An immense area of rock salt eroded by wind and rain into jagged spires. So incredibly serrated that "only the devil could play golf on such rough links"

General Information

Hours:

Open daily, accessible via Salt Pool Road off Badwater Road
Recommended to visit early morning or late afternoon to avoid extreme heat

Fees:

Private Vehicle (7-day pass): $30
Motorcycle (7-day pass): $25
Individual (on foot or bicycle, 7-day pass): $15
Annual Death Valley Pass: $55
America the Beautiful Pass: $80

Pet Policy:

Pets are allowed on roads and parking areas but not on trails or salt formations
Must be leashed (max 6 feet) and not left unattended in vehicles

Closest cities with hotels:

Furnace Creek (13 mi)
Beatty, NV (~50 min)
Pahrump, NV (~1.5 hrs)

Seasons:

Late Fall, Winter, and Early Spring: Ideal for mild temperatures
Summer: Not recommended due to extreme heat

Location:

Devil's Golf Course, Badwater Rd, Death Valley, CA 92328nps.gov/thingstodo/check-out-devils-golf-course

How to Get There

From Furnace Creek (13 mi): Drive south on Badwater Road for approximately 13 miles, then turn right onto Salt Pool Road and follow the short gravel path to the parking area.

Overview

The Devil's Golf Course is a large salt pan on the floor of Death Valley. It was named after a line in the 1934 National Park Service guide book to Death Valley National Monument, which stated that "Only the devil could play golf" on its surface, due to a rough texture from the large halite salt crystal formations.

Lake Manly once covered the valley to a depth of 30 feet (9.1 m). The salt in the Devil's Golf Course consists of the minerals that were dissolved in the lake's water and left behind in the Badwater Basin when the lake evaporated. With an elevation several feet above the valley floor at Badwater, the Devil's Golf Course remains dry, allowing weathering processes to sculpt the salt there into complicated formations.

Through exploratory holes drilled by the Pacific Coast Borax Company, prior to Death Valley becoming a national monument in 1934, it was discovered that the salt and gravel beds of the Devil's Golf Course extend to a depth of more than 1,000 feet (300 m). Later studies suggest that in places the depth ranges up to 9,000 feet (2,700 m).

Devil's Golf Course can be reached from Badwater Road via a 1.3-mile (2.1 km) gravel drive, closed in wet weather. It should not be confused with an actual golf course in Furnace Creek, also in Death Valley.

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article "Devil's Golf Course", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0

This article uses material from nps.gov "Death Valley National Park"