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Highway 190 near Zabriskie Point on August 16th,
2004
Flash flood aftermath near Furnace Creek
Good omen: Road runner waits for the last barricade
to be removed on the newly reconstructed Highway
190
Bikers ready to roll on April 29th, 2005 |
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FURNACE
CREEK, CALIFORNIA —
On-the-road weather has
always fascinated me. A weather radio can ALWAYS be found
in any of my road trip vehicles, and I try to look at the
NOAA weather satellite imagery a least once a day when I am
at the office. On August 15, 2004, I noticed a huge thunderstorm
cell building over the mountains on the eastern edge of Death
Valley. Rain of any consequence is always of interest when
it falls on one of the driest mountain ranges in North America,
but this one looked especially intense. It was. The storm
that began to flood the dry gullies just to the east of Furnace
Creek became known as the "storm of the century"
and unleashed torrents of water that eventually led the death
of two motorists whose car was washed off of state highway
190 near the entrance of the popular Twenty-Mule Team Canyon
Road. The storm waters completely wiped out nearly three miles
of the state highway and caused extensive damage to both paved
and dirt roads throughout the eastern sections of Death Valley
National Park.
One of our long-term road correspondents,
Mark Holloway, was working
for the park highway department at the time. He provided us
with dramatic photographs of some of the damage, including
photos of some of the eight cars that were swept out of the
employee parking lot and washed down the canyon in front of
the historic Furnace Creek Inn. This section of State Route
190 between the Badwater Road junction and State Route 127
at Death Valley Junction is one of the most popular paved
roads in the park. It provides access to Dante's View, the
Twenty-Mule Team Canyon Drive, Echo Canyon, and Zabriskie
Point, which probably has the distinction of the most-photographed
feature in this 7,200 square mile preserve. We frequently
recommend using this state highway to anyone wishing to visit
Death Valley starting from either Las Vegas or California.
From our office, it is almost exactly 180 miles to Furnace
Creek using this route, while the alternative highways can
easily increase this distance by 100 miles. Because we love
visiting Death Valley, the closure of this vital highway was
of keen interest to us at RoadTrip America.
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