This museum grade fine art photograph is available in a fine art limited edition of 200, signed and numbered with a signed Certificate of Authenticity (COA) provided for additional provenance.
Boulder Path - Milky Way and Summer Triangle over Devils Golf Course, Death Valley, CA
Devils Golf Course, Death Valley National Park, California
The Milky Way, Summer Triangle and Northern Cross over Devils Golf Course and the Panamint Range in Death Valley National Park
The Milky Way spiral arm rises high into the skies above Devils Golf Course Salt Pan in Death Valley National Park, as faint green airglow illuminates the sky. Vega, the fifth brightest star in the night sky and the second brightest star in the northern hemisphere, shines brightly to the right of the Milky Way. Altair, the 12th brightest star in the night sky and the fourth brightest star in the northern hemisphere, shines bright just to the left of the Milky Way. Deneb is the 19th brightest star in the sky and the 12th brightest star in the northern hemisphere. Deneb also marks the top of the Northern Cross. The entire Northern Cross is visible in this image, formed by Deneb, Sadr, Aljanah (Epsilon Cygni), Albireo and Delta Cygni within the constellation Cygnus.
Together, Vega, Altair and Deneb form the famous Summer Triangle. Although called the Summer Triangle, it remains visible into November from Death Valley's latitude. Both Vega and Altair are relatively close to earth in cosmic terms, at 25.04 light-years away and 16.7 light years away respectively. Deneb is much further away at 1,400-2,600 light years away. The exact distance is not known. It's so extraordinarily bright that it overwhelmed the instruments on the Gaia satellite, astronomers' most precise star mapping instrument. It's also too far away to reliably use parallax triangulation methods.
To see more of my work of Devils Golf Course, please see Cracked Starlight and Starblast.
The History of Devils Golf Course and Its Name
Devil's Golf Course got its name in 1934 when a guide book published by the US Department of the Interior and National Park Service stated the terrain was so rugged "for only the devil could play golf on such a course." Page six of the 1934 Death Valley National Monument guidebook describes the area well: "The Devil's Golf Course, lying south of Furnace Creek, is an expanse of salt, crystallized into weird and fantastic shapes varying from an inch to more than 3 feet in height. These dwarfed and twisted pinnacles cover the area so closely that a flat space large enough to lay one's hat cannot be found. The salt is not just thin surface strata; a well reached a depth of over a thousand feet, and except for a few thin layers of clay the rest was salt. This area is well named, for only the devil could play golf on such a course."
It's not clear whether this referred to the modern day Devils Golf Course or the earlier locations appearing on the early park maps, though it's safe to assume it started as the latter and changed over time. The location now known as Devils Golf Course appeared on NPS maps as 'Salt Pools' from the first park map in 1933 through at least 1958. By the 1961 park maps, the name Salt Pools was removed with Devils Golf Course replacing the Salt Pools location on the maps (with the exception of one 1965 brochure anomalously reverting to the older name). From the first 1933 maps through at least 1958, Devils Golf Course on the maps referred to an area ranging from Salt Pools (modern day Devils Golf Course) northward into Middle Basin north of where West Side Road branches off Badwater Road and south of Furnace Creek. The descriptive term 'Devils Golf Course' first appeared in the 1934 NPS guidebook, and by 1961 had replaced 'Salt Pools' on official NPS cartography maps for this location, a 25-year naming transition documented in NPS publications.
This change was likely because the park service had originally kept the naturally occurring salt pools at Devils Golf Course open with dynamite, but understandably stopped this practice at some point. It is reasonable to assume the map name change in 1961 coincided with the decision to stop the practice of artificially keeping the pools at Devils Golf Course open with dynamite. Now, the salt pools occur at random naturally due to sinkholes, though they will always eventually crust over with salt and close up. As such, they are no longer marked or mentioned on modern day maps as the name no longer accurately reflects what visitors will find there.
If you listen closely on warm days, you can hear the salt make a cracking sound as it expands and contracts. It's a rugged salt pan consisting of dry, weathered, wind, and rain sculpted deposits of thick salt. The salt formations here are made of Halite (commonly known as rock salt) mixed with bits of borax. Unlike the flat honeycomb hexagon salt rings of Badwater Basin 5 miles to the south of here, the formations at Devils Golf Course are jagged, rugged, tough spiky pinnacles. The salt pan sits at a slightly higher elevation than Badwater Basin, -276 feet below sea level (Garmin GPS and Gaia GPS, consistent with USGS topographic elevation). With no outlet, the waters of Ancient Lake Manly deposited salt and other minerals into the lake bed as it dried out, eventually forming Badwater Basin and Devils Golf Course.
There's a lot of misinformation floating around about what causes the salt formations at Devils Golf Course. Many popular travel blogs incorrectly state that the spires and formations at Devils Golf Course grow via "capillary action," the vertical pumping of briny groundwater to the surface. The 1966 USGS Report 494-B written by Charles Hunt debunks this claim with the actual cause of the growth here.
Instead of vertical capillary action, the primary driver is lateral groundwater seepage from nearby flood plains into the ground beneath the smooth salt crust. Here at Devils Golf Course, where the smooth salt flat meets the edge of a flood plain, water seeps sideways into the ground beneath the smooth salt crust. As that water evaporates, it deposits more salt crystals underneath. Those growing salt crystals deposited beneath the crust push upward with enough force to heave and buckle the smooth surface above them, eventually turning it into the rough, jagged formations of Devil's Golf Course (p B62, right column, 5th paragraph).
Long before Death Valley became a National Monument in 1934, the Pacific Coast Borax Company drilled holes here in search of potash. They found "interbedded salt and mud, with some minor sand and gravel" underneath the salt pan here as deep as they drilled, which was more than 1,000 feet deep in some places. Later research suggests the deposits in some places in the valley are much deeper, as much as 9,000 feet thick near Mormon Point, less than 4,000 feet thick west of Artists Drive. The original 1937 park brochure refers to drilling of over 1,000 feet of alternating layers of clay and salt without reaching bedrock. It states "that the rock floor of the valley at this place must lie more than 1,250 feet below sea level."
Technical Specifications
- Camera: Canon EOS 5D Mark III
- Lens: Canon EF24-70mm f/2.8L II USM
- Settings (Sky 1): 24mm | f/2.8 | 25 Seconds | 6400 ISO
- Settings (Sky 2): 24mm | f/2.8 | 25 Seconds | 6400 ISO
- Settings (Foreground): 24mm | f/2.8 | 201 Seconds | 3200 ISO
- Settings (Light Painting 1): 24mm | f/8 | 6.0 Seconds | 100 ISO
- Settings (Light Painting 2): 24mm | f/8 | 30.0 Seconds | 100 ISO
- Process: 5-Image Panoramic | Successive Back-to-Back Exposures using a Nodal Rail to Prevent Parallax Error | Bespoke Multi-Layer Noise Management (Manual Masking to preserve details and raw data integrity)
Technical Note
A high-resolution panoramic stitch [16x20 aspect ratio] of 5 single exposure images captured in horizontal orientation, panning upwards for the sky frames using a nodal rail and L-bracket on a 3-way pan and tilt panoramic head for nodal point accuracy, ensuring the final photo preserves museum-grade detail and resolution across the entire frame, from the textures of Devils Golf Course to the Milky Way and stars in the sky. Two successive light painting passes were used at different exposure shutter speeds at f/8 to properly illuminate the vast expanse of the salt flat from the closest formations in the foreground to those further out, each requiring different levels of illumination due to the inverse square law of light fall-off.
Note on Provenance
Captured using the panoramic workflow of the "Mead Method" and light painting developed over 15 years of fine art landscape experience. This image preserves a genuine moment in time executed entirely in the field without the use of composites, sky swaps, or generative AI. Just a single moment in time, preserved.
Photo © copyright by James Mead.
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• Signed and Numbered Limited Editions of 200
• Signed Certificate of Authenticity (COA) provided for additional provenance
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• Ready to hang out of the box: no glass or framing required
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After placing your order, I’ll reach out personally to confirm your ideal frame and liner pairing from my curated Roma collection. If you’d prefer to finalize your framing choice in advance, feel free to reach out any time for a custom recommendation.
These museum grade works of art feature:
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• Available in your choice of 3.5" or 4" Roma wood mouldings with a black linen liner for a framed, museum-grade appearance
• Museum-grade 3" black linen liner for added depth and visual separation
• Signed and Numbered Limited Editions of 200
• Signed Certificate of Authenticity (COA) provided for additional provenance
• Hand Crafted in the USA by our master printmakers
• Ready to hang out of the box: no glass or framing required
Please contact me for Alaska, Hawaii, and international shipping rates. Please allow 4-5 weeks for production and delivery.
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