Charles Cooper, age 12, of Dorchester, Mass.,

What is the hottest place in the United States?

The hottest place in the United States rates among the hottest places in the whole world. When it comes to scorching temperatures, very few places can beat it. Our hottest spot is, of course, the desert of Death Valley in California. There the record for a summer day is 134 degrees Fahrenheit in the shade. Whew only a few spots in the Sahara Desert ever become hotter than this. And they are only hotter by a few degrees.

Death Valley is trapped, way below sea level, by grim mountains, Its lowest point is 282 feet below the level of the sea. The area is about 140 miles long and from 4 to 16 miles wide. It gets about two inches of rain a year. The dry heat is enjoyed by lizards, rattlers and other snakes as well as hundreds of different kinds of plant life, So Death Valley was not named, because it is a desolate waste unable to support living things. It was named by the gold prospectors of 1849 who almost perished there.