The Mojave Desert has the problem of famous places. Mojave National Preserve, Joshua Tree, Death Valley — they draw people for good reasons, and they’re genuinely worth visiting. But they’re also crowded in a way that wasn’t true ten years ago. If you’ve done the main circuits a few times, there’s a ceiling to what you’re getting out of the return trip.
What follows is a partial answer to the question we get asked fairly often: where do you actually go?
We’re not going to hand out GPS coordinates. Some of these spots are fragile and some are on that fine line between known and overrun. We’ll give you enough to find them yourself — which is part of the point.
The Mojave has more rock arches, slot canyon entrances, and remote geological features than most people realize. Finding them requires some homework. That homework is also why you usually have them to yourself.
Wildrose and the Charcoal Kilns — Death Valley’s Back Door
Most visitors drive into Death Valley through Furnace Creek. The Wildrose Road approach from the south — accessible from Trona off Highway 178 — gives you a completely different experience. Quieter, longer approach, with the Charcoal Kilns sitting at the end of it like something from a different century. Ten beehive-shaped stone kilns, built in the 1870s to make charcoal for silver mills, remarkably intact. The road is passable for most vehicles in good weather; high clearance preferred.
The Providence Mountains — Mojave National Preserve
Most Mojave National Preserve visitors come for the Kelso Dunes or the Hole-in-the-Wall area. The Providence Mountains section gets a fraction of that traffic and has the Mitchell Caverns — limestone caves with guided NPS tours — plus some of the most dramatic rocky terrain in the eastern Mojave. The area around Essex Road and off I-40 has real character that most visitors drive past.
Mitchell Caverns Tour Info
Searchlight and Crescent Peak — Southern Nevada
South of Searchlight, NV off US-95, there’s serious desert running with almost nobody on it. Crescent Peak is one of those out-and-back hikes that delivers — good views of the Colorado River drainage, old mining history, and a very low probability of running into another person. It’s the kind of place you have to want to find.
Ghost town structures scattered across desert terrain — the Mojave corridor has more of these than most people realize. Searchlight, Vanderbilt, Hart, Ivanpah — the mining era left a lot behind.
The McCullough Range — Southern Nevada
Between Henderson and Laughlin, the McCullough Range sits in that overlooked strip of southern Nevada that most people drive through at freeway speed without slowing down. Technical rocky terrain, old mining roads, solid camping, and views back toward the Mojave valley that most people only see from I-515.
Afton Canyon — Off I-15 East of Barstow
Afton Canyon is the Mojave River cutting through volcanic rock in a way that produces real canyon walls and actual running water in the canyon bottom for much of the year — one of the only above-ground stretches of the Mojave River. BLM-managed, camping allowed. The green riparian zone against black basalt is genuinely different from the surrounding desert. Air your tires down for the sandy wash approach off Afton Road.
Plan Before You Go