Salt Creek Anticline

Salt Creek is an ephemeral stream that flows between Mesquite Flat (northern Death Valley) and Devils Golf Course (southern Death Valley). Salty water in the stream flows mostly from groundwater discharge in the late winter and spring. The active channel where water flows most continuously is confined to a channel carved down the middle of a rising anticline forming in the old lake basin sediments in the center of the valley (Hunt, 1975). It is in this section of the stream where desert pupfish survive despite the harsh desert conditions that currently exist in the valley. Highway 190 is in the upper left. Scale (1:48,000).