California: Death Valley National Park

July 17, 2021
California
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🌡️ Death Valley — The Lowest, Driest and Hottest Place on Earth

Yes, yes, we know. Some would call us foolish for visiting Death Valley National Park in the height of summer. Fair point, actually. But we wanted to experience the extreme conditions first-hand — not read about them from the comfort of a sofa in Basingstoke. So off we went, baking ourselves in one of the most hostile landscapes on the planet, and absolutely loving it.

We had driven from the relatively merciful conditions of the Sierra Nevada mountains — all cool pine air and glacial lakes — down to the lowest point in North America. It’s a journey that takes no time at all, geographically speaking, yet feels like you’ve crossed into another world entirely. The Sierra Nevada acts as a giant rain shadow, blocking moisture-laden Pacific air from reaching the desert ranges to the east. The result? A vast, scorched landscape of mountains, canyons and enormous flat plains that look like the surface of Mars on a bad day.

About Death Valley National Park

Death Valley holds a rather impressive collection of records, none of which you’d want to boast about if you were the valley itself. It is the lowest, driest and hottest of all the National Parks in the United States of America — which is, to be clear, a country that already has some spectacularly inhospitable places.

The valley floor sits at 282 feet below sea level. It receives a frankly pitiful 2 inches (5cm) of rain each year. And in July 1913, a temperature of 134°F (56.7°C) was recorded at Furnace Creek — a name that, in hindsight, should have been something of a warning to prospective visitors. That record still stands as the highest reliably recorded air temperature in history. On Earth. The whole of it.

Despite all this, the park attracts well over one million visitors annually. Whether that says something about human curiosity, human stupidity, or a pleasing combination of the two, we shall leave to the philosophers.

How Death Valley Got Its Cheerful Name

The name “Death Valley” was given to this brooding landscape by a group of emigrants who found themselves hopelessly lost here during the bitter winter of 1849 to 1850. They were part of the great westward migration of that era — thousands of settlers heading to California following the discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill in January 1848, lured west by the prospect of riches and a new life.

This particular group made the catastrophic decision to take a supposed shortcut through the valley, and promptly got stuck. As far as we know, only one member of the group actually died — a man named Captain Culverwell, found collapsed near a spring — but that was quite enough for the rest of them to conclude that the valley was going to claim the lot of them.

They were eventually saved by two remarkable young men: William Lewis Manly and John Rogers, both experienced scouts, who made a heroic 250-mile round trip on foot to fetch supplies and guide the stranded party to safety. As the survivors finally hauled themselves out of the valley, crossing the Panamint Mountains on the western edge, one of the men turned, looked back at the shimmering, pitiless landscape below, and said simply: “Goodbye, Death Valley.”

The name stuck.

People Have Been Living Here Far Longer Than You’d Think

Long before any ill-prepared pioneers wandered into the valley, people were already calling it home — or at least making a reasonable go of it. Rock art and artefacts found throughout the region indicate a continuous human presence stretching back at least 9,000 years, to a time when the climate here was considerably less ferocious and the valley floor held a large, shallow lake.

The most recent Native American inhabitants were the Timbisha Shoshone, a remarkably resourceful people who developed sophisticated strategies for surviving — and indeed thriving — in the desert environment. They moved seasonally between the valley floor and the cooler mountain elevations, harvesting pinyon pine nuts, hunting bighorn sheep, and trading with neighbouring tribes. They are still here today, with a small permanent community within the park boundaries.

The Borax Years

From 1883 to 1889, Death Valley had something of an industrial moment, which is not a sentence you write every day. Teams of mules — famously, twenty mules at a time — hauled enormous wagons laden with powdery white borax out of the valley across more than 160 miles of desert to the nearest railhead at Mojave. Borax, used as a cleaning agent and industrial mineral, was mined from deposits on the valley floor and processed at a works near what is now the Furnace Creek area.

The operation was extraordinary by any measure. Each wagon train consisted of two massive ore wagons and a water tank wagon, pulled by a team of eighteen mules and two horses. The round trip took about twenty days. It was backbreaking, brutal work in conditions that were, shall we say, not ideal. The mines have since fallen to ruin, but the Twenty Mule Team became one of the most enduring images of the American West — later used to sell a popular brand of laundry soap, which feels like something of an anticlimax given the heroics involved.

What to see in Death Valley National Park?

⛽ Stop at Stovepipe Wells

We pulled into Stovepipe Wells from the west, which is the most likely way you’ll arrive if you’re coming from the direction of Los Angeles or the Owens Valley. And honestly, after the drive through the Mojave, the sight of even a modest wayside station felt like stumbling upon civilisation itself.

Stovepipe Wells is about as small as a settlement can get while still calling itself one. It sits at roughly sea level — which sounds unremarkable until you remember that much of Death Valley drops well below it, with Badwater Basin bottoming out at 86 metres below sea level, the lowest point in North America. The village, if we’re being generous with the word, consists of a hotel, a petrol station, a general store and a ranger station. That’s your lot. Don’t expect a Waitrose.

The name itself has a pleasingly odd history. In the early days of cross-desert travel, prospectors and teamsters driving their 20-mule borax wagons across this furnace of a landscape marked a reliable water source here by sticking an old stovepipe into the ground above a buried spring. It was, by the standards of Death Valley navigation in the 1880s, a perfectly sensible thing to do. The name stuck, as names from desperate necessity tend to do.

The spot became a proper tourist stop in 1926 when a chap named Bob Edie opened a small camp here, making it one of the earliest visitor facilities in what would become Death Valley National Monument in 1933 — and a full National Park from 1994. So there’s rather more history in this scrubby little outpost than its current gift shop might suggest.

We stopped here to stock up on provisions — water, mostly, because Death Valley is not the sort of place where you want to be caught short — and to take our first proper photos of the visit. The landscape at this western edge of the valley already had that magnificent, slightly threatening quality: vast alluvial fans sweeping down from the Panamint Range, the air shimmering even in the morning, and a silence so complete it felt almost rude to speak above a whisper. We managed it anyway.

🏜️ Harmony Borax Works

The next morning we were keen to get out and explore what Death Valley actually had to offer beyond the oppressive heat and the distant shimmer of things that probably weren’t water. And there really is a lot to explore — this place covers more than three million acres of designated wilderness, which is roughly the size of Connecticut, though considerably less welcoming. We’d decided we wanted to try a few hikes, which in retrospect was either brave or slightly stupid, given that we were in one of the hottest places on earth in the middle of summer.

Still, we weren’t completely daft about it. Hats were worn. Sun cream was applied with the sort of thoroughness usually reserved for people who’ve already made the mistake of not applying it. And we loaded ourselves up with water — more water than seemed reasonable, as it turned out, was exactly the right amount.

Our first stop was a short, gentle hike, just to let our bodies quietly acclimatise to the fact that they were now operating in temperatures most ovens would consider sporting. We headed to Harmony Borax Works, which is only a short drive from the Furnace Creek Oasis and, as it turns out, played a rather significant role in the history of the valley.

Borax, for those of us who weren’t paying attention in chemistry class — and I very much wasn’t — is a naturally occurring mineral compound, sodium tetraborate if you want to get technical about it, and it turns up in all manner of everyday products: detergents, cosmetics, enamel glazes, and various industrial applications. It had been known to exist in the American West for some time, but it was in 1881 that substantial deposits were discovered right here in Death Valley, near what was then known as Furnace Creek Ranch. Mining operations got properly underway in 1883, and Harmony Borax Works was born.

Getting the stuff out of the valley, however, was no small feat. The terrain was brutal, the heat was murderous, and the nearest railway was a very long way away. The solution was the now-famous twenty-mule teams — enormous wagons, each loaded with around ten tonnes of borax, hauled by teams of eighteen mules and two horses across 165 miles of desert to the rail depot at Mojave. It was, by any measure, an extraordinary piece of logistics, and the image became so iconic that the twenty-mule team ended up on the product packaging of a borax brand that’s still sold today.

At its peak, Harmony Borax Works employed around forty people — a proper little industrial community plonked in the middle of one of the most inhospitable landscapes in North America. The workers lived on site and, one imagines, spent a fair amount of time questioning their life choices, particularly in July and August when the temperatures climbed to truly absurd levels. At those extremes, the borax itself began to crystallise out of solution prematurely, rendering it effectively unusable. The practical upshot of this was that the whole operation simply stopped for a couple of months each summer, and the workforce was temporarily relocated to other processing plants elsewhere in California. Which, to be fair, sounds like rather a reasonable arrangement.

The good times, such as they were, didn’t last long. After just five years of operation, Harmony Borax Works closed its doors in 1888. Richer deposits had been found elsewhere, the economics had shifted, and that was more or less that. Today what remains is a handful of weathered ruins and some rusting equipment baking quietly in the sun, which the National Park Service has thoughtfully preserved and labelled so that people like us can wander around looking vaguely educated.

It was a short hike, as promised, but rather a good one. The kind of place that makes you feel as though you’ve actually learned something, rather than simply sweated through your shirt for nothing.

🏜️ Hike Mosaic Canyon

Emboldened by our earlier stroll — which, let’s be honest, barely counted as exercise — we decided to push our luck and tackle Mosaic Canyon. Well, when I say “we decided,” what I really mean is that someone consulted the guidebook and announced we were doing it. The rest of us nodded along in that British way that means “I’m not entirely sure about this, but I’ll complain later.”

The canyon sits tucked into the barren, sun-blasted mountains of Death Valley National Park in California — a place that has been doing its best to kill things for a very long time. Death Valley, incidentally, holds the record for the highest reliably recorded air temperature on Earth: 56.7°C (134°F), measured at Furnace Creek back in July 1913. The Timbisha Shoshone people had been living in this unforgiving landscape for centuries before European settlers arrived, which suggests either remarkable resourcefulness or a very stubborn streak. Probably both.

Mosaic Canyon itself gets its name from the polished, water-worn rock along its lower walls — a natural mosaic of grey and white dolomite and marble that has been smoothed by thousands of years of flash floods grinding away at the stone. Geologically speaking, it’s rather impressive. In practice, it looks like someone has been at it with a giant floor polisher.

The hike is a 4-mile round trip, and it starts out deceptively flat — the sort of start that lulls you into a false sense of competence. The trail winds through an alluvial fan before the ground starts to rise and the canyon walls begin to close in around you. It’s a proper canyon, which is to say it becomes narrow in a couple of spots and requires what trail guides politely call “scrambling” — which is their cheerful way of describing the bit where you have to use your hands as well as your feet and hope nobody is watching.

The rock formations as you push deeper into the canyon are genuinely extraordinary. The banded walls of polished dolomite glow in the desert light, and the geology on display spans some of the oldest exposed rock in the Death Valley region — in places, you’re looking at material that is over 700 million years old. That does put one’s bad knees into perspective, rather.

What the guidebook failed to mention — or what we failed to read — was quite how ferociously hot it gets inside the canyon in the early afternoon. The narrow walls that make the whole thing so dramatic also do a splendid job of trapping heat. By the time we reached the end of the trail, the temperature was overbearing in that very specific way that makes you wonder why you left the hotel in the first place. We stood there, admiring the scenery, sweating profusely and saying things like “yes, marvellous” through gritted teeth.

The walk back to the car park felt considerably longer than the walk in, as these things always do. When we finally reached the sanctuary of the car and the blissful air conditioning clicked on, there was an audible collective sigh of relief. Possibly the most satisfying sound any of us had heard all week

🎨 Artist Palette and Artist Drive

As the sun began its slow retreat behind the Amargosa Range, we decided to make the most of what light was left and headed out to Artist Palette and Artist Drive. And what a decision that turned out to be — one of those rare moments when something actually lives up to its name, which, in our experience, is rather unusual. Death Valley, after all, is hardly renowned for underselling itself.

Artist Drive is a nine-mile one-way loop road that branches off Badwater Road in the southern end of Death Valley National Park, and it winds you through a series of hills that look, quite frankly, as though someone has spilled an enormous tin of paint over them. The rock formations here — a glorious geological jumble of volcanic deposits, oxidised minerals and ancient lakebed sediments — produce colours so vivid and unexpected that you genuinely do a double-take the first time you see them.

The palette on display, if you’ll forgive the inevitable pun, runs from deep rusty reds and burnt oranges through to soft pinks, purples, greens and yellows. The greens come from chlorite, the pinks from manganese oxide, and the reds and yellows from various iron compounds that have been oxidising slowly for millions of years, which puts our own slow decline somewhat into perspective. The volcanic activity that shaped this landscape happened roughly five million years ago, and the results are frankly showing off a bit.

The centrepiece of it all is Artist Palette itself — a broad, multicoloured hillside that the National Park Service had the good sense to put a small car park next to, presumably because nobody was going to drive past it without stopping. We certainly didn’t. We pulled over, clambered out, and stood there gawping like tourists, which, to be fair, is precisely what we were.

The timing, as it turned out, was rather fortunate — not that we’d planned it that way, naturally. As evening crept in and the direct sunlight softened into something altogether more theatrical, the colours seemed to intensify rather than fade. The warm, low-angled light of the golden hour does extraordinary things to this landscape, drawing out contrasts and deepening the reds and purples in a way that the harsh midday sun simply doesn’t manage. We snapped away on our cameras with the sort of enthusiasm normally reserved for people who actually know what they’re doing photographically, and somehow, almost by accident, the photos came out rather well.

It is, in short, one of those places that makes you feel that nature has been showing off quite deliberately, and that the rest of us have simply been getting on with things without paying sufficient attention.

🧂 5. Badwater Basin

By the time we reached Badwater Basin, our legs were tired, our water bottles were warm, and our enthusiasm for walking anywhere in Death Valley was wearing decidedly thin. Still, you don’t come all this way and skip the lowest point in North America, do you? That would be like going to Paris and not bothering with the Eiffel Tower. Ridiculous.

Badwater Basin sits at 282 feet below sea level — or, if you prefer your measurements in metres, about 86 of them below the surface of the sea — making it the lowest point on the entire North American continent. The name itself tells you everything you need to know. A surveyor’s mule reportedly refused to drink from the pool of water here sometime in the 1800s, which led someone to scrawl “bad water” on their map. The name stuck, which is either a fine example of practical American record-keeping or a spectacular failure of imagination, depending on your mood.

The salt flats themselves are the remnants of Lake Manly, an ancient lake that was once around 90 miles long and up to 600 feet deep during the last ice age, roughly 10,000 years ago. When the climate warmed and the water evaporated, it left behind enormous deposits of salt, borax, and other minerals, all baked hard by the relentless sun into the vast, blinding white expanse you see today. It’s extraordinary, really — standing on the floor of a prehistoric lake in the middle of the Mojave Desert. The sort of thing that makes you feel briefly profound before the heat brings you back to reality.

We had the good sense to wait until dusk before venturing out onto the boardwalks that extend across the salt flats. This was, it must be said, one of our better decisions of the day. The temperature drops — only slightly, admittedly, but enough — and the light does something genuinely spectacular. As the sun dipped behind the Panamint Range to the west, the sky turned through shades of amber and deep red, casting long shadows across the salt and turning the whole basin a warm, rust-coloured pink. The Amargosa Range to the east caught the last of the light in a way that made even our tired, cynical eyes widen a little.

The walk itself is mercifully short and completely flat — which, at that point in the day, was exactly what we needed. The boardwalk leads you out across the salt crust, keeping you from cracking through it and sinking into the brine below, which is a thoughtful touch. The silence out there is remarkable. No wind, no insects, no distant traffic — just the odd crunch of salt underfoot and the faint sound of other visitors whispering, as if they’d all instinctively agreed the place deserved a bit of reverence.

As sunsets go, it was genuinely one of the better ones we’d seen. And we’ve seen a few.

🏜️ 6. Zabriskie Point

Zabriskie Point was, without question, one of the most jaw-dropping viewpoints in the whole of Death Valley National Park — and we say that as two blokes who’ve spent a fair amount of time standing at the edges of things and pretending to be more impressed than we actually are. This time, though, there was no pretending required.

The name comes from Christian Brevoort Zabriskie, who served as vice-president and general manager of the Pacific Coast Borax Company in the early twentieth century. The borax industry had a significant presence in Death Valley from the 1880s onwards, and the landscape around this particular overlook was heavily mined during that era. So yes, you’re essentially standing on what was once a giant industrial worksite. Romantic, isn’t it.

Getting there involved almost no effort whatsoever, which suited us perfectly. There’s a car park — sorry, a parking lot, as we’d been firmly conditioned to say by this point — and from there it’s a short, paved walk of about five minutes to the main overlook platform. The Americans are terribly good at making scenic viewpoints accessible without making you feel like you’ve accidentally signed up for a hiking expedition. We appreciated that more than we probably should admit.

What greeted us at the top was, frankly, absurd in the best possible way. Spread out below was a vast, rippling landscape of eroded badlands — ancient lake bed sediments, somewhere between 9 and 5 million years old, carved by wind and the occasional flash flood into a series of golden, cream, and ochre ridges that looked for all the world like someone had crumpled up the earth and forgotten to smooth it back out again. The colours shifted depending on the light, ranging from pale yellow in the midday glare to deep amber and rust as the sun moved lower in the sky.

Beyond the badlands, the view extended dramatically toward the Panamint Mountains to the west, their dark, angular slopes providing a sharp contrast to the pale, folded terrain in the foreground. And far below, almost impossibly far it seemed, lay the white expanse of the salt flats on the valley floor — the remnants of ancient Lake Manly, which once filled much of Death Valley to a depth of around 30 metres, some 10,000 to 12,000 years ago during the last Ice Age. It’s now reduced to a thin, blinding crust of sodium chloride that you can walk on, which we had already done and which had been considerably less glamorous than it sounds.

The whole panorama was genuinely spectacular — the kind of view that makes you stand there in slightly baffled silence for longer than you intended, while other tourists shuffle around you taking selfies with the sort of focused determination that suggests the photograph matters more than the place itself. We did not say this out loud. We are not entirely without manners

🏜️ Mesquite Flats Sand Dunes

What is there not to love about sand dunes? Honestly, we weren’t entirely sure at first — middle-aged knees and shifting sand are not natural allies — but the Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes turned out to be one of those places that made us feel like children again. Ridiculous, breathless, grinning children, running up slopes and rolling back down them for absolutely no sensible reason whatsoever. Which, really, is the best possible reason.

These are the most famous and most accessible dunes in the whole of Death Valley National Park, and for once, “most accessible” doesn’t mean a disappointing car park with a plaque and a gift shop. The dunes sit in the heart of central Death Valley, close to the small settlement of Stovepipe Wells — itself an evocative name that conjures images of frontier hardship, though these days it runs to a petrol station and a motel, which is rather more useful. You can reach the dunes from Highway 190, which has been the main artery through Death Valley since it was properly surfaced in the 1920s, or via the unpaved Sand Dunes Road for those who fancy a bit of mild adventure without actually committing to anything genuinely dangerous.

The dunes themselves have been quietly doing their thing here for thousands of years, shaped by the complex interplay of winds funnelling through the surrounding mountain ranges — the Cottonwood Mountains to the north, the Panamint Range to the west. Sand, it turns out, goes where the wind tells it to, and the winds here can’t quite make up their minds, which is why the dune field contains not one but three distinct types of dune formation. There are crescent dunes, also known as barchans, which form when the wind blows predominantly from one direction. There are linear dunes, long parallel ridges that emerge when winds blow from two different directions. And there are the rather spectacular star-shaped dunes, which develop when winds arrive from multiple directions and the sand simply piles upward in glorious confusion — nature’s own architectural indecision made solid.

The tallest dune reaches about 100 feet — which sounds modest until you’re actually climbing it through soft sand in the midday heat and your thighs start filing a formal complaint. That said, the overall dune field covers a surprisingly vast area, stretching across the valley floor in great sweeping waves, and the sense of scale only becomes apparent once you’re out in the middle of it.

We went at sunrise, as any sensible person should, when the light was low and golden and the shadows carved the rippled sand into something resembling a Renaissance painting. The surface was cool, the air was still, and there wasn’t another soul in sight. By ten o’clock, naturally, it was filling up with people, because nothing stays secret for long. But for those first couple of hours, it felt like we’d stumbled across something quite extraordinary — and we had, really, even if it was only sand.

🔥 8. Dante’s Peak Viewpoint

We’d been warned that Dante’s View was something special, and for once the warnings turned out to be entirely accurate rather than the usual tourist-brochure hyperbole.

The viewpoint itself is a series of terraced lookouts perched high above the valley floor, and the views it offers across Badwater Basin are, frankly, extraordinary. The name, since you’re asking, comes from the terracing — those stepped levels reminded someone, at some point, of the work of Dante Alighieri, the 13th-century Italian poet who spent rather a lot of his creative energy imagining the afterlife in exhaustive, organised detail.

Dante — full name Durante di Alighiero degli Alighieri, if you want to be pedantic about it, and the Italians usually do — was born in Florence in 1265 and died in Ravenna in 1321. During those 56 years he managed to produce the Divina Commedia, or Divine Comedy, which is arguably the most ambitious piece of writing anyone has ever attempted, being nothing less than a guided tour of the entire afterlife. The Comedy — it’s called that not because it’s funny, but because it has a happy ending, which is quite a low bar for comedy — is divided into three parts: the Inferno, which describes the nine circles of Hell; the Purgatorio, with its seven terraces of Purgatory; and the Paradiso, covering the nine spheres of Paradise. Dante wrote all of this in the early 14th century, mostly while in political exile from Florence, which perhaps explains why his vision of Hell is so vivid and personally felt.

Here at Dante’s View, it’s the Inferno connection that feels most apt. Standing up here looking down at Badwater Basin — the lowest point in North America at 282 feet below sea level — baking in temperatures that regularly exceed 120°F in summer, you can absolutely see why someone thought Dante’s imagery was appropriate. The place looks, in the most spectacular possible way, like somewhere you really wouldn’t want to end up for eternity.

To get here, we took the 13-mile spur road that branches south off CA 190, just inside the eastern boundary of Death Valley National Park. The road starts innocuously enough, running at a fairly gentle gradient across the broad, flat floor of Greenwater Valley — a wide, open expanse that gives you rather a false sense of security about what’s coming. Then, quite abruptly, it climbs. Sharply. From around 3,000 feet, the road winds its way up to the summit at 5,475 feet, and the change in both temperature and perspective is remarkable. At the top, the heat that had been oppressive at valley level had eased to something almost bearable, and the view that opened up below us was one of those genuinely jaw-dropping moments that justifies the entire trip.

In summary …

Death Valley National Park is a place of extremes, which is of course what draws visitors. If you want to experience a true desert environment then this a great place to do it in relative safety.
Death Valley is easy to get to from Las Vegas and California – so can be a place you can realistically get to for a quick side trip on a vacation itinerary.
You will need a car to really explore Death Valley.
This is a desert location so plan accordingly if you intend to hike and explore the more remote parts of the Park. Take plenty of water, sunscreen and hats. Perhaps save the hiking for earlier in the mornings or later in the day during the summer months.

Planning your visit

📍 Overview

Death Valley National Park is one of the most extraordinary and dramatic landscapes on Earth. Straddling the border of south-eastern California and Nevada, it holds the distinction of being the largest national park in the contiguous United States, covering more than 3.4 million acres of desert wilderness. It is also one of the hottest and driest places on the planet, yet paradoxically supports a rich diversity of life, from rare desert wildflowers to ancient geological formations millions of years in the making.

Within this vast and rugged terrain, visitors will encounter salt flats stretching to the horizon, multi-coloured volcanic craters, towering sand dunes, and craggy canyon walls carved by millennia of wind and water. Badwater Basin, situated 86 metres below sea level, is the lowest point in the Western Hemisphere, whilst Telescope Peak rises dramatically to 3,368 metres above it — a contrast that perfectly encapsulates the park’s extraordinary range.

Despite its forbidding name, Death Valley has long captivated travellers, scientists, and adventurers. Indigenous Timbisha Shoshone people have called this land home for centuries, and the valley is steeped in the history of nineteenth-century pioneers, borax miners, and prospectors who braved its harsh conditions in search of fortune.

🗺️ Location

Death Valley National Park is located in south-eastern California, primarily within Inyo County, with portions extending into Nevada. The park’s main hub, Furnace Creek, sits along California State Route 190 and serves as the central point for visitor services, accommodation, and park facilities. The park can be accessed from several directions: from the west via Highway 190 through Panamint Springs; from the east via Highway 190 through Death Valley Junction; and from the north via Scotty’s Castle Road.

The nearest major cities are Las Vegas, Nevada, approximately 225 kilometres to the east, and Bakersfield, California, approximately 225 kilometres to the west. The park’s sheer size means that many of its most spectacular sites are spread across great distances, and a private vehicle or organised tour is strongly recommended for exploring the park thoroughly.

🌐 Website

www.nps.gov/deva

📞 Contact

Telephone: +1 (760) 786-3200

Mailing Address: Death Valley National Park P.O. Box 579 Death Valley, CA 92328 United States

Email: The National Park Service does not publish a direct public email address for Death Valley National Park. Visitors wishing to submit written enquiries or comments may do so via the official contact form available on the park’s National Park Service website.

🎟️ Entry Fees

All visitors to Death Valley National Park are required to hold a valid entrance pass. The park does not accept cash, so payment must be made by credit or debit card at self-service pay stations located throughout the park, including at Furnace Creek Visitor Centre, Zabriskie Point, Badwater Basin, and various campground entrances.

Private vehicle (car, truck, van, or RV): USD $30 — covers all passengers in the vehicle and is valid for seven consecutive days.

Motorcycle: USD $25 — covers up to two motorcycles and all riders; valid for seven consecutive days.

Individual entry (on foot or by bicycle, aged 16 and over): USD $15 per person, valid for seven days. Children under the age of 16 do not require an entrance pass.

Death Valley Annual Pass: USD $55 — grants unlimited entry to Death Valley National Park for twelve months from the date of purchase.

America the Beautiful — National Parks and Federal Recreational Lands Pass: USD $80 annually — grants access to all 63 US national parks and hundreds of federal recreational sites across the country. Discounted and complimentary versions of this pass are available to US senior citizens, active military personnel, veterans, individuals with a permanent disability, and families participating in the Every Kid Outdoors programme.

Please note that from 2026, free entrance days offered by the National Park Service are restricted to US citizens and residents. International visitors will be required to pay the standard entrance fee on those dates.

🕗 Opening Times

Death Valley National Park is open year-round, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. There are no gates or checkpoints that close the park to visitors overnight. However, visitors are strongly advised to plan their activities between sunrise and sunset, particularly during the summer months when daytime temperatures regularly exceed 48°C (120°F).

Furnace Creek Visitor Centre is the park’s primary information hub and is open daily. Opening hours are generally 8:00 am to 5:00 pm, though hours may vary seasonally. Visitors are advised to check the official NPS website for the most current hours before travelling.

Individual attractions, ranger stations, and facilities within the park may have their own operating schedules, and some remote areas may be seasonally inaccessible due to extreme heat, flooding, or road conditions.

🚗 Getting Around

Given the enormous scale of the park, a reliable vehicle in good mechanical condition is essential. Petrol and basic supplies are available at Furnace Creek and Stovepipe Wells, though prices are higher than in surrounding towns. Many of the park’s unpaved roads require a high-clearance or four-wheel-drive vehicle. Visitors should carry ample water at all times — a minimum of four litres per person per day is recommended — and should inform someone of their travel plans before venturing into remote areas.

Best time to visit Death Valley National Park

Death Valley National Park — straddling the border of California and Nevada — is one of the most extreme environments on Earth. It holds the record for the highest reliably recorded air temperature on the planet (56.7°C / 134°F, measured at Furnace Creek in 1913) and sits as the lowest point in North America at 86 metres below sea level. Planning your visit around the seasons is not merely a matter of comfort; in summer, it can be a matter of survival.

🌸 Spring (March – May)

Spring is widely regarded as the finest time to visit Death Valley. Temperatures are genuinely pleasant, ranging from around 20°C in March to 35°C by late May, and the desert is at its most alive. Wildflower blooms — known as a “superbloom” in wetter years — can carpet the valley floor and canyon walls in extraordinary colour, drawing photographers and nature lovers from around the world. The bloom is unpredictable and depends heavily on autumn and winter rainfall, but even in quieter years, isolated pockets of colour appear along roadsides and in the alluvial fans.

Trails such as Mosaic Canyon, Golden Canyon, and the hike to Darwin Falls are all enjoyable in spring without the brutal heat that makes summer walking dangerous. Badwater Basin, Zabriskie Point, and Artist’s Drive are easily explored in the cooler morning hours. Birdlife is notably active, and the clarity of the air on calm days makes for exceptional long-distance views across the salt flats.

Visitor numbers begin to climb through April and peak around Easter, so booking accommodation well in advance — particularly at the Oasis at Death Valley in Furnace Creek — is strongly advised. Campgrounds fill quickly during superbloom events.

What to pack: Lightweight, breathable, moisture-wicking clothing in layers (mornings can be cool), a wide-brimmed hat, high-SPF sunscreen, UV-protective sunglasses, sturdy walking shoes or hiking boots, a refillable water bottle (minimum 4 litres per person per day on trails), a light fleece or jacket for early mornings and evenings, a camera or binoculars for wildlife and wildflowers, and a detailed park map.

☀️ Summer (June – August)

Summer in Death Valley is, bluntly, punishing. Daytime temperatures regularly exceed 45°C and have been recorded above 50°C. Ground temperatures on exposed tarmac and sand can reach 90°C. Humidity is extremely low, which means sweat evaporates almost instantly — a deceptive sensation that masks how rapidly the body is losing fluid. Heat-related illness and death are genuine risks; several visitors die each year from heat stroke or dehydration.

That said, summer has its own peculiar appeal for those who seek extremes. The park is far less crowded than in spring or autumn. Sunset and sunrise — when temperatures briefly dip to a less hostile 30–35°C — offer dramatic lighting across the Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes and the salt polygons at Badwater Basin. The mirage effects and the sheer silence of the landscape at dawn are remarkable.

Petrol stations within the park are limited. Vehicles can overheat; air conditioning systems work overtime. If you visit in summer, plan all outdoor activity before 9am and after 5pm. Remain inside or in shade during midday. Night sky gazing is excellent in summer, as skies are reliably clear and monsoon moisture occasionally brings dramatic lightning storms to the surrounding ranges.

What to pack: Very light, loose, long-sleeved clothing in pale colours (provides UV protection and reflects heat better than short sleeves), a wide-brimmed hat, extremely high-SPF sunscreen (reapply every 90 minutes), electrolyte tablets or drinks, a minimum of 6–8 litres of water per person per day, cooling towels, a portable fan, sandals only for brief flat walks (never for trails), a vehicle emergency kit including extra coolant and a tyre repair kit, and a torch for dawn/dusk exploration.

🍂 Autumn (September – November)

Autumn is an excellent and often underappreciated time to visit. Temperatures drop steadily from the brutal highs of summer — September is still hot (38–42°C) and best approached with the same caution as summer — but by October conditions become genuinely comfortable, typically ranging between 28°C and 34°C by day with cool evenings. November sees daytime highs closer to 20°C in lower elevations and noticeably cold nights.

Visitor numbers are lower than spring, accommodation is easier to secure, and the landscape takes on warm amber and ochre tones in the afternoon light that make for some of the most rewarding photography of the year. The sky is often intensely blue and cloudless. Hikes that are impossible in summer — Telescope Peak, Titus Canyon, and the Wildrose Charcoal Kilns trail — become accessible again in October and November.

The park begins its shoulder season programming in autumn, with ranger-led talks and evening programmes resuming. Stargazing improves further as the nights lengthen, and Death Valley’s designation as an International Dark Sky Park makes this one of the finest places in the United States to observe the Milky Way.

What to pack: Light to medium-weight clothing in layers, a warm fleece or mid-layer for evenings (temperatures can drop sharply after dark), a waterproof shell jacket (September can see the tail end of monsoon moisture), hiking boots for the longer trails accessible in this season, a star chart or astronomy app, high-SPF sunscreen, a wide-brimmed hat, 3–4 litres of water per person per day for hiking, and a headtorch for night sky sessions.

❄️ Winter (December – February)

Winter transforms Death Valley into one of the most approachable and temperate desert environments in North America. Daytime temperatures at Furnace Creek average 18–22°C — conditions that would be considered mild even by British standards — while nights can drop to near freezing or below, particularly at higher elevations. Snowfall occasionally dusts the Panamint Range and the Amargosa Mountains, creating a striking visual contrast with the pale salt flats below.

This is the peak season for visitors seeking comfortable conditions, and the park can feel surprisingly busy over the Christmas and New Year period. January and February are quieter, with excellent opportunities for solitary exploration. The low-angle winter light is extraordinarily beautiful for photography, particularly at Zabriskie Point and the Devil’s Golf Course, where long shadows reveal the extraordinary texture of the salt formations.

Telescope Peak — at 3,368 metres the highest point in the park — may be covered in snow and accessible only to those with winter hiking experience and appropriate gear. Road conditions on unpaved tracks can deteriorate after rainfall; a 4×4 vehicle is advisable for exploring more remote areas such as Racetrack Playa (home to the famous “sailing stones”) and Saline Valley.

What to pack: Warm, layered clothing including a thermal base layer and a windproof outer shell, a warm hat and gloves for early mornings and evenings, sturdy waterproof hiking boots, sunscreen (UV levels remain high even in winter), sunglasses, 2–3 litres of water per person per day, a detailed park map (some roads may be closed or impassable), and snow chains or a 4×4 vehicle if venturing to higher elevations or remote tracks.

🌟 Overall Best Time to Visit

For most visitors, mid-March to mid-April represents the sweet spot — warm enough to enjoy the full range of activities and landscapes, cool enough to hike safely for extended periods, and timed to coincide with the best chance of witnessing wildflowers in bloom. The shoulder weeks of late February and early May offer similar conditions with noticeably smaller crowds. Autumn — particularly October and November — runs a very close second, especially for those interested in serious hiking, stargazing, or simply experiencing the park without competing for parking at Zabriskie Point. Winter is ideal for photographers and those who prefer solitude. Summer should be approached with the utmost caution and is not recommended for first-time visitors, families with children, or anyone with underlying health conditions.

Other places close by (sort of …) worth visiting

1. Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area (81 Miles)

Las Vegas is a high-octane, but fun place to visit but after a few days there you simply feel the need for something more sedate and relaxing to recharge your internal batteries. Located just 17-miles west of Vegas is Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area.

Red Rock Canyon was designated as Nevada’s first National Conservation Area, which lies in the Mojave Desert. It’s known for geological features such as towering red sandstone peaks and the Keystone Thrust Fault, as well as Native American petroglyphs.

Find out more from my blog post on the Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area.

2. Giant Sequoia and Kings Canyon parks (270 Miles)

As the crow flies Giant Sequoia and Kings Canyon parks are not too far from Death Valley but unfortunately the Sierra Nevada range sits between the two so you will have to take a big detour!

High-up in California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains are two of the USA’s most spectacular National Parks, Kings Canyon and Sequoia. Sequoia National Park gives you the chance to get up close to the largest trees on the planet whilst in Kings Canyon you can explore the most incredible alpine scenery with the backdrop of some of the tallest peaks in the lower 48 States.

Find out more from my blog post on the Giant Sequoia and Kings Canyon Parks.

Where to stay near Death Valley?

1. Inn at Death Valley

The Inn at Death Valley sits within Death Valley National Park in California, one of the hottest and driest places on earth. Originally built in 1927 by the Pacific Coast Borax Company, the property has been significantly updated over the years while keeping its Spanish Colonial architecture intact. It sits at roughly 190 metres below sea level, surrounded by the Panamint Mountains. The inn offers 66 rooms and suites, a spring-fed swimming pool, a full-service spa, and two restaurants. Given its location, it functions as something of a base camp for visitors exploring the park — Zabriskie Point, Badwater Basin, and the Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes are all within easy driving distance. Rooms are comfortable and well-appointed, though prices are on the higher end. For a remote desert property in a national park, the level of service and facilities on offer is genuinely impressive.

2. Ranch at Death Valley

The Ranch at Death Valley sits within one of the most extreme landscapes in North America, deep in California’s Death Valley National Park. Originally built in the 1920s as a working borax mining operation, it has since been converted into a full-service resort that draws visitors year-round despite temperatures that regularly exceed 40°C in summer. The property is large and spread out, with several pools — including a spring-fed one — alongside tennis courts, a golf course, and a range of dining options. Rooms are functional rather than luxurious, housed in low-rise buildings dotted across the grounds. The appeal here is not the accommodation itself but the location: easy access to the park’s key sights, including Badwater Basin, Zabriskie Point, and the Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes. For those wanting a base from which to properly explore Death Valley without camping, the Ranch is the most practical and affordable of the two on-site options.

3. Amargosa Opera House & Hotel

The Amargosa Opera House & Hotel sits in Death Valley Junction, a near-ghost town in the Mojave Desert, roughly 30 miles east of Death Valley National Park. Built in the 1920s as a company town for the Pacific Coast Borax Company, the complex fell into disuse until 1967, when dancer and artist Marta Becket stumbled upon it during a road trip and decided to stay. She restored the theatre, painted elaborate murals of a Renaissance audience across its walls, and performed there for decades — sometimes to almost no one. The hotel still takes guests, offering sparse, characterful rooms in a building that feels genuinely unchanged by time. It is one of the stranger places to spend a night in California: isolated, quietly eccentric, and thoroughly unlike anywhere else. Marta Becket died in 2017, but the site remains open and worth the detour.