United States · California
Death Valley (Furnace Creek)
The hottest air temperature ever measured on Earth, and in winter one of the emptiest and most extraordinary desert drives anywhere.
Death Valley is the hottest, driest and lowest place in North America: a trough some 225 km long, floored with salt pan, badlands and dune fields, and walled by ranges that climb more than three vertical kilometres straight out of it. It is also the largest national park outside Alaska, and almost all of it is empty - the whole visit runs on a handful of paved roads with a scatter of people at each pullout and nothing at all in between. Furnace Creek is the oasis in the middle, a green smudge of springs, palms and lodges that is the only real cluster of shade and services for hours in any direction, with most of the headline sights inside an hour's drive of it.
Suggested stay
2–4 days
Language
English
Currency
USD
Timezone
UTC-7
Why you'll love Death Valley (Furnace Creek)
The extremes the lowest point in North America sits in the same view as a snow-dusted summit more than three kilometres above it, on ground that holds the highest air temperature ever recorded on the planet.
The emptiness this is the biggest national park in the lower forty-eight and it takes a fraction of the traffic the Utah parks do, so even in peak season the pullouts clear and the silence out on the salt is total.
The geology salt polygons, mineral-stained hills, eroded lakebed badlands, a volcanic crater and a dune field all within an hour of each other, and no vegetation anywhere to hide the workings.
The night sky a Gold Tier dark sky park with no town glow for a hundred kilometres in any direction, where on a moonless night the salt pan is lit by starlight alone.
Best time to visit
Oct-May
15-32° days
36.434° N, 116.863° W
UTC-7 · America/Los Angeles
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Weather & when to go to Death Valley (Furnace Creek)
Month by month: typical highs and lows, rainfall and rain days.
✓ Best Oct-May
Watch for Jun-Sep extreme heat risk
Cards tinted by calculated verdict · big number = typical daily high, small = low · hover for conditions
When to avoid Death Valley (Furnace Creek)
July and August are dangerous rather than merely uncomfortable: afternoon highs sit above 45 C and regularly clear 50 C, overnight lows on the valley floor barely dip under 30 C, and walkers are told to be off the below-sea-level trails by mid-morning. June and September run hot enough to shrink the usable day down to dawn and dusk, and the rare summer thunderstorm can flash-flood a road in minutes.
Top things to do in Death Valley (Furnace Creek)
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Badwater Basin - the salt flats 86 m below sea level
scenic nature wildlife 👍 PopularA boardwalk runs out from the car park onto a hard white crust of sodium chloride that stretches for kilometres, cracked into hexagonal polygons where the ground stays wet enough to keep re-forming. Look up at the cliff behind the car park for the small sign marking sea level, hundreds of metres overhead. Walk fifteen minutes past where the crowd stops and the polygons get bigger, whiter and completely your own.
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Zabriskie Point - sunrise over the golden badlands
scenic 👍 PopularA short paved ramp from the road ends at a railing above a maze of gullies eroded out of an ancient lakebed, with the pale spire of Manly Beacon in the middle and the Panamints across the valley behind. First light is the reason to come: the badlands go from grey to burnt gold in about ten minutes. Trails drop straight off the point into Golden Canyon and Gower Gulch if you want to walk it rather than look at it.
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Dantes View - the whole valley from 1,670 m up
scenic hiking ⭐ Highly recommendedA paved road climbs the Black Mountains to a viewpoint standing more than 1,750 m directly above Badwater Basin, which means you can see the lowest point in North America and, on a clear day, the highest summit in the lower forty-eight in the same sweep. It runs twenty degrees cooler than the valley floor, so it is the one comfortable place to be on a hot afternoon, and short ridge walks either side of the car park empty out entirely.
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Golden Canyon to Gower Gulch - the badlands loop past Manly Beacon
hiking adventure ⭐ Highly recommendedThe best walk within reach of Furnace Creek: about 6 km up a narrow canyon of yellow mudstone, out onto the ridge below Manly Beacon with the Red Cathedral cliffs off one side, then down a wash that was rerouted by a mining-era diversion and now cuts a slot to the valley floor. Half a day at a slow pace, no shade whatsoever, and best begun at first light in any month.
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Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes - the dune field at Stovepipe Wells
scenic nature wildlife 👍 PopularThe park's most accessible dunes rise about 30 m off a flat beside the highway, with no marked trail, so you simply walk in and pick a crest. Late afternoon and sunrise carve the ripples into shadow, and after a windless night the sand records every kangaroo rat, sidewinder and beetle that crossed it. Go at either end of the day and get well past the first ridge to find untouched sand.
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Artists Drive and Artists Palette - the mineral-stained hills
scenicA one-way loop of about 14 km dips and climbs through the alluvial fans on the east side of the valley to a hillside splashed green, pink, lavender and rust, the colours coming from iron, manganese and weathered volcanic ash rather than anything living. Late afternoon light is when it actually looks like the photographs. The road is narrow with sharp dips and is closed to long vehicles.
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Dark-sky stargazing on the valley floor
scenic nature wildlifeDeath Valley holds Gold Tier dark sky certification, the strictest grade, and the nearest real light domes are far enough away to sit low on the horizon. Pull off at any of the salt-flat car parks well after the sunset crowd has gone, give your eyes twenty minutes and the Milky Way runs the length of the valley. Winter gives the longest nights and the steadiest air; check the moon phase before you commit.
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Devils Golf Course - the broken salt pan
nature wildlife off beaten pathA short gravel spur off Badwater Road ends on a field of rock salt eroded into jagged, ankle-breaking spires that crunch and tick audibly as the crystals expand in the heat. It is the same salt as Badwater at a different stage of its life, and the name comes from an old park guidebook remarking that only the devil could play golf on it. Sturdy shoes, and step carefully - the edges are genuinely sharp.
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Mosaic Canyon - polished marble narrows above Stovepipe Wells
hiking nature wildlifeA rough access road climbs to a trailhead where the canyon immediately tightens into walls of dolomite worn smooth as a countertop by flash floods, streaked through with a natural breccia that looks exactly like set mosaic tiles. The first stretch of narrows is a twenty-minute walk; carrying on to the dry falls and the upper canyon makes it a solid half day of easy scrambling.
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Ubehebe Crater - the maar volcano at the north end
nature wildlife hikingA hole roughly 800 m across and over 150 m deep, blasted out when rising magma hit groundwater and flashed it to steam, with the black cinder rim layered over orange lakebed sediment. A trail runs right around the lip in about an hour and a steep scree path drops to the floor, which is a fast walk down and a lung-burning walk up. It is a long drive north of Furnace Creek and usually paired with the Racetrack road.
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Racetrack Playa - the sailing stones
nature wildlife off beaten path adventureA dead-flat clay lakebed scored with long, curving furrows behind rocks that have plainly moved on their own. The mechanism was finally filmed in 2014: a shallow winter flood freezes into thin ice panels, and a light breeze shoves the whole sheet along, pushing the stones with it. Getting there means about 43 km of brutal washboard from Ubehebe Crater on high-clearance tyres, with a spare and no phone signal - budget the entire day.
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Titus Canyon Road - the one-way run through the narrows
off beaten path history adventureA 43 km one-way gravel road starts over on the Nevada side, climbs a pass, drops past petroglyphs and the tin-and-timber remains of the Leadfield mining swindle, then funnels into narrows so tight two cars could not pass before spitting you out onto the valley floor. High-clearance is required and the road shuts after rain; walkers can also enter the narrows on foot from the western end.
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Harmony Borax Works - the twenty-mule team wagons
historyA short interpretive loop just north of Furnace Creek around the adobe ruins of an 1880s borax refinery, with a preserved wagon set from the teams that hauled the loads more than 260 km to the railhead, a ten-day trip each way. It is the reason there is a road, a hotel and a park here at all, and it takes twenty minutes.
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Salt Creek boardwalk - pupfish from a vanished lake
nature wildlifeA short loop of boardwalk over a briny creek that holds a pupfish found nowhere else on Earth, stranded here when the lake that filled this valley in the ice age dried out and left them in water several times saltier than the sea. Late winter and early spring is when the creek runs and the males turn blue and start fighting over territory; by summer much of it is dry.
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Telescope Peak - the summit above Badwater
hiking adventureThe high point of the park at 3,366 m, reached on a roughly 22 km return trail from Mahogany Flat that climbs through pinyon and ancient bristlecone pines to a ridge looking down on the salt pan more than three kilometres below on one side and across to the Sierra on the other. Late spring through autumn is the window; the access road and the ridge hold snow and ice well into spring, and that needs proper gear.
Best areas to stay in Death Valley (Furnace Creek)
$ Budget $$ Mid-range $$$ Premium
Furnace Creek
First-time visitors $$Palm oasis with the park's only real services
Explore hotels in Furnace Creek →
Stovepipe Wells Village
Low-key stays $One-street outpost beside the dune field
Explore hotels in Stovepipe Wells Village →
Panamint Springs
Sierra-side arrivals $Rustic stop on the far western edge
Explore hotels in Panamint Springs →
Beatty, Nevada
Budget travellers $Scruffy desert crossroads, motels and small casinos
Explore hotels in Beatty, Nevada →
Shoshone and Tecopa
Southern approach $Tiny southern gateway with desert hot springs
Explore hotels in Shoshone and Tecopa →
Live nightly prices from Booking.com, Agoda and others, centred on Death Valley (Furnace Creek)
Getting to & around Death Valley (Furnace Creek)
Getting there
Fly into Las Vegas and drive about two and a half hours west; there is no bus, train or rideshare into the park.
Flight
Harry Reid International Airport, Las Vegas (LAS)
Las Vegas is about 190 km east of Furnace Creek, roughly two to two and a half hours by road, either north on US 95 and in via Death Valley Junction or west through Pahrump on the Bell Vista road. Hire a car at the terminal: no scheduled bus or shuttle serves the park, there is no rideshare coverage inside it, and Pahrump or Beatty are the last places for cheap fuel and a proper supermarket.
Drive
Death Valley Junction, Highway 190
The standard approach from Las Vegas, two to two and a half hours through Pahrump or Amargosa Valley. Fill the tank before the state line and carry more water than you expect to drink.
Drive
Shoshone, southern entrance
From Los Angeles it is roughly 480 km and four and a half to five hours, out through the Mojave and up past Baker and Shoshone, or the longer way round via Ridgecrest and Trona. Mobile coverage disappears for long stretches of both.
Drive
Towne Pass, Highway 190
The Sierra approach from Lone Pine and the Owens Valley, about 170 km and two and a half hours over a pass at nearly 1,500 m. The descent into the valley is long and steep, and cars and brakes overheat on it in the warm months.
Coach
Furnace Creek visitor centre
There is no scheduled public bus into the park. The only regular coach traffic is day-tour buses out of Las Vegas, which arrive around the middle of the day and leave again in the afternoon.
Getting around
Your own car
Effectively compulsory. The park runs about 225 km end to end with the sights an hour apart, there is no shuttle of any kind and no rideshare, and the paved roads are wide and in good shape. The three in-park fuel pumps are the most expensive for a long way, so arrive full.
TBC
High-clearance 4WD
The line between the paved highlights and everything else. Racetrack Valley Road, Titus Canyon and the far northern dunes shred ordinary tyres, carry no signal and no traffic, and most hire-car contracts forbid them outright.
TBC
On foot
Every canyon walk, the dune field and the salt-flat boardwalk start from a car park and most are under two hours return. From April onwards all of it happens before nine in the morning.
Free
Bicycle
Allowed on paved and dirt roads but never on trails. No shade, no water and long climbs make it a winter proposition for prepared riders rather than casual pedalling.
TBC
Guided tour
Operators run day tours in from Las Vegas covering the salt flats, the badlands overlook and a dune stop. It is the only realistic way to see the park without driving yourself.
TBC
Day trips from Death Valley (Furnace Creek)
Rhyolite and Beatty
Half dayGhost town and sculptures
Rhyolite boomed to thousands of people on a gold strike and was all but abandoned inside a decade, leaving a three-storey bank facade, a train depot and a house built from tens of thousands of bottles standing in the creosote. At the gate an open-air sculpture park has a set of ghostly shrouded figures posed on the gravel. Beatty itself, ten minutes on, has fuel, food and a candy store that pulls in every passing car.
Getting there
car
About 60 km northeast over Daylight Pass, an hour each way by car
Ash Meadows and Devils Hole
Full dayDesert spring oasis
Boardwalks cross a wildlife refuge of impossibly blue spring pools fed by water that fell as rain thousands of years ago and travelled here underground, supporting more endemic species in a small area than almost anywhere in the country. Devils Hole, a detached piece of the national park, is a flooded fissure viewed from a platform above a security fence, holding a pupfish population that has hovered near extinction for decades.
Getting there
car
About 90 km east via Death Valley Junction, an hour and a quarter each way by car
Panamint Springs, Darwin Falls and Father Crowley Vista
Full dayWestern edge of the park
The far side of the park, past the sand dunes and over a pass, where a short walk up a gravel wash reaches a spring-fed waterfall running through willows in the driest place on the continent. Further up the highway a viewpoint looks straight down into the red-walled cut of Rainbow Canyon. The drive itself, dropping across the empty floor of Panamint Valley, is a good part of the reason to go.
Getting there
car
About 80 km west over Towne Pass, an hour and a quarter each way by car
Lone Pine and the Alabama Hills
Full daySierra film country
A field of rounded granite boulders and natural arches below the eastern wall of the Sierra Nevada, where hundreds of westerns and science-fiction films were shot, with the highest summit in the lower forty-eight rising straight behind it. A dirt loop road threads the formations, a short trail reaches an arch that frames the peaks, and the film museum in town names the rocks you just drove past. A long day, and a natural overnight if you are heading on to the Sierra.
Getting there
car
About 170 km west on Highway 190 and the Owens Valley road, two and a half hours each way by car
Tecopa, China Ranch and Death Valley Junction
Full dayHot springs and date farm
A string of oddities down the southern approach: a lone adobe theatre at a crossroads whose interior a dancer painted with an entire audience over years of performing to near-empty houses, then mineral bathhouses in a low-key spa hamlet, and a date farm hidden in a badlands canyon that sells date shakes and has walking trails down to the Amargosa River. Best in the cool months, when a hot soak is actually appealing.
Getting there
car
About 120 km south via Death Valley Junction and Shoshone, an hour and a half each way by car
A little history of Death Valley (Furnace Creek)
The Timbisha Shoshone have lived in this valley for at least a thousand years, moving with the seasons between the mesquite groves and springs on the floor in winter and the pinyon forests of the Panamints in summer. The name they use for the place refers to the red ochre rock paint quarried here. The English name came from outside and in a hurry: a party of emigrants trying to shortcut to the California goldfields got trapped on the floor over the winter of 1849, and although only one of them died, the valley kept the name they left it with.
What followed was mining, and mostly disappointment. The gold and silver rushes produced more ghost towns than fortunes, and the one commodity that genuinely paid was borax, scraped off the salt pan in the 1880s and hauled out by mule teams in wagons big enough to be a tourist attraction in their own right. When the borax ran thin the company that owned it discovered that the scenery sold better than the mineral, opened a hotel and lobbied for federal protection. That is why a place this hostile has a resort in the middle of it, and why the mule team became the emblem of the whole valley.
A party of emigrants seeking a shortcut to the goldfields is trapped crossing the valley through the winter; two men walk out for help and the group gives the place its English name on leaving.
The Harmony Borax Works begins refining at Furnace Creek, and twenty-mule teams start hauling loads more than 260 km to the railhead at Mojave, ten days each way.
A thermometer at Greenland Ranch, now Furnace Creek, reads 56.7 C on 10 July, still the highest air temperature accepted anywhere on Earth.
The borax company opens a hotel on the hillside above Furnace Creek, converting a worked-out mining district into a winter resort.
A Spanish-style villa in Grapevine Canyon is completed for a Chicago insurance executive and becomes known by the name of the prospector who talked it up as his own gold-funded castle.
President Hoover proclaims Death Valley a national monument in February; road and trail building follows through the 1930s.
The California Desert Protection Act upgrades the monument to a national park and enlarges it, making it the largest national park outside Alaska.
The Timbisha Shoshone Homeland Act returns land in and around Furnace Creek to the tribe, the first time a tribe was granted a permanent homeland inside a national park.
The park is certified as a Gold Tier International Dark Sky Park, the largest so designated at the time.
A flash flood tears down Grapevine Canyon, wrecking roads and utilities at the villa and closing it to visitors for a long restoration.
Furnace Creek records 54.4 C on 16 August, the highest reliably measured temperature on Earth in modern instrument records.
The remains of a tropical storm drop close to a year of rain in a day, shutting every road in the park and pooling a shallow lake across Badwater Basin.
Know before you go
Payment
Cards everywhere
English
Everywhere
Wifi
Limited
Power
Type A / B
120 V, 60 Hz
Dialing
+1
Extreme heat risk in this window; check current conditions before you go.
The months our climate read flags to avoid: the wettest, lowest-rated weather of the year.
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FAQs about Death Valley (Furnace Creek)
▸ When is the best time to visit Death Valley?
October to May, and November to March if you want it comfortable all day. Winter days on the valley floor sit somewhere between mild and pleasantly warm with cold clear nights, which is ideal for walking canyons and standing on salt. Spring adds warmth and the chance of wildflowers. July and August are the months to avoid outright, and June and September are workable only if you treat dawn as the start of the day.
▸ How hot does it actually get?
Hotter than almost anywhere. The valley floor holds the highest air temperature ever accepted anywhere on Earth, set here in 1913, and midsummer afternoons above 50 C are routine rather than remarkable. The heat is dry, which makes it deceptive: you dehydrate fast without feeling sweaty, and shade is genuinely scarce. Even in winter the sun on the salt pan is fierce.
▸ How many days do you need?
Two to four. One full day, done well, covers the salt flats, the badlands overlook, the colour drive and the dunes. A second lets you walk a canyon properly, get up to the high viewpoint for sunrise and reach the volcanic crater at the north end. Three or four opens up the backcountry roads and the Panamint side, and stops the whole trip being spent behind the wheel.
▸ Do you need a four-wheel drive?
Not for the famous sights. The salt flats, the badlands, the colour drive, the dunes and the high viewpoint are all on good sealed roads that any hire car handles. You need high clearance and tough tyres for the sailing-stone playa, the one-way canyon road and the remote northern dunes, and punctures out there are common enough that a spare and a plan matter more than the drivetrain.
▸ Is it safe to hike here in summer?
Not on the valley floor. From roughly June to September the park tells visitors to stay off below-sea-level trails after mid-morning, and people are rescued or die every year for ignoring it. If you are here in the heat, hike at dawn, keep to the high country in the Panamints where it is far cooler, and treat the car as your shade for the rest of the day.
▸ Will my phone work, and is there wifi?
Assume not. There is a patchy signal at Furnace Creek and Stovepipe Wells and essentially nothing across the rest of the park. Lodge wifi exists, is shared and is slow. Download offline maps before you arrive, do not rely on live navigation, and leave your route with somebody if you are going onto the dirt roads.
▸ Where do you stay, and does it book out?
Inside the park it is Furnace Creek for services and choice, Stovepipe Wells for something simpler beside the dunes, and Panamint Springs for the quiet western edge; outside it, Beatty over the Nevada pass and the Shoshone and Tecopa side to the south. There are very few rooms in total, so the cool months book many weeks ahead and the campgrounds fill on winter weekends.
▸ Is Death Valley expensive?
The lodging and fuel are, and not much else is. There is almost no competition inside the park, so rooms and the three fuel pumps carry a captive-market premium, and the gateway towns are considerably cheaper for both. Against that, the park entry pass covers several days, and the salt flats, the badlands, the dunes, the canyon walks and the night sky all cost nothing at all.
▸ Can you see a superbloom?
Rarely, and never on demand. Wildflowers need an unusually wet autumn and winter followed by warmth without wind, which happens perhaps once a decade at full strength; the big displays run roughly February to April on the valley floor and later as you climb. Most years give scattered colour along the alluvial fans instead, which is worth stopping for and is not what the photographs show.
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