 116o 47.922’W) Located south of Furnace Creek on a one-way loop road east of the main east side paved highway. Go 8.4 miles south of CA 190 on the Badwater Road and turn left onto Artist’s Drive. Continue for 3.7 more miles. The actual site located above is before the small turn-in for parking because the overall view of the Artist’s Palette is better and the fault zone is more obvious.
Best Time: Very late afternoon, all year.
Geology: This is one of the most colorful sites in Death Valley. The rocks exposed here belong to the Miocene Artist’s Drive formation. The formation consists of a lower sedimentary member with volcanic tuffs dated to approximately 13Ma and an upper member composed of pyroclastic deposits, sedimentary deposits and basalt flows. The whole formation exceeds 4,000 feet in thickness (Wright, et. Al., 1991; McAllister, 1970). The lower pyroclastic member and the upper sedimentary layers are the most colorful throughout the formation’s outcrop extent. The varied colors are due to trace elements within this predominantly volcanic formation, especially those associated with the more felsic rocks. At the GPS coordinates location, one can get a good view of the Black Mountains frontal fault which is oblique (right lateral and normal) slip. At this point, you are standing within a small north-south oriented graben (Miller & Wright, 2004).
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