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Beginning Friday, June 26th, Death Valley National Park will reopen roads, trailheads, restrooms, and overlooks, including the Badwater Road, Dante’s View, Artists Drive, Golden Canyon, and Ubehebe Crater. Backcountry roads will also reopen, including roads to Saline Valley, the Racetrack, and Titus Canyon. Devils Hole, a detached unit of the park located in Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge, will also reopen. For a full list of areas that will be reopened to recreational access, please visit our website (www.nps.gov/deva).

On Sunday, the thermometer at Death Valley's Furnace Creek, located in the deserts of Southern California, soared to 130 degrees Fahrenheit, according to NOAA's Weather Prediction Center. If verified, it would be the hottest temperature recorded in the U.S. since 1913, and perhaps the hottest temperature ever reliably recorded in the world. The highest temperature ever recorded on Earth was also observed in Death Valley — 134 degrees Fahrenheit in 1913.

A press release says the Super Hornet went down in a remote area in the southern portion of the park at around 3:00 that afternoon. The Super Hornet was assigned to Air Test and Evaluation Squadron, which is based at Naval Air Weapons Station (NAWS) in China Lake.

He was reported missing a short time later and park rangers found McCarry’s vehicle on Lake Hill Road in Panamint Valley, a remote section on the park, on May 31. For two days, teams searched for him from the ground and air, aided by a California Highway Patrol airplane and a U.S. Navy helicopter. On June 1, searchers found McCarry’s body about a quarter mile from his vehicle in Panamint Valley.

Park visitors found the body of David Kelleher (67), of Huntington Beach on June 14 in Death Valley National Park. Kelleher appears to have been walking from Zabriskie Point toward Furnace Creek after running out of gas. On the morning of June 8, a park ranger noticed that there was only one vehicle in Zabriskie Point parking lot. On the evening of June 11, the same park ranger saw only one vehicle in the parking lot and remembered it from three days earlier. A heat wave caused record temperatures, up to 123°F.

Searchers located the body of John McCarry (69, from Long Beach) on June 1. Park rangers located McCarry’s vehicle on Lake Hill Road in Panamint Valley on May 31. After two days of air and ground searches by National Park Service and Bureau of Land Management rangers, California Highway Patrol’s A-81 airplane, and U.S. Navy’s VX-31 SAR helicopter, his body was found about a quarter mile from his vehicle on the afternoon of June 1.