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Why are Mount Whitney and Death Valley located so close to each other?

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Pacific mountain system Coast Mountains along the Torres Channel, an arm of Atlin Lake, northwestern British Columbia, Canada.

Mount Whitney and Death Valley are located in close proximity due to the complex geological processes of the Basin and Range Province. This region is characterized by numerous north-south trending mountain ranges and intervening valleys formed by the faulting and tilting of the Earth's crust.12

The Sierra Nevada, which contains Mount Whitney, is a massive, upfaulted, and tilted block of the Earth's crust. A major fault zone bounds the eastern side of this range, where the great mass was uplifted to create the highest peak in the contiguous United States.34

Conversely, Death Valley is a structural depression—a sediment-filled basin—that formed as part of the same regional faulting process. While the Sierra Nevada block was uplifted, other crustal blocks sank, creating the deep, low-lying basins characteristic of the region. This dramatic difference in elevation over a relatively short horizontal distance is a direct result of these intense, ongoing tectonic forces.5123