Gower Gulch (Death Valley)

Coordinates: 36°25′0.33″N 116°49′24.94″W / 36.4167583°N 116.8235944°W / 36.4167583; -116.8235944 Gower Gulch is a small gulch on the eastern side of Death Valley in Inyo County, California. It is located in the Black Mountains. Gower Gulch is visible from Zabriskie Point and is about one and a half miles long.

History

Gower Gulch is named after Harry P. Gower, an official of the Pacific Coast Borax Company and co-owner of the Furnace Creek Inn and Ranch, before Death Valley became a national monument. The gulch contained mines, camps, and roads during the late 19th century and early 20th century.

Geology

Gower Gulch passes through three geological formations:

the Badlands in the easternmost portion
the Artist's Palette Formation mid channel
the Playa Formation at the channel head.

There are two areas of dry waterfalls: the Upper Knickzone near Zabriskie Point and the Lower Knickzone near the gulch's Alluvial fan. The tallest fall, at the head of the alluvial fan, is approximately 25 ft. high, the only way around it being a ledge on the northern side of the fan. The alluvial fan has a deep channel, called a telescoping channel, that runs north-west from Gower Gulch's mouth.

Mining

Gower Gulch was mined in after the 1880s, when a 1 ¹⁄₂-mile-long (2.4 km) road starting at the northern side of Zabriskie Point was built by the Pacific Coast Borax Company. This road allowed wagons and autos to reach the ten borax mine claims in the gulch. many of these mines are still visible today, though mines on the floor bed of Gower Gulch have been filled in with sediment from past floods.

Diversion

In 1941 a 5-foot-deep (1.5 m) Furnace Creek-Gower Gulch Flood diversion channel was blasted upstream from Zabriskie Point to divert flood waters from the Furnace Creek Wash and the resorts into Gower Gulch. The diversion increased the size of Gower Gulch's drainage basin from 2.77 km² to 455.63 km², an increase of 16,348%. As a result, massive erosion of the channel took place as debris from Furnace Creek were channeled into Gower Gulch. Today the diversion has sunk to over 20 feet deep with two dry falls, one three feet and another ten feet high.

References

Death Valley Historic Resource Study A History of Mining
Schultz, Lisa (2005). "Investigation of the Transient Response of Gower Gulch to Forced Diversion, Death Valley, California." Boston College, The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Department of Geology and Geophysics.

Death Valley and Death Valley National Park

Fauna, flora and minerals	Amargosa springsnail Borax Chuckwalla Death Valley monkeyflower Death Valley pupfish Death Valley June beetle Devils Hole pupfish Saratoga Springs pupfish

History	Amargosa Opera House and Hotel Badwater Death Valley Railroad Greenwater Harmony Borax Works Lake Manly (Badwater Basin) Skidoo Tonopah and Tidewater Railroad Twenty-mule team

Places	Amargosa Range / River / Valley Ash Meadows NWR Badwater Basin Ballarat Beatty Black Mountains Chloride City Cottonwood Mountains Dante's View Darwin Falls Death Valley Junction Devil's Golf Course Eureka Valley / Dunes Funeral Mountains Furnace Creek Panamint City / Panamint Range / Panamint Springs / Panamint Valley Racetrack Playa Rhyolite Saline Valley Saratoga Springs Scotty's Castle Stovepipe Wells Telescope Peak Trona Ubehebe Crater Zabriskie Point

Transportation	California: SR 127 SR 178 SR 190 Trona Railway Nevada: US 95 SR 267 SR 373 SR 374

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