Today, we'll visit a place of strange and silent beauty. As beautiful as this place is, its name provides evidence of very real danger. We are exploring Death Valley National Park  . Death Valley is a huge place. It extends more than 225 kilometers across the southern part of California into the neighboring state   of Nevada. Death Valley is a land of beautiful yet dangerous desert and mountains. There are mountains that reach more than 3,000 meters into the sky. Much of Death Valley is flat and dry. In some areas the ground is nothing but salt. Nothing is able to grow in this salty ground. However, it would be wrong to think that nothing lives in Death Valley. The valley is full of life. Wildflowers grow very quickly after even a small amount of rain. Several kinds of birds live in Death Valley, as do mammals and reptiles. Many different snakes live there too. The area got its name in 1849. That was the year after gold was discovered   in California. Thousands of people from around the country traveled to the gold mining areas of the state. They were in a hurry to get there before other people did. One group trying to reach California decided to take a path called the Old Spanish Trail. By December they had reached Death Valley. But there was a lack   of water and there were too few plants for their work animals to eat. The people could not find a pass through the tall mountains to the west of the valley. Slowly, they began to suffer from a lack of food. To survive, they killed their work animals for food and began to walk out of the valley. As they left, a woman in the group looked back and said, "Goodbye, death valley." The name has never been changed. Death Valley became a national park in 1994. More than one million people visit the park each year. Why did the woman call the area death valley?
Because the group of people didn't know how to walk out of the valley. Because lots of people died here. Because the woman was left behind and would die here. Because the group of people lived a hard life here and their work animals were killed.