California, Deep Springs Valley, view SSW from Gilbert Pass, White Mountains, elevation 1789 m (5870 ft).

Deep Springs Valley is located at the southwestern corner of the Great Basin in the interior western United States. Bounded by the Sierra Nevada on the west and the Wasatch ranges of Utah on the east, the Great Basin is characterized geologically by east-west extension (spreading) and thinning of the Earth's crust. The crust accommodates this stretching by breaking into hundreds of blocks bounded by steep normal faults, resulting at the surface in hundreds of north-south oriented mountain ranges separated by deep valleys.

Superimposed here in the western Great Basin are a number of major NNW-oriented right-lateral fault systems that take up a significant amount of displacement from the San Andreas Fault as the Pacific crustal plate slips NNW relative to the North American plate. These parallel faults of the eastern California shear zone slip at different rates, and the Deep Springs Valley graben (or half-graben) is the result of NNE-oriented displacement-transfer faults that help make up the difference in motion between the Owens Valley - White Mountains fault system to the west, and the Furnace Creek - Fishlake Valley fault system to the east.

Put another way, the White Mountains (right-hand side of the image) are moving northward 1-2 mm per year faster than the Inyo Mountains (left-hand side of the image), and Deep Springs Valley spreads and sinks to make up the difference. It does this mainly along the Deep Springs fault system along the base of the Inyo Mountains on the left. Deep Springs Lake (white playa in distance) occupies the Valley's lowest point at the southwest end, which also marks the area of greatest recent displacement along the Deep Springs fault.

The most recent scarp along the Deep Springs fault averages about 2.7 meters (9 feet) of vertical displacement along about 20 km of its 26 km length. It is thought to have been formed by a single magnitude 7 earthquake event sometime between 1200 and 2200 years before present. Overall, formation of the valley is estimated to have started about 1.7 million years ago, and to have accumulated about 5000 feet (1500 m) of vertical drop along the Deep Springs fault during that time.