Discover Darwin Falls in Death Valley National Park

Darwin Falls a Hidden Treasure to Death Valley National Park

Death Valley is well known for its record heat and alien like surfaces canyons and epic wide open vista views. Visitors flock to the park in the Fall, winter and spring to get extra camping season, to recreate in a park that has a very vast open territory to play outdoors. But few visitors seem to know about the oasis gem located on the Western edge of the park just west of Panamint Springs called Darwin Falls.

To be honest we didn’t know of Darwin falls either on our planned visit until a cashier in Beatty told us that it was the can’t miss feature of the park. That seemed a bit odd as Death Valley has many well know features and all the Star Wars lure one could desire, so we added to our list as a last stop if we have time.

What a surprise Darwin falls was on our trip. The Road to darwin falls is just West of Panamint Springs and is approx a 1 mile trek on a well maintained dirt road to the parking area. this is the same 4×4 road into the settlement of Darwin. The Hike is approx 1 mile from the parking area and is completely flat for the first 3/4 mile and then requires a little rock hopping and crawling the last 1/4 where you start to see the first sign of green vegetation.

The waterfall itself is small and the viewing area is even smaller so during Covid crowds are nearly impossible to miss if there are others on the trail.

There is kind of an off trail route that is available to go to an upper falls section but this does take a little willingness to rock crawl up the side of the mountain.

Over all this sia great little excursion and is such a drastic change from the rest of Death Valley that we recommend it as a site to be seen on your next visit.