Byway Main Page

Byway Sites (Traveling South to North)

  1. Topaz Lake
  2. Walker River
  3. Bridgeport
  4. Conway Summit
  5. Virginia Creek
  6. Mono Lake
  7. Mono Craters
  8. June Lake
  9. Crestview
  10. Mammoth Lakes
  11. Crowley Lake
  12. Sherwin Grade
  13. Round Valley
  14. Bishop
  15. Bristlecone Pines
  16. Division Creek
  17. Owens Valley
  18. Dehy Park
  19. Manzanar
  20. Lone Pine
  21. Diaz Lake
  22. Coso Junction
  23. Fossil Falls

 

Site No. 22— Coso Junction

Highlights

Land of Water & Fire

The Coso Volcanic Field is well known as a geothermal area. Commercial power development began in the 1980s. Located within the China Lake U.S. Naval Air Weapons Station, power plants at the Coso Geothermal Field are currently produceing 270 MW from four geothermal power plants.

The Coso Volcanic Field is also one of the most seismically active regions in the United States, producing dozens of tremors in the M1 and M2 range each week.

The valley was inhabited in late prehistoric times by the Timbisha (also called Panamint or Koso) in the extreme south end around Owens Lake. Obsidian from the Coso Volcanic Fields was heavily exploited by Native Americans to make knives and projetile points.

The Timbisha Shoshone Tribe, part of the Western Shoshone Nation, was recognized by the US government in 1983. In this effort, they were one of the first tribes to secure tribal status through the Bureau of Indian Affairs' Federal Acknowledgment Process. They had formerly been known as the Panamint Shoshone.

In 2000, 7,500 acres of ancestral homelands were given back to the tribe via the Timbisha Shoshone Homeland Act. There are about 300 members of the tribe, approximately 50 of whom live at Furnace Creek within Death Valley National Park.