It’s the driest place in the USA,
the lowest point in North America,
and one of the hottest places on Earth.
But between mid-October and mid-May,
Death Valley is one of the
USA’s most life-affirming road trips.
Death Valley straddles the California-Nevada border,
just a four-and-a-half-hour drive from Los Angeles,
or a two-and-a-half-hour drive from Las Vegas.
Many parts of Death Valley
are designated Wilderness Areas
and are under the care of the National Park Service.
Despite its rugged
appearance, Death Valley’s ecological,
geological and historical gems are fragile.
Tread lightly, so future
generations can experience the wilderness value
of this national treasure.
If you’re approaching from Nevada,
the adventure begins just
outside the park in the free-wheelin’ town of Beatty,
The Gateway to Death Valley.
In the early 1900s,
Beatty serviced nearby mining towns such as Rhyolite,
which during its short life featured a train station,
3 newspapers, and 53 saloons.
After the mining boom,
the hills around Beatty
called out to artists and freethinkers.
Stop by the Goldwell Open
Air Museum, home to The Venus of Nevada,
the Ghost Rider, and other
works inspired by the windswept Mojave Desert.
The Mojave has long drawn spiritual seekers too.
If you’re entering the park from the California side,
stretch your legs at Father Crowley Overlook,
dedicated to the man they called The Desert Padre.
Just a 10-mile drive further
into the park, take the turn-off to Darwin Falls,
a reminder that despite the park’s foreboding name,
Death Valley supports a surprising abundance of life.
After Darwin Falls,
shake off the dust at Panamint Springs.
Whether you’re staying
the night or just whetting your whistle,
remember to top up on
fuel and water before venturing into the backroads,
because this is no place for the ill-prepared.
Follow the gravel roads south to the Wildrose Kilns,
which once produced the charcoal needed to
smelt lumps of Death Valley ore into silver.
Stop by the Eureka Mine, where fortune-seeker,
Pete Aguereberry,
devoted his life to swinging a pick.
The Frenchman never did hit the motherlode,
but instead discovered one
of Death Valley’s greatest treasures, serenity.
When visitors began exploring Death Valley in their
new-fangled motor cars in the 1930s,
the ever-affable Aguereberry guided
them to the place he called “The Great View”.
Take the climb to his
beloved outlook, and behold the spectacle
of the Panamint Mountains
cascading into the Valley floor 6000 feet below.
After exploring the backroads of the Panamint Range,
head deeper into the
park’s sun-baked heart, at Stovepipe Wells.
It was here where a party of
lost 49ers, burnt their wagons, ate their oxen,
and staggered out on foot
from the place they christened, Death Valley.
Death Valley’s landscapes may
be harsh, but they are rarely monotonous.
Each twist on these
desert roads reveals yet another vista
with its own geological voice, its own story to tell.
Just a short drive east
of Stovepipe Wells are the shifting sands of
the Mesquite Dunes,
the easiest to access of all the park’s dune fields.
Further east, take a walk along the Salt Creek Trail,
where playful pupfish splash in the wetland remnants
of a lake which once covered much of the valley.
To the south, lace up
your hiking boots and discover the slot canyons,
marbled narrows,
and galleries of fragmented rock in Mosaic Canyon.
Once you’ve explored the trails around Stovepipe Wells,
continue south into the valley floor,
where as the road descends the temperature climbs.
Pull into the aptly-named, Furnace Creek,
the holder of the world’s highest recorded temperature.
Despite the heat,
the resorts here make Furnace Creek
a cool place to kick back after a long day on the trails.
In the late 1800s, this outpost was
the home of the Pacific Coast Borax Company,
whose 20-mule wagon teams
hauled borax from the valley floor
and into the laundries
and cosmetics counters of the USA.
Learn more about the Death Valley’s gritty past
at the Furnace Creek Visitor Center.
Run by the National Park
Service, an hour here will deepen your
appreciation of the park’s
incredible history, ecosystems and geology.
Furnace Creek is close
to some of Death Valley’s most popular sites,
and as always, no two are quite the same.
Just a 5-mile drive south
of Furnace Creek is Zabriskie Point,
a mud-rock Badlands that has
long inspired film makers, musicians and mystics.
A few miles south, take the turnoff onto Artist’s Drive,
a scenic road which takes in an eye-popping,
oxidised palate of hillside colours.
Nearby, at the Devils Golf Course,
stand at the edge of the jagged salt plane
that stopped the wagons
of those lost 49ers dead in their tracks.
Just ten miles down the road in Badwater,
imagine the heartbreak of those
lost overlanders who splashed these waters to
their cracked and swollen lips,
only to taste water twice as salty as the sea.
After exploring the park’s lowest point
take the road up Coffin Peak, to Dante’s View.
Here, from a height of five-and-a-half thousand feet,
southern Death Valley stretches out with all the ferocity
of hell and all the beauty
of heaven, nature’s very own Divine Comedy.
After coming back to earth, head north,
and follow 27-miles of
serpentine bends through Titus Canyon, to Leadfield.
In 1925 false advertising lured
hundreds of hopeful miners to these barren hills.
Three years later, Leadfield was
just another Death Valley ghost town.
One miner who did strike it lucky was Bert Shively.
Cornering his runaway burro in a remote canyon,
the exasperated miner picked
up a rock to hurl at the stubborn beast.
Glinting in the sun, that rock was never thrown,
and The Lost Burro Mine
went on to produce gold for decades.
Just over the hill from Bert’s mine, is The Racetrack,
whose mysterious sliding rocks were long thought to be
the work of playful spirits and bored extra-terrestrials.
Alas, science has recently
discovered more logical culprits…
high winds and winter ice.
From the Racetrack, head though Teakettle Junction,
to a section of the park formed by steam.
Drive to the rim of Ubehebe Crater,
formed in one explosive
instant when rising magma hit cool groundwater.
Some geologists estimate the
crater was formed only 300 years ago,
a reminder that despite
appearances, Death Valley is very much alive…
and forever changing.
Welcome traveller,
to a destination where the rusting iron
and mine shafts of ol’ timers
tell tales of endurance and hope.
Where epic landscapes terrify, mystify and delight.
Where the wind scours the skin in one moment,
and in the next… whispers all the world’s secrets.
Death Valley, is the stuff of life.
