A non-hiker’s guide to Death Valley — what to do, see and eat in the charming towns nearby
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After hours of driving through the remote and redundant high-desert landscape, Angelenos eager to reach the boundaries of Death Valley often zip straight past two gems on the route to the fabled national park. But the historic towns of Shoshone and Tecopa have more to offer than gas tank refills and places to rest one’s head for the night.
Established more than a century ago, both communities have moved beyond their early histories as railroad towns and rich mining districts and are transitioning into ecotourism and hot springs resort destinations. They’re rife with charming businesses, eateries, wildlife hotspots and a surprising amount of hidden water sources.
Still, these places are far from chic or trendy — and that’s the way the locals like it. Out here, there are no stoplights, cell service is practically nonexistent and the freedom is palpable.
About This Guide
Our journalists independently visited every spot recommended in this guide. We do not accept free meals or experiences. What should we check out next? Send ideas to guides@latimes.com.
Located halfway between Barstow and Las Vegas along California Highway 127, Shoshone is a one-road town that, despite a population of only 22 people in 2020, boasts a post office, general store, gas station and gift shop, inn, local museum, restaurant and saloon, pond, village office, RV park, bodywork clinic, cemetery, a K-12 school with a 13-person student body and a single-airstrip airport that gets about 58 flights per month. And it’s home to a landmark piece of architecture: a sleek home built by the Midcentury Modernist architect Richard Neutra.
Since its construction in the 1950s, the house has served as the home of Susan Sorrells. She is the granddaughter of Charles Brown, a Shoshone pioneer whose name is printed all over the small community, appearing on the sidings of dilapidated garages and on the menu at the local restaurant. Now she owns the village along with several thousand surrounding acres. For the last few decades, Sorrells has revitalized the region’s endemic wildlife and ecological features, such as the Shoshone Spring, by inviting scientists and researchers from universities to help nurse the environment back to health. The result has been a resurgence in endangered and formerly extinct animals, such as the Shoshone pupfish and Amargosa vole, which in turn has made the village a popular locale for bird-watchers and nature enthusiasts.
Water is also a big draw in nearby Tecopa, a few miles south of Shoshone along the Old Spanish Trail, a historic trade route that connected Santa Fe, N.M., to Los Angeles. The community of roughly 169 people is located in the basin of the prehistoric Lake Tecopa, where extensive fossils and footprints from mammoths, flamingos, muskrat and extinct genus of camels and horses have been unearthed and are now on view at the Shoshone Museum.
The once-marshy terrain is also host to a plethora of minerals and salts, which are the source of much confusion among tourists who often observe what appears to be freshly fallen snow on the ground. (Actually, it is underground salts that have risen to the surface through capillary action that create this snowlike white crust.) Gone are the region’s lakes, but Tecopa is rife with hot springs heated by subsurface magma.
Today the area boasts four hot spring businesses, each offering different perks, from on-site sleeping accommodations to bathhouses separated by gender. After a soak, you can head to the town’s microbrewery and one of the only vegan eateries for miles.
From the clear open skies to the petrichor-like smells of underground waters spilling onto the land, Shoshone and Tecopa are far from the desolate backwaters some might mistake them to be.
So the next time someone mentions Death Valley, remember there is more to do in the region beyond lacing up a pair of hiking boots and slinging a CamelBak over your shoulders. If you happen to pass this way on your drive, lighten up on that gas pedal, flip on the turn indicator and make a stop at one of these unique places.
Jessie Schiewe is a freelance journalist.
Rest and recharge at the rustic Shoshone Inn
The Shoshone Inn is just a short stroll from the Crowbar Café and Saloon, the Shoshone Museum, the Charles Brown General Store and a pond renowned for its bird-watching opportunities. Don’t miss the desert tortoise sanctuary behind the inn, where two tortoises of unknown age live in the foundations of a crumbled old home.
Enjoy plant-based dishes and natural foods at Kit Fox Cafe
It’s best known for its wood-fired pizzas crafted with organic dough and tomato sauce made on-site from scratch. But there are a plethora of more natural items — such as avocado toast, fresh-squeezed, cold-pressed orange juice and house-brewed kombucha — that differentiate the Kit Fox Cafe’s menu from other nearby eateries. In addition to its artisanal pizzas, breakfast items and focaccia bread sandwiches, there is an entire plant-based menu offering vegan BLT and vegan club sandwiches, plant-based egg and cheese biscuits and plant-based buffalo or BBQ wings. Soup and salad are also served, along with a daily rotating menu of fresh, homemade baked goods. Those seeking a caffeine pick-me-up can also get their fix here or satisfy their sweet tooth with sugary drinks like the lavender vanilla lemonade.
Enjoy your meal inside the cafe where a stained-glass window depicting cactus and mountain ranges creates a cheery glow, and the walls are lined with nature photos of the surrounding area. There is also ample outdoor seating underneath the covered porch or in the back patio.
Take a tour of the whimsical Amargosa Opera House
In the 1920s, the Pacific Coast Borax Company built the property to serve as accommodations for potential investors, but the opera house didn’t get its whimsical makeover until the middle of the century when Marta Becket took over ownership of the establishment. A former Rockette and ballerina, Becket spent six years painting the walls of the theater to resemble a two-tier balcony crowded with historic figures, mainly from the 16th century in keeping with the building’s Spanish Colonial Revival architecture. The king and queen of Spain hold court in the center while ladies in crinolines cool themselves with folding fans and ancient Romans fixate on a scroll of paper. A cluster of nuns gossip in one corner, Native American performers strike poses in the bottom alcoves and plump cherubs unfurl pink ribbons across the ceiling. The effect is akin to being transported back in time to a packed show at Shakespeare’s famed Globe Theatre.
Tours of the opera house occur twice a day, seven days a week, at 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. Tickets are $15, and reservations are not required; simply show up, but make sure to be there on time. Events still take place at the opera house, with the most notable being the anniversary show that happens every year on or around Feb. 10, the date of Becket’s first performance in the theater in 1968.
Cool off with flavorful craft beers at Death Valley Brewing
The beers are made in-house by the establishment’s master brewer, Dan Leseberg, and include classics such as IPAs, red ales and hard ciders as well as more inventive concoctions like plum sours, peach habanero wheat ales and date braggots. A popular new addition is the “Me So Corny,” an idea that came to Leseberg in a dream about taking acid with his cat, who suggested putting popcorn in a brew. In order to make the drink a reality, Leseberg drove to the nearby city of Pahrump, Nev., where he purchased 45 pounds of kernels from every available store.
Along with enjoying a sample flight or taking home a growler, you can pass the time playing billiards, board games and darts or enjoying the mini outdoor disc golf course. Humorous flair can be found throughout the space, from the drunk skeleton sleeping with a sombrero over his head behind one of the booths to an actual coffin resting in front of the outdoor sign. On weekends, the bar might host a live-music event, and with the Kit Fox Cafe next door, customers can feast on wood-fired pizzas and focaccia sandwiches while working on their buzz.
Dine like a local at the Crowbar Café and Saloon
The traditional Western-style restaurant serves classic American and Mexican fare in notoriously large portions, along with beer poured into large handled mugs. Most customers will immediately name the homemade tortilla chips, cactus salsa and french fries as the restaurant’s knockout items, but many also laud the prime rib plate, the spicy “rattlesnake chili” and the grilled “Ortega burger.” There are also some dishes you might not expect to find in the high desert, such as a blackened salmon plate and broiled rainbow trout with lemon butter.
The first building in this two-room restaurant was constructed in the late 1930s and features a long diner counter and walls painted with rolling hills in soothing earth tones. The other room — the saloon — was added in the 1950s and has a rustic ambience accentuated by brass Victorian light fixtures, red tablecloth-covered tables and a full bar.
Dine inside or al fresco on the patio where there is a stage and dance floor. The restaurant is open daily from 8 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. Afterward, take a stroll through the wetlands behind the restaurant. The trailhead is marked with blue poles in the back patio.
Enjoy date shakes and a desert oasis at China Ranch Date Farm and Bakery
To reach the date farm, open daily from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., drive down rocky dirt roads that weave through abandoned gypsum mines, their entrances now boarded off with chain-link fences. Cell reception will also fail at some point along the commute — but the rough-and-tumble journey is worth it for the lush green scenery at the end. And don’t worry: Employees are more than willing to give you directions and a free hand-drawn map to help you find your way out of there.
Ogle mammoth bones and miniatures at the Shoshone Museum & Visitor Center
Learn about the early pioneer women of Death Valley and admire the handiwork of historicaland locally made Native American baskets. Though the collection is eclectic, everything in this museum is tied to the region, including the remnants of a spy plane that crashed in Shoshone in 1969, original field notes from the Department of Agriculture’s Death Valley catalogs in the 1890s and fossilized tracks made by extinct horses and camels in the area roughly 12 million years ago.
The adjoining gift shop is stocked with hand-drawn cards of the local scenery, wildlife embroidered “dad” hats, wooly mammoth stuffed animals and Death Valley map bandanas, among other region-specific goodies and books. Open daily from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., the museum serves as an unofficial gathering space for locals and law enforcement, so you might overhear some town gossip while perusing the exhibits.
Visit historic rock homes at Dublin Gulch Caves
It is not known exactly when the caves were first created, but “1870” is carved prominently near the entrance of one of the homes. However, some townspeople believe the caves were constructed more recently when a silver boom at the nearby Noonday Mines brought an influx of workers to the area in the 1920s. Some of the more complex residences have multiple rooms, split levels, chiseled wall nooks, fireplaces and even garages, although touring most of the interiors is prevented by padlocked front doors.
The caves were inhabited until the 1970s, and remnants from the residents can still be observed today in a heap of refuse containing rusted food cans, pull-tab beer cans and the vertebrae of antique spring mattresses.
Look for birds and endemic wildlife at the Pupfish Habitat and Birding Trails
The restoration efforts began in 2012 with the main goal of increasing population numbers of the endangered Shoshone pupfish, a small fish from the killifish group that was thought to be extinct until a few were found in a nearby ditch in 1986. Depending on the time of year, you can spot male pupfish in the ponds, however the females tend to camouflage and burrow into the ground.
A wooden boardwalk meanders through thickets of wetland grasses that provide homes for the endangered Amargosa vole, and strategically placed wooden benches and a gazebo-covered picnic table make for lovely perches from which to enjoy the sounds of the burbling waters and vocal avian residents.
The habitat is a popular spot for birders who come to catch glimpses of the more than 225 riparian, waterfowl and neotropical migrant bird species that visit each year. Crissal thrasher and loggerhead shrike live in the area year-round, and the yellow-breasted chat and blue grosbeak, who come there to breed, can be spotted in the spring and summer.
This quiet, peaceful spot might seem empty on first exposure, but sit still long enough and you’ll notice it’s actually teeming with life.
Spend the night in a large-scale art installation at Villa Anita
Guests have access to the curated outdoor spaces and gardens throughout the property and may tour any current or past art installations. For an extra $150, one can sign up for a private art class, such as a two-hour wheel-throwing and hand-building ceramics class or a jewelry workshop on the art of making wire-wrapped stone necklaces. Those who can’t spend the night but still want to see this livable art project can take a one-hour tour of the property for $55.
Get a day pass for the mineral pools at Tecopa Hot Springs Resort
Tecopa has no fewer than four hot spring businesses, each catering to a different clientele. Tecopa Hot Springs Resorts is best known as the quiet, family-oriented hot springs option, offering $25 day passes for use of itshillside bathhouse that contains two indoor soaking tubs. The salt- and magnesium-rich waters are piped in from a nearby artisanal well at a temperature of 104 degrees, per Inyo County Health Department requirements. Nude bathing is preferred, however swimsuits are allowed, and it is mandatory that all bathers shower before entering the pools.
Tecopa Hot Springs Resorts also offers lodging in the form of a 12-room motel and campground with cabins and accommodations for tents, cars and RVs. Campground guests get full access at no additional fee to the hillside bathhouse, and motel guests have access to three indoor soaking tubs in the building’s central hall. The property sits on 160 acres of open land and since 2014 has played host to the Tecopa Takeover Music Festival, an annual three-day jam-band music festival in November.
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