A world of extremes, Death Valley National Park is the nation’s driest, hottest and lowest place, but also features mountains over 11,000 feet high that experience below-zero weather and snow, as well as colorful badlands, sand dunes and canyons. Its dramatic mountains, valleys and a world of extremes. 

Death Valley is the nation’s driest, hottest and lowest place, but also features mountains over 11,000 feet high that experience below-zero weather and snow, as well as colorful badlands, sand dunes and canyons.

Its mountains, valleys and dunes are world renowned for their complex and diverse geology. The park also contains a wealth of well-preserved archaeological sites and petroglyphs.

It is the largest national park outside of Alaska, at nearly 3,000,000 acres.

Death Valley’s outstanding natural beauty and scientific importance were first brought to the attention of the National Park Service in the late 20’s. With the support of Stephen T. Mather, Director of the National Park Service, Death Valley’s national significance was recognized, and it was proclaimed a national monument by President Hoover on February 11, 1933.

With the passage of the Desert Protection Act of October 31, 1994, Death Valley grew by 1,200,000 acres and was designated a national park.

Today Death Valley National Park is made up of 3,336,000 acres and contains more than 3,000,000 acres of wilderness.The park’s 3.3 million acres /1.34 million hectares encompass mountain-size sand dunes, below-sea-level salt flats, mysterious singing rocks, and colorful sandstone canyons.

Extremes are the norm: Death Valley is the hottest and driest place in America, with summer temperatures peaking above 120 F°/49°C, and average rainfall of 2 inches/5 cm per year.

Also extreme are the park’s elevations: Badwater Basin, the park’s lowest spot, rests at 282 feet/86 metres below sea level while Telescope Peak soars to 11,049 feet/3,368 metres.

So go high, or go very, very low; get hot, or chill out with amazing desert vistas. Death Valley delivers on every end of the scale.

Lush oases harbor tiny fish and refuge for wildlife and humans. Despite its morbid name, a great diversity of life survives in Death Valley.

History & Culture

The first non-Native Americans arrived in Death Valley in 1849 looking for a shortcut to the California gold fields. Although only one member of their party died, the name Death Valley was given to the area.

Various mining operations used the valley afterwards, most notably for borax mining. When mining prospects went sour, the Pacific Coast Borax Company lobbied for federal protection of Death Valley, in order to develop tourism.

President Hoover declared about two million acres of the area a national monument in 1933. In 1994 the monument was expanded by 1.3 million acres and declared a national park.

Plants & Wildlife

Animal life is varied, and numerous species of reptiles, birds and mammals populate Death Valley, adapting well to the desert environment. However, many of these animals have a nocturnal lifestyle in order to escape the searing climate and can be difficult to spot.

The largest native mammal in the area, and perhaps the best studied member of the fauna, is the desert bighorn sheep. Small herds of sheep are most commonly found in the mountains surrounding Death Valley but at least occasionally visit the valley floor. Look for these animals near the springs and seeps that can be found throughout the park.

Over 350 species of birds are now known to inhabit or visit the area. And even native fish are to be found in Death Valley – several forms of desert pupfish of the genus Cyprinodon live in Salt Creek and other permanent bodies of water.

Things to See and Do

Death Valley and Furnace Creek

• Artist Drive. The rocks within this section of the park have been stained myriad colors by minerals within, creating a view that resembles an artist’s palette.
• Badwater. At 282 feet below sea level, it’s the lowest point in North America. A boardwalk and signs provide info on the local environment, and a trail leads out onto the salt flats. When photographing Badwater Basin, walk out on the flats a bit and shoot back at the pool of water for reflection photo.

• Dante’s View. Spectacular view from an overlook just a mile or two away from Badwater, but 4000 feet taller. The road to Dante’s View is a bit long, but the view is worth it. If you are towing a trailer, a parking lot is provided for you to leave your trailer behind before ascending the most difficult part of the road to Dante’s View.
• Devil’s Cornfield
• Devil’s Golf Course. A bizarre landscape consisting of a vast field of salt crystals. Please admire these carefully! A slight touch can break the crystals, which often take years to re-form.
• Echo Canyon 4WD road just east of Furnace Creek.
• Mustard Canyon. A popular hike located just north of Furnace Creek through a brilliantly-colored canyon. The best view is from the very end of the trail, which requires traversing through some narrow canyon walls and over ladders. Star Wars fans may recognize this place as Jawa hideouts from Episode IV.
• Mushroom Rock. This oddly shaped rock is on the road south of Furnace Creek.
• Natural Bridge. Travel south from Furnace Creek. Natural Bridge is just east of the main road via a dirt road. This natural bridge in a narrow canyon was created when erosion managed to undercut a section of the stream bed and eventually create a bridge well above the bottom of the canyon.
• Salt Creek. Travel north from Furnace Creek. Salt Creek is about two miles west of the main road via an easy dirt road. This place is great. Long ago Death Valley was a lake with fish in it; as the lake dried up and salinity increased the fish evolved to cope. Now they are restricted to a short, salty creek which springs up out of the desert, flows for a few hundred yards, and then disappears back into the sand.
• Visitor Center And Museum. At Furnace Creek. When visiting Death Valley, start here and you may discover that some sight you hadn’t been interested in turns out to really interest you. Or just figure out which of these many places you should really visit.
• Zabriskie Point. Famous viewpoint loved by photographers just east of Furnace Creek. View overlooks interesting weathered canyons. View is a two minute walk from the parking lot. The best time to photograph Zabriskie Point is at dawn – face south to get the eroded badlands in their sunrise colors. If you arrive after dawn, face south and photograph the same badlands in their earth tone colors or face west to get the different badlands with the valley floor and mountains in the background. Zabriskie Point is where U2 shot the cover photo for their Joshua Tree album.

Stovepipe Wells and Vicinity

• Aguereberry Point
• Amargosa Opera House
• Cottonwood Canyon
• Darwin Falls. A 15-foot waterfall that is particularly interesting in Spring. Traveling west of Panamint Springs on SR 190, turn left onto a dirt road that goes up a wash just before SR 190 starts climbing uphill. After about half a mile of dirt, gravel and rocks, there is a small parking lot. From the parking lot, hike about half a mile to a mile further into the canyon. Since this is the drinking water supply for Panamint Springs, please do not jump in, no matter how tempting it is.
• Death Valley Buttes
• Greenwater Ruins
• Grotto Canyon
• Marble Canyon. A popular hiking destination. While accessible only by a long, sandy road followed by a techincal rock crawl through a wash, this hike is worth the headache (or fun) of getting to the base of the trail. Before you go, consult rangers about the location of various petrogylphs along the canyon walls. Though some have been vandalized recently, many are in pristine condition.
• Mosaic Canyon. This popular hike in the center of the park winds through a narrow, marbled canyon. Some climbing and scaling of slick marbled rock is required.
• Sand Dunes. Near Stovepipe Wells. Most people think sand dunes are common in the desert. They aren’t. There are two interesting areas of sand dunes in Death Valley. The largest is Eureka Dunes, accessible only to adventurous backcountry folks. This smaller set of dunes near Stovepipe Wells is still quite impressive.
• Stovepipe Well

Scotty’s Castle and Vicinity

• Scotty’s Castle (Death Valley Ranch). A strange story about the creation of elaborate mansion in the valley involving sickness, fraud, and tall tales.
• Titus Canyon. An unimproved road into Death Valley that begins just west of Beatty (the road to Titus canyon heads north from the normal paved route from Beatty into Death Valley). Titus canyon is narrow, deep and spectacular. Due to narrowness, parts of this road are one-way, so you really need to start from the east end of the road. You don’t need an off-road vehicle for this, normal cars should do fine, but don’t bring the RV.
• Ubehebe Crater. Located in the northern part of the park near Scotty’s Castle, this giant crater was formed by volcanic activity. Walking trails lead into and around the crater, but be warned – going down into the crater is a difficult undertaking, and it may be best to enjoy the view from the top.

Backcountry Sights

• Barker Ranch. Charles Manson and his followers were captured here in 1969. The backcountry road up – which includes several rock falls – will make you wonder how Charles Manson got a school bus through. Many visitors who make the difficult trek stay overnight in the cabin here.
• Charcoal Kilns
• Crankshaft Junction
• Desolation Canyon. Because it is not marked from the road, and not well marked on the map, a hike through this canyon offers solitude even beyond that of what is a very quiet park to begin with. The canyon isn’t much to look at for the first 1/2 mile of the hike from the parking area, but beyond that, there is much to explore.
• Emigrant Canyon
• Eureka Sand Dunes. Tucked away in the north part of the park, accessible only by tens of miles of dirt road, these are the second tallest dunes in the United States. Don’t let their out-of-the-way location deter you from visiting, however. The solitude only adds to the otherworldliness of the wind-swept sands, the highly rare Eureka Grass blades grasping for life in the dry mounds, and the panoramic view of the colorful Last Chance and Saline Ranges which flank the dunes on either side.
• Ibex Dunes. Well off the beaten path in the Southern end of the park, these are some of the most remote sand dunes in the American West. Mountains flank the dunes to the west and east, making both sunrise and sunset an event. The backcountry road here is rutted with arroyos, and like so many other places in the park, requires a four-wheel drive.

• Pleasant Canyon and South Park Canyon 4wd Loop. The South Park Canyon portion near the Panamint Valley should be attempted only by experienced drivers with high clearance vehicles.
• Racetrack Playa. As with many points of interest within the park, this one is not easily accessible. The main route consists of 27 miles of dirt road, beginning at the Ubehebe Crater in the northern part of the park. However, the effort is well-rewarded with a site of twilight-zone proportions. The Plestiocene-era lake bed, nearly three miles long and a mile wide, is so flat that it once used as a landing strip for drug smugglers. But the Racetrack is most famous for its “moving rocks”: boulders whose erratic tracks remain visible for years. Though their movement has been tracked with GPS, no adequate explanation for it has been found. In the spring months, brine shrimp – which hibernate when the water dries up, only to emerge months or even years later – are sometimes visible in the muddy puddles here.
• Tea Kettle Junction. Located in the backcountry near the Racetrack Playa, this signpost is decorated with numerous tea kettles and makes for a rather odd sight in the vast desert.
• Telescope Peak. Highest point in the park at 11,049 feet.
• Hiking. There are numerous trails within the park, ranging in difficulty from short loops to overnight, mountainous treks. Always bring sufficient water when hiking in Death Valley; the heat can kill.
• Photography. The odd geologic formations in the park are great for early morning and late evening photography, although during the day the harsh sun tends to wash out most photographs. During March and April the wildflowers within the valley bloom, making it a particularly photogenic time of year.
• Stargazing. The clear desert air, scarcity of clouds, and a great lack of nearby light pollution makes Death Valley an ideal spot for stargazing. Ideally come during a new moon to fully appreciate the darkness of the night sky.
• Four-wheel driving. Death Valley has numerous high-clearance roads that offer a challenge for four-wheel drive enthusiasts. Driving off-road is not permitted.
• Bicycling. Bicycles are allowed on all roads in the park, including the many rough, trail-like backcountry roads that attract four-wheel drive enthusiasts. As with motor vehicles, riding off-road is not permitted.
• Scotty’s Castle Tours. Tours of the home of an eccentric resident of Death Valley are offered daily from 9:00 AM until 5:00 PM, departing at least once an hour and lasting for fifty minutes. Costs are $11 per person (discounts for seniors and children) and there may be a wait for tickets, so try to purchase them several hours in advance of your preferred tour time. Note that tickets are sold on a first-come, first-served basis.