Classic basin-and-range topography: Death Valley, California. View from Dante's View across Badwater, the lowest point in the western hemisphere at 282 feet below sea level, to the Panamint Mountains and Telescope Peak (11,049'). Mt. Whitney, the highest point in the lower 48 states, is about 100 miles beyond Telescope Peak. Note the perfectly formed alluvial fans in the foreground at the base of the Black Mountains. Both mountain ranges are bordered by large normal faults.
View from the floor of Death Valley across Devil's Playground to Hanaupah Canyon fan and the Panamint Mountains. A tall normal fault scarp can be seen low on the fan in the center of the photo. Telescope is in the clouds at right.
A close view of a major basin-and-range fault scarp. This fault broke in the huge 1872 earthquake. It is a right-normal oblique fault. In 1872 it produced several meters of both right-lateral and normal displacement.
Late afternoon view of the 50'-tall scarp of the Hilton Creek fault, McGee Canyon, eastern Sierra Nevada, California. Here the scarp cuts lateral moraines of the now-vanished McGee Canyon glacier. This fault moved a few inches (valley side down) in the 1980 Mammoth Lakes earthquakes. It is a normal fault like that seen in the Hanaupah Canyon alluvial fan.
A small normal fault cutting Miocene tuffs and conglomerates east of Shoshone, California, near Death Valley. Although it is not obvious from the photo, the hanging wall block (left) moved down relative to the footwall, upon which the geologist is standing. (Note: the orange layer near the top of the hanging wall does NOT correlate with the orange layers low in the footwall.)
UNC geologists illustrating the concept of footwall and hanging wall at a small fault near Las Vegas, Nevada. Their feet are on the footwall, and the hanging wall is hanging over their heads. This is a small normal fault. Grooves and scratches on the fault plane run down the dip of the plane.
