Death Valley

Scotty's Castle is a two-story Spanish Villa located in northern Death Valley National Park, California, USA. It is also known as Death Valley Ranch. Scotty's Castle is not a real castle, and it did not belong to the "Scotty" from whom it got its name.



By far the single biggest visitor attraction in Death Valley is both manmade and totally incongruous. At the far northern end of the valeey, just off Highway 257 close to Ubehebe Crater, a flamboyant rogue and sometime prospector, nicknamed Death Valley Scotty, persuaded Chicago millionaire Albert Johnson to build an extravagant Spanish-style mansion in the desert. Scotty had orignially lured Johnson out here with bogus tales of a gold mine. Johnson, however, found that the climate suited his fragile health, forgave Scotty and the two became lifelong friends.




The 25-room house has a 15m high living room, a music room with a 1600 pipe organ, and even indoor waterfalls that acted as air-conditioners in the summer. The house is now administered by the National Park Service.



Death Valley holds many wonderful surprises for the visitor, from castles to craters, from beautiful sunsets to singing sands. In spite of its forbidding name, very few people have actually died here. It was Christmas Day 1849 when the first white man gazed down at Death Valley. What has become known as the Death Valley Party consisted of four families and a group of young men. They were on their way from Salt lake City looking for an easy way across the Sierra Nevada to the newly discovered gold fields in the San Joaquin Valley. Twenty-six wagons went into Death Valley but only one made it out. One person died and it is said that the valley was given its name when one of the party looked back as they were leaving and said,"Goodbye, death valley."




Today Death Valley is a national park with over 805km of well-maintained roads and nearly all the attractions only a short walk away. Death Valley is unique among desert valleys, not only because of its size and variety of scenery, but also because of its extremes. It has the lowest point in the western hemisphere at 86m below sea level, but Telescope Peak rises to over 3353m not far away. Only 97km to the west is Mount Whitney, at 2218m the highest peak in continental US outside Alaska. In 1913 a record high air temperature of 57 degree celsius was recorded and summer temperatures regularly exceed 49 degrees celsius, making it undoubtedly one of the hottest places on earth.

California is blessed with the most diverse scenic national parks in the USA. Towering coastal redwoods in the north, bubbling mud at volcanic Mount Lassen, giant rock faces at Yosemite, sand dunes of Death Valley, it would be a great destination for vacations.