The road to Titus Canyon is a 26-ish miles one way unpaved road, except on the last 3 miles or so toward the west end. You start on the Nevada side outside of Death Valley on highway 374.

Cool stuff to see here is of course Titus Canyon, and a ghost town named Leadfield.

The road is listed as 'high clearance' or '4x4' recommended by park service most of the time, although from the look of it, if your car can survive the 3 miles two-way journey from the Death Valley side, you can probably make the whole trip without much trouble.

There are a couple of rough spots, but they arent terrible, in fact the day before I took this route (03-20-2002), I've seen two sedans driving through the road while I hike up Titus Canyon from the Death Valley side. Per park service, the road condition of that day was 'high clearance' recommended. So normal car is defintely do-able, but you should always check road condition first just to make sure it's safe to travel.


Route Overview:click on the image to get a higher resolution of the map. (1804x510)

Trip notes:

The road started at a left turn on highway 374 after you leave Death Valley bondary, the turn off is clearly marked (Titus Canyon). After a mile or so you will enter Death Valley boundary again, there's a sign and a gate marked the boundary. You get to do a couple miles of gravel on flat ground before you enter the valley area.

From this point, until Red Pass, most of it is uphill. It was not too steep however, and there are very few dips and holes on the road, I imagine it changes if it rains.

Red Pass is ..... uhh red. I guess that's how it got the name. You can see the whole mountain is red, the road is red, the dirt is red. I encountered a few rough spot here, but nothing serious, just a few big holes on the road that I kept wondering how the sedans got thru. I'm guessing you can probably clear it if you dont care much about your car's suspension system.
After driving over Red Pass, you will get to a series of downhills that take you into a small valley, that's where Leadfield is located.

Leadfield is a really nice place to take a break, and just walk around. It's VERY quiet (it's a ghost town, what do you expect), and if you did not see anyone on your way up to this point, chances are you arent going to see another human being here at least for a couple of hours.
This is a very interesting town, it kinda reminded me of the dot-coms of the 20th century.

It looks like this car made it thru back in 1926, but its owner fail to drive it out when the town died.

Most of the buildings that still exist are intact, and it feels weird walking into a 70-80 years old town. It's pretty amazing that they were able to haul all those building material all the way to here to make this town happen.

Somewhere out in the middle of nowhere, there's a half finished concrete foundation. When I first saw it, I was surprised, as I did not know they had concrete stuff back in 1920s, but it turns out concrete was invented way before that (Egyptian uses it too). Still tho, I wonder what they were trying to build, before they abandon the town.

After leaving Leadfield, you will enventually get into a canyon, this starts Titus Canyon. WATCH OUT for hikers. Titus Canyon is hikable from the Death Valley side and it's only a 6-7 miles hike up to the Titus Canyon east entrance, people do hike this canyon, and it would be rude to speed pass them and get the road all dusty. Not to mention the scenary is great here, you should take your time to enjoy it.

Portion of the road inside the canyon is VERY narrow, a lot of time it's only about 10 feet wide. another reason to slow down, you dont want the canyon wall to scrape your car.
After exiting the canyon, you will come to a parking lot, this is where the two-way road ends, and where hikers park their cars. Another 3 miles takes you to the main paved park road. As you come down, you get to see the whole death valley as well.
The canyon is prettier to hike than drive.


Elevation Profile:

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