Death Valley National Park

Death Valley National Park, established as a national park in 1994 on the California–Nevada border, protects the hottest, driest, and lowest place in North America. Its Badwater Basin sinks to 282 feet below sea level, and the valley holds the highest air temperature ever reliably recorded on Earth — 134°F (57°C). The largest national park in the contiguous United States, it is a vast, stark expanse of salt flats, sand dunes, and bare, banded mountains.

Despite its forbidding name and ferocious summer heat, the park is far from lifeless: it holds hidden springs, wildflower "superblooms" after rare wet winters, and the eerie "sailing stones" that slide across a dry lakebed. Death Valley lies in the deep rain shadow of multiple mountain ranges, which strip the moisture from passing storms. From below-sea-level basin to 11,000-foot peaks, the park spans an enormous range of desert terrain.

• California
  The most populous U.S. state, admitted 1850 located in
• The Mojave Desert
  The driest desert in North America part of