Furnace Creek Fan

Furnace Creek Wash drains from the Amargosa Range into Death Valley where it forms a massive alluvial fan. The location of the fan is controlled, in part, by faulting along the northern end of the rising Black Mountains (on the right). However, a man-made diversion near Zabriskie Point (near the right side of the image) is partly diverting the drainage and migration of sediments down Gower Gulch, a canyon in the northern end of Black Mountains. Note that in 1948 the development of the Furnace Creek Ranch area was limited to only a small portion of the fan. Scale (1:48,000); north is to the left.