Explore Death Valley's Rich History

Park History

Today’s visitor to Death Valley drives in air-conditioned comfort, stays in comfortable hotel rooms or well-maintained campground, orders meals and provisions at park concessions, even quaffs a beer at the local saloon. He or she may take a swim in the Olympic-sized pool, tour a Moorish castle, shop for souvenirs, and enjoy the desert landscape while hiking along a nature trail with a park ranger.

It hasn’t always been so.

Americans looking for gold in California’s mountains 1849 were forced to cross the burning sands in order to avoid severe snowstorms in the nearby Sierra Nevada. Some perished along the way, and the land became known as Death Valley.

Horace Albright, a founding father of the National Park Service, was instrumental in the creation of Death Valley National Monument. In 1913, Albright interrupted his study of mining law at the University of California to take a job in Washington as confidential clerk to the U.S. Secretary of the Interior. He soon teamed with wealthy borax industry executive Stephen Mather to establish the National Park Service, serving as superintendent of Yellowstone National Park and as Mather’s field representative. For two decades, Albright explored and evaluated dozens of potential parks and historical sites.

“Death Valley National Park was in many ways a tough sell,” Albright told me in a 1976 interview. After all, he explained, in the early 1930s, the general public—and most members of Congress—regarded the desert in general and Death Valley in particular, as a trackless wasteland. And then President Herbert Hoover came from a mining background, and often tilted more toward industry than scenery.

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Protection and later history

Albright, who became National Park Service director in 1930, helped convince Hoover to sign an executive order to withdraw two million acres of the Death Valley region for inclusion in a national park or monument.

In one of his last official acts, President Herbert Hoover signed a proclamation designating Death Valley as a National Monument on February 11, 1933. With the stroke of a pen he not only legislated the protection of a vast and wondrous land, but helped to transform one of the earth’s least hospitable spots into a popular tourist destination.

Like a proud father with many children, Albright declined to name a favorite park, but he confessed that Death Valley had always occupied a special place in his heart. His upbringing in the nearby town of Bishop, his interest in mining, and his major role in the park’s creation all contributed to his love of the valley. When I asked him what was it about Death Valley that attracted him, he adjusted his hat, pulled on his string tie, and said suddenly: “The rocks. You can see almost the whole history of the earth in those rocks.”

Death Valley National Monument was “upgraded” to national park status and became the largest park outside of Alaska with more than 3.3 million acres when Present Clinton signed the California Desert Protection Act of 1994. Numerous parts of the mountain ranges surrounding Death Valley, as well as tow other large valleys—Eureka and Saline—were added to the park.

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