A Different Route

All routes to Death Valley lead to some of the West's most memorable landmarks, but the Beatty route may be best of all. Going through Beatty offers a variety of interesting stops even before entering the valley proper, as well as the opportunity to overnight in Beatty itself, a crossroads community just big enough to have necessary lodging and eating places yet retain the charm of unspoiled Nevada.

The Beatty route also seems the easiest drive, for it avoids the traffic of other routes along the now-developed areas along Blue Diamond Road and through the town of Pahrump. It's only 41 miles from Beatty to Furnace Creek, the hub of the park, and Beatty proudly wears the nickname "Gateway to Death Valley."

On our past visits we spent the majority of our time seeing the more remote places of the park, but on this trip we stuck to the highlights in the eastern area, those closest and most easily accessed from Las Vegas. Over the course of a couple of days we visited many of the places we had overlooked in the past but also took another look at some old favorites, all without spending much time driving.

Once we arrived in Beatty, my daughter and I grabbed a quick breakfast, filled the gas tank and headed a few miles west to the ghost town of Rhyolite. From 1905 to 1912, this was a thriving gold mining town with a population that some say reached as high as 10,000. Like many boom towns of that era, Rhyolite went practically overnight from a small tent city to one that included saloons, hospitals, churches, swimming pools, a red light district and an opera house.

You can spend hours walking around the old town, now managed by the Bureau of Land Management. Time has taken its toll on most buildings, right down to their foundations, but some still half-stand, such as the Cook Bank Building, Porter Brothers Store, schoolhouse, jail and the Las Vegas & Tonopah Railroad Depot. It's a popular subject for Nevada photographers.

A favorite building of all visitors is the Tom Kelly Bottle House. Kelly was a recycling pioneer and constructed the house in 1906 from about 20,000 discarded glass bottles, put in place with mud. Building materials were typically scarce and expensive in boom towns, so houses were built of bottles in several Nevada camps, but few survive today, and perhaps none in a condition so good as this one. The house is listed on the Nevada State Registry of Historic Places.

The bottle house was rehabilitated and stabilized in 2005. Because there are no full-time caretakers at the property, the BLM has fenced in the house, which obscures the view, especially if photographing it. The current fence is scheduled to be replaced with a lower fence in the future.

This time of year, however, caretakers are on site part time, and do give informational tours about the bottle house, which means you can go inside the fence, though not inside the house. This is on a casual basis, unscheduled, but is usually in the mornings

After exploring Rhyolite we stopped at the Goldwell Open Air Museum. The first outdoor art displays appeared here in 1984, thanks to Belgian artist Albert Szukalski and a few Beatty residents. You will find an eclectic mix of art, including an ethereal interpretation of da Vinci's Last Supper. Another is a steel sculpture of a prospector and a penguin, towering two dozen feet above the desert floor.

This might be a tribute to Shorty Harris who, with the help of his pal Ed Cross, made the 1904 gold strike that put the area on the map. Desert legend has it that when Shorty was amply fortified with liquor, he thought a penguin was following him around.

Returning to the main road and heading west, in just a few minutes we passed the turn-off to Titus Canyon Road. If you have the time, and real off-road tires on a high-clearance vehicle or, even better, a four-wheel drive, this road is as rewarding as any that enters the park. The 26-mile trail passes by old mining ruins in the ghost town of Leadfield, American Indian petroglyphs, a spring and a spectacular narrow section so tight the road is one-way. Since we had traveled down this canyon before and didn't have time to do it again on this trip, we continued west, and a few miles later we officially entered Death Valley National Park.

Our next stop was a side trip to the Keane Wonder Mine, which reached its heyday in the same era as Rhyolite. In 1903, a local prospector named Jack Keane, previously down on his luck, was searching for silver but instead discovered a large ledge of gold. The gold mine turned out to be one of the two largest producers in the area and at one time about 500 miners worked here. Total production was more than $1 million; of that, more than $600,000 worth of gold was taken between 1907-1911. At today's gold prices, the gold alone would be worth about $25 million.

Although there is plenty of evidence of gold mining throughout the park, this mine is one of the easiest to reach, and unlike others it hasn't been wiped clean by vandals. There is stuff everywhere you look, including an old safe, ruins of a mill, lots of building foundations, an outhouse, the tramway towers and a bevy of unrecognizable rusty artifacts. The aerial tramway was 4,700-feet long and was gravity operated. The weight of buckets full of ore descending the tram would pull the lighter empty buckets back up to be refilled.

Two remote hikes lead from the parking area. For those up to a challenge there is a strenuous four-mile round-trip hike up a rugged trail to the main mine complex. The other hike takes you north along an old abandoned pipeline for about one mile to the remains of a cabin, where nearby you will find a lovely spring with lush vegetation, a big draw for desert bighorn sheep. The entire landscape is dotted with dozens of unsecured mine shafts, all susceptible to cave-ins and many home to toxic fumes, so stay out of any mine, no matter how safe it appears.

As we made our way south toward Furnace Creek, we next took the turnoff to the Salt Creek Interpretive Trail. The area surrounding the access road is so drab and unappealing, it's a wonder that anyone bothers to check it out. But knowing the desert holds secrets, we headed that way and were pleasantly surprised.

From the parking area, we followed the wooden boardwalk and immediately were treated to the sight of dozens of zebratail lizards darting around through the pickleweed. This plant and some salt grass are the only noticeable vegetation around. Within a few hundred feet from the trailhead, we found the flowing stream of Salt Creek. Although it is almost as salty as the ocean, it still provides a native habitat to the Salt Creek pupfish.

This heat-tolerant fish is just one of 10 species or subspecies of pupfish that live in the Death Valley area. A variety of birds also thrive here, including ravens, killdeer and, surprisingly, even great blue herons.

Our last stop before arriving in Furnace Creek was Harmony Borax Works. Borax, a compound of the elements boron, chlorine, and oxygen, was sometimes called "the white gold of the desert" and in this region was first located in the 1870s. It was refined by separating the mineral from the mud and other salts. This historic site is worth a short stop to see the ruins of the old refinery and one of the original wagons that were used to transport the product.

The Harmony Borax Works only operated for six years, from 1883 to 1889, but when people think of Death Valley, it often conjures up images of the 20-mule wagon teams the company used to deliver the product. This is thanks to the old advertising campaign for 20 Mule Team Borax and the television series it sponsored, "Death Valley Days," which ran from 1952 to 1975. The show, based on fact, mostly consisted of human interest stories set in the late 19th century in and around Death Valley.

The wagon team was managed by a mule skinner and a helper or "swamper" who drove the wagons through the harsh Death Valley terrain 165 miles south to the railroad in Mojave. It took them more than 10 days to complete the journey. We stood by the wagons and couldn't believe how enormous they were. Each wagon was 16-feet long by four-feet wide and six-feet deep. The front wheels are five-feet tall and the back ones seven feet. Even empty, a wagon weighed 7,800 pounds and when filled with borax, the total load was more than 361/2 tons.

Borax, although not mined at this site anymore, is still a widely used product to this day. Ceramic industries use more than half the production in pottery glazes, china and porcelain, but it is also widely used in a variety of products including ovenware, antiseptic and a mold-retarding wash on citrus fruits and textiles. And, as the "Death Valley Days" sponsors used to remind us every week, 20 Mule Team Borax still does a lot of laundry.

Our next day was spent exploring the area south of Furnace Creek, starting with a stroll out on the salt flat at Badwater. Ever since Charlotte was a toddler, we have stopped here whenever we could, always walking the basin barefoot. Worn to a snowy white base from use, it has a unique feeling, as if walking on snow if it were possible for snow to be warm.

No matter how many times we visit, it is always thrilling to be standing 282 feet below sea level, the lowest point in the Western Hemisphere, yet be able to look across the salt pan and gaze up at 11,049 foot Telescope Peak in the Panamint Range.

Returning north toward Furnace Creek we headed onto Artists' Road.

This is a nine-mile, one-way paved drive through the most colorful landscape in the park. With all the twists, turns and major dips it's just fun to drive, but the colors of the volcanic and sedimentary hills will take your breath away. The multihued palette ranges from red through pink all the way to a bright aqua.

Back on the main road and just a few miles north we stopped at Golden Canyon. You could spend hours being awed by the geology in this narrow canyon.

This is an easy hike if you just travel one mile up the canyon and return, but rocky.

Probably the most fascinating thing to see is portions of an old road that once made its way up this canyon until about 30 years ago. In 1976, 2.3 inches of rain fell over a four-day period in this area. A flash flood of epic proportions forced boulders, mud and massive amounts of water down through the narrow walls taking with it much of the road, never to be replaced.

Charlotte and I would spend two nights camping in the Furnace Creek area, the most popular place in the park.

This was no wilderness experience, but it was at least convenient. Here you will find the Furnace Creek Inn and Ranch, several campgrounds, a golf course, a small airport, gas station, stores, restaurants and the park's main visitor center.

Of course, Death Valley can be so hot that winter is a popular time to visit there, but between now and Christmas, the park is the least crowded it will be during the cool months. Average daily temperatures in Death Valley proper will be in the mid-60s, making it an ideal time to hike, bike, camp, golf, sightsee or just kick back. The trip offers something for everybody.

Contact Deborah Wall at Deborabus@aol.com.