3 Best Sights in Death Valley National Park, California

Ten well-preserved stone kilns, each 25 feet high and 30 feet wide, stand as if on parade. The kilns, built by laborers for the Modock Consolidated Mining Company in 1877, were used to burn wood from pinyon pines to turn it into charcoal. The charcoal was then transported to the Argus Range west of Panamint Valley—and later to the towns of Darwin and Lookout—where it was used to extract lead and silver from the ore mined there. Nearby is the trailhead for the difficult, 8.4-mile hike to Wildrose Peak.

Death Valley's mule teams hauled borax from here to the railroad town of Mojave, 165 miles away. They plied the route until 1889, when the railroad finally arrived in Zabriskie. Constructed in 1883, one of the oldest buildings in Death Valley houses the Borax Museum, 2 miles south of the borax works at the Ranch at the Oasis at Death Valley (between the restaurants and the post office). Originally a miners' bunkhouse, the building once stood in Twenty Mule Team Canyon. Now it displays mining machinery and historical exhibits. The adjacent structure is the original mule-team barn.

Accessed via a dirt road, this fascinating relic of Death Valley's gold-mining past, built in 1907, reopened in November 2017 after nine years of repair work. Its most unique feature is the mile-long tramway, with the original cables still attached, that descends 1,000 vertical feet and once carried gold ore. From here, a network of trails leads to other old mines. A 1,500 foot climb 1.4 miles to the uppermost tramway terminal is rewarded by expansive valley views.