Wanderlust World Wanderlust World Death Valley holds the distinction of being the lowest, hottest, and driest place in North America. Its lowest elevation is Badwater Basin, which sits at -282 feet (-86 meters) below sea level. This surreal salt flat, a remnant of ancient Lake Manly, is the geographic nadir of the continent.
The extreme depth is a result of tectonic forces: Death Valley is a graben—a block of crust dropped between two parallel fault lines (the Black Mountains to the east and the Panamint Range to the west) as the Basin and Range Province stretches apart. This ongoing rifting continues to pull the valley floor downward.
For context, the highest point in the contiguous U.S., Mount Whitney (14,505 ft), lies just 85 miles west—a dramatic vertical relief of nearly 15,000 feet over a short horizontal distance.