Death Valley National Park

Death Valley National Park is a national park of the United States that straddles the California-Nevada border, east of the Sierra Nevada. It encompasses Death Valley itself along with the northern part of Panamint Valley, the southern part of Eureka Valley and most of Saline Valley, lying at the interface between the arid Great Basin and Mojave deserts. The park protects the northwest corner of the Mojave Desert and a varied landscape of salt flats, sand dunes, badlands, valleys, canyons and mountains, including Badwater Basin, at 282 feet below sea level the second lowest point in the Western Hemisphere. It covers 3,422,024 acres, and more than 93 percent of its area is designated wilderness. It was first protected as a national monument on February 11, 1933, and redesignated a national park on October 31, 1994, and it is managed by the National Park Service. This entity is distinct from Death Valley, the desert valley landform the park is centered on and takes its name from.