Every Trail Tells a Story
Eureka Dunes
Climb California’s highest dunes, rising nearly 700 feet.
Hear (maybe) the mysterious “booming sand.”
Experience silence and solitude in a surreal desert setting.
Between the Owens Valley and Death Valley, isolated and often overlooked Eureka Valley holds many surprises, chief among them the Eureka Dunes. The dunes, formerly known as the Eureka Dunes National Natural Landmark and administered by the BLM, were added to the expanded Death Valley National Park in 1994.
The dunes rise from the floor of an ancient lakebed. If you look carefully, you can trace the ghost shoreline etched faintly into the surrounding hills. Now dry as a bone, the former lakebed occasionally captures a little water after a storm. Photographers descend eagerly, crouching low to frame reflections of the Saline Range or Last Chance Mountains in pools that may vanish before their lenses fog.
The Last Chance Mountains live up to their name for rainfall – catching just enough of the sparse storms to keep the dunes from being utterly lifeless. Their runoff seeps into the sand and sustains more than 50 species of plants. Three grow nowhere else on Earth: Eureka dunes milkvetch, Eureka dune grass, and the large, ghostly white blossoms of the Eureka Dunes evening primrose. In a desert defined by scarcity, this counts as botanical extravagance.
Like their cousins at Kelso, the Eureka Dunes are known for their peculiar “booming.” Walk just right and the wind-polished grains slide together to create a deep, humming sound – a cross between a bass cello and an approaching B-52. (One suspects the sound startled more than a few prospectors in their day.) The booming here is softer than Kelso’s, but the real auditory experience isn’t the sand – it’s the silence. Stand still, the wind dies, and you realize just how far you are from the nearest freeway, town, or cell tower.
The dunes themselves are massive: 3.5 miles long, half a mile wide, and nearly 700 feet high – California’s tallest dunes. Hiking them isn’t so much about a destination as it is about surrendering to the climb, slipping back a half-step for every step forward, lungs full of dry desert air. From the crest, the view is astonishing: Eureka Valley stretching endlessly below, ringed by mountains with names that sound more like warnings than invitations – Last Chance, Inyo, Saline.
And then there’s the irony: a place named for gold rush fever dreams is today most treasured for its silence, solitude, and survival of three humble desert plants. The miners moved on. The dunes remain.
From the entrance station opposite Grapevine Campground, continue north on Scotty’s Castle Road. The right fork leads to Scotty’s Castle, but you continue toward Ubehebe Crater, 2.8 miles, then turn right onto dirt Big Pines/Death Valley Road. Drive some 21 miles northwest to Crankshaft Junction. Bear left, continuing on Big Pines/Death Valley Road which heads southwest up and over the Last Chance Range. (A few miles of the road through Hanging Rock Canyon are paved, the rest dirt.) After 12.3 miles, turn left (south) onto South Eureka Road and travel 10.7 miles to the north end of the dunes and a road fork.
An ungraded road goes east to the north side (near interpretive signs) and primitive campsites. You can safely drive straight ahead to the northwest corner of the dunes. Respect the wilderness boundary and avoid getting stuck by staying on the established roads.
The trail-less walking is strictly free-form up – and across – the dunes. If you get to the top of the island of sand, you’ll get a unique vista of Eureka Valley and the many mountains that surround it: the Last Chance Range to the northeast, the Saline Range to the west, the Inyo Mountains to the southwest.