Up US-95 in a Passenger Car: Devils Hole, Bonnie Claire, and Rhyolite After Dark

This was an out-and-back day on US-95 north of Las Vegas, through Clark County into Nye County, with a car that has no business on a real 4x4 road. The plan: Devils Hole, a marble quarry, an obsidian stop I already knew, a ghost town, and Rhyolite after dark. Most of the day’s decisions came down to the same question. Can the car make it, or am I about to get stuck?

Devils Hole: slow is fine, sand is the risk

The road to Devils Hole leaves the highway paved, turns to unpaved, then to dirt for the last stretch to the hole itself. It felt a little sketchy, but I made it in my car by driving slowly. The worst part was the washboarding. Besides that, no real complaints. My takeaway for next time: a passenger car can do it as long as you go slow and stay out of sand.

Devils Hole is a detached unit of Death Valley National Park, about 40 acres, surrounded by the Ash Meadows area that became a national wildlife refuge in 1984. You look down into it from behind a fence. The Park Service put that fence up after two divers drowned there. A steady stream of visitors came through while I was there. The water is a really intense blue with its own tiny ecosystem inside. I couldn’t pick out any fish without a longer lens, and that’s a normal experience for anyone viewing from the fence line. I did see a massive lizard on the rock above the hole and was half sure it would fall in.

The fish you’re squinting for is the Devils Hole pupfish. NPS says the population has been in severe decline since the mid-1990s, and the cause is still undetermined. That decline is why the site is managed so tightly. If you photograph it, caption it as a fenced overlook, because nobody gets down to the water.

The quarry I skipped

From Devils Hole I went back to US-95 by the same route instead of trying a shortcut I didn’t know. Next on the list was the old Carrara marble quarry. A truck was driving out of the road I’d planned to take in, and one look at the road told me I’d probably get stuck. So I skipped it. That call was made from the junction, without driving any of it, so the quarry is still on my list for a car with more clearance.

Bonnie Claire: the last houses, and a reason to leave

Instead I headed north toward Scotty’s Junction, where I’d found obsidian on an earlier trip, and drove on down to Bonnie Claire. A couple of structures are still standing, including the “house of quotes.” I always enjoy the piles of junk and rubble at ghost towns, and they usually turn up old can labels. Sometimes I photograph bottle bottoms too, to try to put a rough age on the site.

One house looked like a leftover miner’s house, probably pre-1950 and built entirely of wood. Inside I saw insulation that I thought might be asbestos, so I didn’t stay long. One floorboard also felt like it was ready to snap. Standard advice for older buildings backs that call up: suspect asbestos material is mainly a hazard when it gets disturbed, and walking on a failing floor in a collapsing building disturbs things you can’t control. I wonder how long that place will last.

Apache tears near Scotty’s Junction, and whose ground it is

On the way back toward the highway I stopped three times for obsidian, the small rounded nodules people call Apache tears. The yield got better the closer I got to the junction. At the stop farthest down the road the obsidian was gravel-sized. A little farther up, there was the same gravel plus some bigger stones. Nearer the junction I found a lot, mostly pebble-sized up to about the size of a half dollar.

I made a point of staying off tribal land, and before you repeat any of these stops you need to check the land status yourself. Scotty’s Junction includes a parcel of about 2,800 acres held in trust for the Timbisha Shoshone Tribe under the Timbisha Homeland Act of 2000. Federal surface-management maps show BLM land around the Bonnie Claire townsite and Bureau of Indian Affairs land nearer the junction, and they disagree with each other in between. Those maps aren’t a survey. Treat every stop as a separate question.

Where a stop really is BLM public land, 43 CFR 8365.1-5 allows collecting “reasonable amounts” of rocks, mineral specimens, and semiprecious gemstones for noncommercial use. No motorized or mechanical tools are allowed except metal detectors, and collecting to sell to dealers needs a permit. A day trip’s worth of pebble-sized Apache tears fits comfortably inside that.

A common “25 pounds a day, 250 a year” figure gets passed around as the federal limit. It comes from a BLM Arizona pamphlet and describes Arizona’s interpretation only. The federal rule sets no number, and Nevada hasn’t adopted Arizona’s. If quantity ever matters, ask the local BLM field office.

Mining claims are the bigger collecting issue on this corridor. Casual collecting doesn’t apply on an active claim, where you need the claimant’s permission. The hills north of Beatty are an active gold district, with AngloGold Ashanti’s Nevada projects nearby, and new claims tend to follow that kind of activity. BLM’s MLRS system shows claim status, and a surface-management map shows who runs the ground. Check both before you stop. BLM’s general rockhounding page is a good starting point.

Rhyolite: plan the sunset, don’t wait it out

By the time I finished collecting it was starting to get dark, so I headed for Rhyolite. I’d debated catching the sunset somewhere else and showing up after dark, and I should have. I ended up waiting at Rhyolite for about two hours for the sky to get dark enough for the photos I wanted. Next time I’ll shoot the sunset at another stop first and arrive at Rhyolite at dark.

Once it was dark I spent a good while taking photos. I wasn’t alone. There was another photographer, and what looked like a ghost tour.

The drive home

US-95 back to Las Vegas at night is very dark. My headlights aren’t the best, and with my brights on, every reflective sign was blinding me. Most oncoming drivers kept their brights on the whole time, which made it worse, and I had a little trouble keeping the car straight. I made it fine. Still, if you’re going to stay at Rhyolite for night photos, budget for a long, tiring drive back and give yourself a way to stay alert. Better yet, stay over in Beatty, a few miles down the road.

What I’d carry forward

• Devils Hole works in a passenger car. Drive slowly, put up with the washboard, and avoid sand.
• Look at the road before committing. The Carrara quarry road can wait for a higher-clearance vehicle.
• Bonnie Claire is for looking, not lingering. Watch for suspect insulation and failing floors.
• Check land status at every obsidian stop. Look for tribal trust land, BLM land, and active mining claims, every time.
• Time Rhyolite for dark. Watch the sunset somewhere else first.

Sources

• National Park Service — Devils Hole
• 43 CFR 8365.1-5, Property and resources — govinfo
• Public Law 106-423, Timbisha Shoshone Homeland Act — govinfo
• Bureau of Land Management — Rockhounding on public lands
• BLM Arizona — rockhounding pamphlet (source of the Arizona-only 25/250 lb figure)
• AngloGold Ashanti — Nevada projects