The Amargosa Desert is an arid desert habitat and an ecotone between the northern Great Basin and southern Mojave Desert. Ancient campsites have been found that date back at least 10,000 years, to the end of the last ice age. Archaeological remains in the valley imply more extensive use by aboriginal peoples than had been previously estimated. During the nineteenth century, two groups of Native Americans occupied the Amargosa Valley: the Southern Paiute and the Western Shoshone. Both were extremely adept at extracting a living from their marginal environment, subsisting on wild plant foods and supplemented by wild game.

Sepiolite clay has been mined from the Amargosa Valley since 1972. Sepiolite is renowned industrially for its water-holding and absorptive capacities. It is used in absorbents, polyesters, asphalt coatings, paints, anticaking agents, plastisols, rubber, detergents, cosmetics, and grease thickeners. [Lhoist]

Despite being located in the hottest and driest corner of the United States, Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge is home to the second greatest concentration of endemic species in North America. In just under 24,000 acres live 26 species found nowhere else on Earth. That’s because approximately 10,000 years ago, as the climate warmed, aquatic species survived by seeking refuge in receding and fragmenting wetlands. Isolated for millennia, the survivors evolved into new species in separated “islands of water” scattered across a sea of desert. Nearly all of Ash Meadows’ endemic species live in or around its 50 springs and seeps.

At first glance this site looks like a top secret government facility with fences encircling the hole, antenna arrays, and multiple cameras. This area is actually run by the NPS, and it’s all to protect the one of a kind Devil’s Hole Pupfish. From the viewing area over the hole, it is very hard to see the actual fish; they are dark blue and only 2-3 inches long.

Devils Hole itself is a water-filled cavern cut into the side of a hill. The cavern is over 500 feet deep and the bottom has never been mapped. Devils Hole provides its resident pupfish with conditions of constant temperature (92°F) and salinity.

An old stone cabin built by famed gunslinger Jack Longstreet. Built into a mound above an underground spring the cabin is cooler than outside temps and was used for food storage by Longstreet. The spring pool near this cabin is sometimes called the boiling spring because fine white sand bellows up from the depths gives it a ‘boiling’ appearance.

Rogers Spring is a 30-foot-diameter spring pool that is surrounded by mesquite, salt cedar, and ash trees. The spring is a good place to see desert species when they come for water. Look for finches, sparrows, warblers, quail, and Mourning Doves. Not many people come out to the spring, and this is where we saw the pupfish.

A beautiful Caribbean-blue spring pool which is feed by Crystal Spring. This spring produces 2,800 gallons of water a minute.

Point of Rocks boardwalk winds through groves of mesquite trees to Kings Pool and where the Amargosa pupfish live in the crystal blue waters. This species of fish has survived in these waters since mammoths roamed the area and this is the only place in the world they exist. Along the boardwalk, if you look closely, you will see Native American Paiute grinding holes used in the cracking of nuts and milling of flour.