Emigrant Junction Ranger Station – Death Valley National Park CA

Description

The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was present in Death Valley National Monument  from 1933 to 1942.  CCC ‘boys’ built erected dozens of buildings in the monument, including administrative, residential, maintenance and visitor facilities. 

One important building is the Emigrant Junction ranger station, built in 1942 as one of the CCC’s last projects in the monument.   The Emigrant Junction station, at the junction of the Towne Pass and Emigrant Pass roads, was the principal western entry point to Death Valley for decades.  The stone building seen here replaced a flimsier structure built in 1935.  It was  heavily modified in 1963, then restored in 1995 and 2001.  The ranger functions moved to Stovepipe Wells in 1987. (Smith & Palmer 2011).

The CCC built a campground and comfort station across the road from the Ranger Station.

Death Valley was proclaimed a national monument by President Herbert Hoover on February 11, 1933, just before he left office.  Hoover set aside almost two million acres (8,000 km2) of southeastern California and small parts of southwestern Nevada. Death Valley is both the lowest and hottest place in the Americas.

Death Valley became a National Park in 1994, in part due to the massive scarring of the landscape produced by continued surface mining allowed by Congress in national monuments. Public outcry  led to greater protection for all national park and monument areas in the country at the end of the 20th century.

The number of improvements in the park are so many that we have created multiple project pages to cover them all.