The National Park Service reopened Lower Wildrose Road in Death Valley National Park on June 3, nearly three years after flash floods from the remnants of Hurricane Hilary destroyed it.
The road is drivable again, but not the way it was. It reopened unpaved, after years as a paved route, and the Park Service has restricted it to vehicles shorter than 25 feet. Drivers should expect soft shoulders, rough gravel, potholes, and stretches where the old asphalt still shows through the dirt.
Lower Wildrose Road, also called Trona-Wildrose Road, is the western approach to Death Valley's high country. It carries traffic to the Wildrose Charcoal Kilns, the Wildrose Peak trailhead, and the rough upper road that climbs toward Mahogany Flat and the trail up Telescope Peak, the park's 11,049-foot high point. For three years that cool, high-elevation corner of the park has been hard to reach from the west while temperatures on the valley floor below climbed through one desert summer after another.
The damage that closed it traces to a single weekend in August 2023, according to Park Service records and regional reporting at the time.
On August 20, 2023, the remnants of Hurricane Hilary dropped 2.2 inches of rain on Furnace Creek, the wettest day ever recorded there and more than the park averages in a full year, about 2.15 inches. The water moved fast across bare desert ground. Flash floods damaged or destroyed roughly 400 miles of road and forced an eight-week closure, the longest in the park's history. On Lower Wildrose Road, the flooding stripped away much of the asphalt and cut a drop nine feet deep across the roadbed.
The Park Service restored an initial 195 miles of road, then an additional 382 miles over the following months. Crews kept working through later storms. In December 2025 the agency reopened six more roads, among them North Highway and Artists Drive, after flash floods in August, September, and November of that year scoured shoulders and buried pavement under rock.
Before you go
Check the park's conditions page (nps.gov/deva) for the current status of Wildrose and the high-country roads above it before driving out. The campgrounds the corridor serves, Wildrose, Thorndike, and Mahogany Flat, are open, though Wildrose has no water. The stairs at the Wildrose Station picnic area remain unsafe from flood erosion and have not been repaired.
For now, reaching the high country means a slow drive on dirt, nothing longer than 25 feet, and a look at the conditions page before you turn off the highway.
How we reported this
This article draws on the following primary sources, accessed June 3 to June 10, 2026:
- National Park Service, "Lower Wildrose Road Reopens" — https://nps.gov/deva/learn/news/lower-wildrose-road-reopens.htm — the June 3, 2026 reopening release: date, the 25-foot vehicle limit, the nine-foot drop, the unpaved status, soft shoulders, the Wildrose Station stair hazard, and planned stabilization.
- National Park Service, "Hurricane Hilary in Death Valley National Park" — https://www.nps.gov/deva/learn/nature/hilary.htm — the park's account of the August 2023 storm, including the 2.2-inch record rainfall at Furnace Creek.
- National Park Service, Death Valley Alerts & Conditions — https://www.nps.gov/deva/planyourvisit/conditions.htm — live closure status for Lower Wildrose, Titus Canyon, and Scottys Castle, plus high-country campground status (accessed June 10, 2026).
- National Park Service, "Additional 382 miles of roads reopened in Death Valley" — https://www.nps.gov/deva/learn/news/additional-382-miles-of-roads-reopened-in-death-valley.htm — the staged road recovery after Hilary.
- National Park Service, December 2025 roads release — https://www.nps.gov/deva/learn/news/pr-roads-12-22-2025.htm — the six roads reopened after the 2025 storm season.