This corner of Death Valley glows red and green at sunset, and science explains why

Death Valley’s most colorful corner

Most of Death Valley is brown. That’s the truth of it: tan flats, gray rock, pale sky.

So when you round a bend on Artists Drive and the hillside erupts into streaks of red, soft green, and deep purple, it stops you cold. The colors look like someone took a brush to the rock face.

The science behind them is as wild as the sight, and the nine-mile road that carries you past them holds more than just the view everyone photographs.

A hillside that looks like spilled paint

The west-facing slope of the Black Mountains rises right off the valley floor, and for one long stretch it runs through every color you wouldn’t expect to find in a desert. Reds and pinks streak across the rock face.

Soft greens pool in the hollows. Lavender and purple push through the shadowed creases.

The surrounding hills are plain brown and tan, which makes the contrast land like a punch. The place earned its name from the obvious comparison, and it holds up.

Why the rock turned all those colors

Iron in the rock drove most of it. Different forms of iron produce the reds, pinks, and yellows, much the way rust colors metal left out in the rain.

Manganese pushed through in other spots and left the lavender and purple shades behind. The green patches come from a mineral called chlorite mixed into weathered volcanic ash.

The rock here records some of Death Valley’s most violent volcanic episodes, and those eruptions left behind the raw minerals that oxidized over time into everything you see now.

The road itself is half the reason to go

Artists Drive runs nine miles as a one-way paved loop off Badwater Road. It branches north of Devil’s Golf Course and feeds back out onto the same road farther south.

The route twists and dips through canyon corridors, sometimes pressing the walls in close on both sides before dropping into the belly of a dry wash and climbing back out.

Many people who’ve driven every road in the park call it the best drive they took. The whole loop runs 30 to 45 minutes without stops, longer if you pull over.

What you need to know before you drive it

Traffic flows one direction only, so there’s no turning around if you change your mind. Blind corners come up fast, which means you can’t stop just anywhere for a photo.

Wait for the pullouts. Vehicles longer than 25 feet aren’t allowed on the road, so if you’re towing something, check your length before you commit.

The dips and rises get tight in the deepest section of the drive, and the sharp bends narrow the road down to where you’ll want to go slow.

Finding the viewpoint at the end of the drive

The main parking area sits about five miles in, roughly halfway through the loop. Pull in there, step out, and the painted hillside stands right in front of you.

A short walk gets you to the base of the rock. The most vivid section of color sits just past a first turnout that looks similar but isn’t quite it, so keep going to the actual lot.

From the parking area you can scan the full sweep of the slope, then walk closer to see the individual streaks and patches where the colors bleed into each other.

The hours that make the colors ignite

Come at midday and the colors wash out. The sun hits straight down, flattening everything into a pale version of itself.

Come at sunrise or late afternoon and the whole hillside shifts.

Low-angle light deepens the reds into something close to rust and pulls the purples out of the shadows. The greens go vivid.

Shadows from the ridgelines cut across the slope and add a third dimension that flat noon light never gives you.

Late afternoon draws the biggest crowds for this reason, but sunrise gives you the same light with almost nobody else around.

Getting close to the red, green and purple rock

No marked trails cut through the painted hills, but the land is open and you can walk. The reds near the base come from a mineral called hematite, the same iron compound that gives blood its color.

The green patches are chlorite, and when clouds move across the sun, the shades shift enough that a slope you photographed 10 minutes ago looks different now.

The rock crumbles easily, so the park asks that you don’t climb the hills. Stick to the established paths at the base.

Half an hour to an hour is enough time to walk and really look.

The canyon mouths hiding along the road

The viewpoint gets the attention, but the drive hides other things.

Yellow warning signs mark the dips where the road drops into dry washes, and those washes often open into canyon mouths worth exploring on foot.

Short walks lead into narrow passages where the walls press in and rise overhead.

Some of those passages open into wider rooms after a rocky start, the kind of quiet spots where you’ll have the canyon to yourself. Most visitors stay in the car between the entry point and the main pullout.

The canyons along the way see far fewer people.

What you can see beyond the colored hills

The road gives you more than just the painted slope.

Looking west from some of the pullouts, the valley floor spreads out below, flat and pale, with white salt flats catching the light far in the distance. The Black Mountains rise to the east.

From a few of the canyon mouths, the Panamint Range frames the view out the far end, the same high ridge that walls off the valley’s western edge.

Nearly every turn in the road opens onto a different angle, and none of them look like the one before.

A roller coaster carved into the rock

Deep in the loop, the road plunges into a system of dry washes and the whole experience changes gear. The pavement narrows.

Colorful walls press in close on both sides. The road bounces through a series of dips and climbs, the kind of ride that makes passengers grab the handle above the door.

Then the canyon releases you and you spill back out onto Badwater Road, the valley floor spreading wide ahead. The transition is abrupt enough that it takes a beat to remember you’re back in the open.

The Star Wars connection most visitors miss

Two scenes from the 1977 film Star Wars were shot near the painted hills. The Jawa Sandcrawler sequence was filmed just south of the turn to the main parking lot.

A scene of R2-D2 rolling across the desert was shot in front of the colored rock face itself. The filming happened decades before movie shoots required permits inside the park.

The National Park Service now runs a self-guided audio tour of the film sites, so if you know where to look, the valley floor looks a little different on the way back out.

Drive Artists Drive in Death Valley National Park, California

Artists Drive sits off Badwater Road in Death Valley National Park, about eight miles south of the Furnace Creek Visitor Center. The turn is well marked.

The park charges $35 per vehicle for a seven-day pass, and no additional fee gets you onto the drive itself.

The road stays open year-round and has no set closing time, though the park strongly recommends avoiding the valley floor between June and September when temperatures regularly top 120 degrees.

Check the official website for current road conditions before you go.

This article was created with AI assistance and human editing.

Read more from this brand:

• The real Death Valley starts where the pavement ends and the cell signal dies
• Two giant concrete dinosaurs are rising out of the California desert off I-10 and the story gets weirder
• America’s driest, lowest, hottest place gets over a million visitors and earns every one