Old Stovepipe Wells

This waterhole sits where two Timbisha Shoshone trails crossed, and it was known long before anyone thought to call finding it a discovery. It is the only dependable water in the dune country, which made it the one certain stop on the cross-valley road during the Rhyolite and Skidoo boom. Drifting sand kept burying the spot, so a length of stovepipe was driven in to mark it — the name attached itself to the pipe rather than the water, and the highway settlement borrowed it later.

What the plaque says

This waterhole, only one in the sand dune area of Death Valley, was at the junction of two Indian trails. During the bonanza days of Rhyolite and Skidoo it was the only known water source on the cross-valley road. When sand obscured the spot, a length of stovepipe was inserted as a marker, hence its unique name.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes — 4.2 mi
  Fourteen square miles of dunes near Stovepipe Wells, and the easiest sand in the park to reach.
• Furnace Creek — 20 mi
  The valley hub, the hottest air temperature ever officially recorded, and the Timbisha village that was here first.
• Rhyolite — 22 mi
  The most complete ghost town in Nevada — a stone city with an opera house and a marble-stepped bank that rose and died inside a decade, now the most photographed ruin in the West.
• Zabriskie Point — 22 mi
  Gullied gold badlands eroded out of an ancient lakebed, best at first light.

More markers nearby

• Burned Wagons Point — 5.2 mi
• Eichbaum Toll Road — 5.3 mi
• Old Harmony Borax Works — 17 mi
• Death Valley Gateway — 19 mi