The Racetrack Playa in Death Valley California is famous
for a mystery. This almost perfectly level dry lake bed near Badwater
is 2 miles long by 1.3 miles wide, and is shaped, when seen from above,
like a bottom-heavy peanut. These features alone, its enormity, its
somehow dizzying flatness, its striking appearance among the black cliffs
of the Cottonwood Mountains and the Last Chance Range, make it one of
the most fascinating places in the world. But it is the secret journeys
of the Racetrack Playa’s sliding rocks that lend it its mystique.
Across the playa are rocks ranging in size from grapefruits to footlockers,
most of which have broken off the Dolomite cliffs at the south end of
the playa where it meet the alluvial fan. Many of the rocks have left
uncanny shallow grooves marking progressions, generally northward but
not always straight, of 2, 20, 200 or 2,000 feet or more. Though theories
abound, and an enormous amount of work, research and speculation has
gone into discovering the secret of the moving rocks in Death Valley,
no one knows how or why they move, and no one has ever seen them in
motion.
The theory currently held to be the most convincing is that the Racetrack
Playa geology is unique, and that after heavy rains a shallow layer
of nearly frictionless clay is formed that allows the area’s powerful
winds, which sometimes reach 70 miles per hour, to slide the rocks forward.
Not every one agrees with this theory, however, and since no one has
ever witnessed this phenomenon, it remains unproven.
The Racetrack Playa has been designated Protected Wildlands, and is
part of the Death Valley National Park. In order to protect the integrity
of the playa no one is allowed on it when it is wet, and no vehicles
are ever permitted on the playa.
