Zabriskie Point

Located at the edge of the Funeral Mountains just east of Furnace Creek on Highway 190, Zabriskie Point is one of the viewpoints most preferred by photographers in Death Valley National Park. It is an elevated overlook that provides stunningly colorful panoramas of wildly eroded badlands, weathered canyons, undulating landscapes, gullies and mud hills, with ground so wrinkled that it resembles the skin of a Shar Pei dog. Also within view are the distant salt plains of the flat valley floor far below.

Those who take a little time to explore in the vicinity will come across plenty of quartzite. It was formed here during the Cambrian Period, about 480 to 540 million years ago. The predominant colors are white, pink, and red. There are also variegated dunes nearby, and a two-mile footpath will take hikers past hilly mounds and through a ravine to Gower Gulch or Golden Canyon.

Death Valley's scenery is best viewed from the Zabriskie Point overlook at sunrise or sunset. As a point of interest, Zabriskie Point is also the name of a curious film of life in the 1960s directed by Michelangelo Antonioni. It was shot here in 1970 from a venue just uphill from where the car park is now located.