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NEVADA
Silver Trails Territory

Beatty to Death Valley:
A Great Winter Trip
By Debbie Wilkinson

If you need a break from the glitz and glamour of the Las Vegas Strip, turn your car north on Highway 95 and spend some time in Beatty, Nevada, the scenic gateway to Death Valley. From Beatty, you can tour back into history and rollicking mining towns and into the extremes of Death Valley.

Unlike the heat in the heart of summer, temperatures this time of year are great for exploring one of the most extreme environments in the world. Springtime arrives soon in the desert and Death Valley will soon sport “rivers of gold.” Not the gold of the gold rush days, but gold foliage that is fragrant, refreshing and easy on the eyes. The gold is interspersed with purple and white islands that beacon and entice. But a trip into Death Valley can excite more than sight and smell for the adventurous traveler. Excite all your senses when you travel Highway 374 out of Beatty and pass through Hell’s Gate.

Your trip begins by stocking up on gas and water in Beatty. After you take care of the necessities, your next stop will be in Rhyolite, one of the most interesting historical sites in southern Nevada. Here your sense of adventure will be ignited by ruins of a rollicking town once home to 8,000 people. Rhyolite survived just 11 years, but it boomed in the early part of the 1900s before dying out when gold prices dropped.

In Rhyolite you can explore your sense of whimsy at the Goldwell Open Air Art Museum. This unique art gallery is home to the world famous Last Supper sculpture, a ghostly representation of the famous painting. Every sculpture here somehow reflects the town or the history of the area and state.

As you drop over Daylight Pass, you may begin to see and smell the blooms that make the valley so exciting this time of year. But your next stop excites more than your sense of sight and smell. You are about to pass through Hell’s Gate–12 miles past Rhyolite–where you turn off your heater or air conditioning, roll down your windows and hold your hands out in the air. Within the next three miles, you should feel Hell’s Gate, a distinct change in temperature between the coolness of the mountains and the much warmer desert air. The inversion layer that causes this change moves from season to season and can be muddied by nearby storms or winds, but by the end of the three miles you will be able to notice the difference.

Once you have reached the Hell’s Gate information kiosk, your flower-seeking adventure begins. The desert gold begins blooming in lower Death Valley in early spring and moves up in elevation as the season wears on. If you continue to Stovepipe Wells and beyond you can see evening primrose and the ever-changing gravel ghost, a beautiful white flower with purple markings that fade as the bloom ages. A wide variety of other flowers in many shades of pink and purple also grace the alluvial fans and hillsides. About two-dozen different wildflowers are known to bloom in the southern California deserts and the park offers wildflower walks several times a week. One word of warning: While you are exploring the flowers of Death Valley keep in mind that if it is fuzzy it can cause poison oak type skin rashes.

For more information about a visit to Death Valley in the spring,
visit http://www.nps.gov/devaa

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