New Photos Added: Eastern Sierras in Infrared

New infrared photos have been added to the site from a trip to the Eastern Sierras. Click on the images, or here to view the updates.

Trona Pinnacles
The Trona Pinnacles are one of the most unusual geological features in the California Desert National Conservation Area. The unusual landscape consists of more than 500 tufa spires (porous rock formed as a deposit from springs of streams), some as high as 140 feet, rising from the bed of the Searles Lake basin. The pinnacles vary in size and shape from short and squat to tall and thin, and are composed primarily of calcium carbonate (tufa). They now sit isolated and slowly crumbling away near the south end of the valley, surrounded by many square miles of flat, dried mud and with stark mountain ranges at either side. The Pinnacles are located within 3,800 acres (15 km2) of federal land managed by the Bureau of Land Management.

The Trona Pinnacles are inside a BLM Area of Critical Environmental Concern (ACEC) designated to protect and preserve unique resources.




Manzanar
Manzanar is most widely known as the site of one of ten camps where over 110,000 Japanese Americans were imprisoned during World War II. Located at the foot of the Sierra Nevada in California's Owens Valley between the towns of Lone Pine to the south and Independence to the north, it is approximately 230 miles northeast of Los Angeles. Manzanar (which means “apple orchard” in Spanish) was identified by the United States National Park Service as the best-preserved of the former camp sites, and was designated the Manzanar National Historic Site.

146 prisoners died at Manzanar. Fifteen prisoners were buried there, but only five graves remain, as most were later reburied elsewhere by their families.

The Manzanar cemetery site is marked by a monument that was built by prisoner stonemason Ryozo Kado in 1943. An inscription in Japanese on the front of the monument reads, 慰靈塔 (Soul Consoling Tower). The inscription on the back reads "Erected by the Manzanar Japanese" on the left, and "August 1943" on the right. Today, the monument is often draped in strings of origami, and sometimes offerings of personal items are left by survivors and other visitors. The National Park Service periodically collects and catalogues these items.



Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest
The Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest, located in the White Mountains of California, is home to the oldest known living trees on earth, the Great Basin Bristlecone Pine Pinus longaeva. The oldest tree, nicknamed "Methuselah", is more than 4,750 years old, and is not marked to ensure added protection from vandals.

The image here was taken in the Patriarch Grove at 11,000 feet above sea level, near the tree line. The grove is the home of the world's largest Bristlecone Pine, the Patriarch Tree. Its splendid remoteness and moonscape appearance gives the Patriarch Grove a surreal atmosphere. Bristlecone pines and limber pines dot the landscape with a background view of the Great Basin in Nevada.