Things to Do in Death Valley National Park

Death Valley rewards travelers who treat it as a park to tour as much as to trek. The great pleasure here is the sequence of unforgettable overlooks and roadside spectacles: Zabriskie Point for its rippling badlands at sunrise, Dante’s View for a commanding look down across the basin, and Badwater Basin for the surreal experience of standing at the lowest point in North America, surrounded by blinding salt flats and enormous desert walls. Artist’s Drive is one of the park’s essential scenic routes, winding through mineral-stained hills that glow in improbable shades of pink, green, gold, and lavender. Add in Devil’s Golf Course, with its tortured salt pinnacles, and Ubehebe Crater, a dramatic volcanic explosion crater, and you have a park that delivers blockbuster geology with very little effort beyond getting out of the car. There is also a playful side to Death Valley’s stark beauty. Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes are the park’s closest thing to a beach, a broad sea of sculpted sand where visitors wander, photograph wind-drawn patterns, and stay for the long, honey-colored light of late afternoon. History lovers should stop at Harmony Borax Works and the Wildrose Charcoal Kilns, two of the park’s most evocative points of interest, where the human story of mining, industry, and survival comes into sharp focus against the desert emptiness. For travelers after something truly distinctive, the park’s clear air and immense darkness make stargazing a headline experience, while photographers will find some of the best conditions in the national park system at dawn and dusk, when the valley floor, salt flats, dunes, and mountains turn cinematic. In Death Valley, the drama is not confined to the trails; it unfolds at overlooks, along scenic drives, on the salt, and under the night sky.