This episode of Bill Burrud’s “True Adventure” series takes a look at sights in and the history of Death Valley in California and Nevada. It begins with men looking through human remains to explain where the valley got its name. The rest of the film follows a jeep in its journey around the valley driving on unpaved roads. It begins with “The Devil’s Golf course”, followed by sand dunes, graves, and abandoned prospecting towns like Skidoo and Rhyolite in Nevada. The film also seeks to contrast the harsh climate, with surprising shots of water in the desert, either in the form of salt creeks or pumped from deep underground.

0:10 Bill Burrud presents “True Adventure”, 0:40 Bill Burrud introduces himself, 1:21 overview of the desert in Death Valley California, 2:12 overview of Death Valley from a mountain, 4:04 a man role playing as a prospector, 3:29 a man with a donkey climbing a hill, 3:53 a dramatization of a prospector dying of thirst, 4:33 graves of people who died in Death Valley, 4:45 three men looking at a human skull, 5:06 clothes and human remains, 5:30 campers setting up their tent, 5:56 a truck stuck in the sand, 6:24 the truck being pulled out of the sand by a Jeep, 6:57 a man inspecting the radiator of a Jeep, 7:20 man pours water into a canister, 7:46 man inspects the tires, 8:01 Jeep drives down an unpaved road, 8:27 an abandoned prospecting wagon, 8:58 an old painting from the Mexican-American War, 9:19 Painting of John Sutter, 9:29 footage from the Sutter Gold Mill at the American River, 10:06 the entrance to death valley at Furnace Creek, 10:39 the jeep driving over “The Devil’s Golf course” where a lake used to be, 11:26 a photographer takes pictures and walks over the landscape, 11:51 crew gathers water from a small stream, 12:16 man operating a water pump, 12:31 Jeep driving past a warning sign, 12:48 man inspects a roadside telephone, 13:31 Jeep drives past an abandoned house, 13:52 old borax transport wagons, 15:02 overview of the desert with the Jeep driving in the distance, 16:07 Jeep stops at a Salt Creek which has some small fish swimming in it, 17:02 Jeep driving through the desert, 17:49 Jeep driving past sand dunes, 18:23 two men digging in the sand and pulling out an old gun barrel, 19:01 a memorial to a group of Pioneers that burned their wagons, 19:48 large Charcoal Kilns made for mining, 20:20 remains of the mining town of Skidoo, 20:56 the abandoned remains of the settlement of Rhyolite in the Funeral mountains, 21:11 the inside of an old pub, 21:32 drawings from the heydays of Rhyolite followed by more shots of the abandoned town, 23:19 the Jeep pulling up to a recent grave, 24:20 an overview of the valley from the mountains, 24:45 Burrud speaks to the camera, 25:45 Executive Producer Gene McCabe, Producer William H. White, Editor William R. Lieb