Aguereberry Point — Death Valley at Alpenglow
Pete Aguereberry arrived in Death Valley around 1905, a Basque immigrant chasing what everyone else was chasing — a claim, a strike, a future that might turn out to be worth the trouble. He found gold at Eureka Mine on Harrisburg Flat and he stayed. He stayed for forty years, long after most of the other prospectors had moved on or given up. Sometime in that long tenure he built a rough road to the high point of the Panamint Range that now carries his name, partly to show his partners the full scale of the valley they were working in.
The view from Aguereberry Point — 6,433 feet above the floor of Death Valley — is not subtle. The salt flats lie below, the Black Mountains rise across the way, the whole basin arranged as if someone intended to make the geology legible all at once. It is the kind of vista that gives the phrase "big country" its content.
This image is not quite that view. It is an approach to it — a more intimate portrait of the point itself, the rocks and the ridge in the near field, the valley haze settling in the middle distance, the alpenglow of a dying afternoon holding in the mountain faces behind. The place, rather than the panorama. Pete's place.
Fine Art Death Valley Landscape Photography Print
Alpenglow illuminates the prospect at Death Valley's Aguereberry Point at sunset.
