The Mojave Road. Maps, the guidebook and the rules.

The Mojave Road is an east-west dirt route between the Colorado River and the Mojave River. It is about eight feet wide and runs through the heart of the eastern Mojave.

How long is the Mojave Road?

It depends who is counting. The Mojave Desert Heritage and Cultural Association puts the marked route at 130 miles, the guidebook says 140, and the Mojave preserve calls it roughly 150. Driving all of it usually takes three days.

Mojave Road trailheads and route

• East end: the Colorado River.
• Into the preserve: near Piute Spring on the east side.
• Out of the preserve: across Soda Dry Lake near Zzyzx on the west side.
• West end: through the Rasor riding area and Afton Canyon to Camp Cady.

There is no registration fee. Undeveloped campsites along the way are first come, first served. The road is a branch of the Old Spanish National Historic Trail and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The guidebook carries the maps, redrawn for the fourth edition, with GPS coordinates. Phone apps are no help here: the Mojave preserve says they show open roads as closed and route drivers onto roads wrong for their vehicle.

Mojave Road guide PDF and GPS tracks

The guidebook itself is a printed, spiral-bound book. What the Mojave Desert Heritage and Cultural Association posts free are PDF maps and KML tracks for the three bypasses: the Afton Canyon alternate, the Piute Hill bypass and the Soda Lake bypass. The KML files load in Google Earth and most GPS units. The tracks were last updated December 20, 2023.

Mojave off-road trail map, BLM side

The Bureau of Land Management publishes maps for the Afton Canyon and Rasor areas at the west end, where vehicles stay on designated routes.

The preserve says Dennis Casebier’s Mojave Road Guide is still the best resource for planning a trip. It gives mile-by-mile directions along with the history and the natural history.

• Title: Mojave Road Guide: An Adventure Through Time, by Dennis G. Casebier, maps by Chris S. Ervin.
• Edition: fourth edition, 2010. 200 pages, spiral-bound, with GPS coordinates.
• Price: $19.95 from the Mojave Desert Heritage and Cultural Association, or $32.95 bundled with the 1987 Background Information booklet.

The association runs its archive and bookstore at Goffs, California. Phone 760-733-4482.

In its September 22, 2026 road update, the Mojave preserve listed the Mojave Road as 4WD only: four-wheel drive with heavy-duty tires, a low-range transfer case and high clearance. Not suitable for all-wheel-drive SUVs.

• Seasonal hazards: water on Soda Lake, washouts from summer monsoon floods, and winter snow or ice can make the road impassable.
• Closures: the preserve closes parts of the road from time to time, most often after flood damage. The Piute Range crossing and Soda Lake are the two spots inside the preserve that get closed.
• Afton Canyon: the water crossings can run deep, so the association publishes an alternate route.
• Soda Lake: the land on both sides of the road is wilderness, closed to vehicles. Off the road the lakebed turns to sticky slurry, and towing can cost more than $1,000.
• Groups: more than 7 vehicles or 25 people need a special use permit.
• Supplies: no gas, food or reliable cell service in the preserve. Water is at Kelso Depot and Hole-in-the-Wall.

The Mojave Road mailbox

“Mail Box” is one of the named places on the road; the Mojave Desert Heritage and Cultural Association lists it in its East Mojave place names. The guidebook’s mile-by-mile log is the way to find it.

The forts

Military posts went up along the road to guard the water sources, and in the 1860s to protect the mail wagons. In the preserve today, the road to Fort Piute is very rocky, with sharp rocks that eat street tires, and camping is not allowed within half a mile of the fort.

Soda Dry Lake

The road crosses the dry lake on the west side of the preserve. The Mojave River ends here, mostly underground, so the lakebed is never truly dry.

Afton Canyon

Known locally as the Grand Canyon of the East Mojave. The Mojave River runs above ground here all year, one of only three places it does. The campground has 22 sites at $6 a night.

Inside Mojave National Preserve, every vehicle must be street-legal under California DMV rules: current registration and tags, lights and turn signals, and insurance. California green and red stickers are not recognized.

• Allowed: any vehicle that could be street-legal in California. Jeeps and trucks licensed in any state are fine. A plated dual sport with lights, turn signals and insurance qualifies.
• Not allowed: ATVs, UTVs, RZRs, side-by-sides, sand rails and dune buggies. They cannot ride the preserve segment of the Mojave Road.
• Stay on the road: no cross-country travel, no new routes and no driving in washes. Designated wilderness is closed to motor vehicles and bicycles.

Outside the preserve, the Bureau of Land Management’s Rasor riding area is open to off-road motorcycles and ATVs. Visitors from other states whose bikes are not registered at home need a California non-resident green sticker there.

For riding ideas closer to home, see our Death Valley motorcycle routes and dirt bike riding around Las Vegas.

Mojave Road from Las Vegas, NV

The easy end to reach is the west end at Afton Canyon. Take I-15 to the Afton exit, 35 miles east of Barstow, and drive three miles south on graded dirt to the campground. The access road is fine for cars as far as the campground; past that you need a high-clearance 4x4.

• Las Vegas to Afton Canyon: about 120 miles, two hours and 40 minutes.
• Pahrump to Afton Canyon: about 115 miles, three hours.
• Las Vegas to Kelso Depot, mid-preserve: about 90 miles, under two hours.

Drive times are from a routing service, rounded.

Fuel and food

There are no gas stations in the preserve. The nearest are in Baker, at Cima Road and I-15, Primm, Searchlight, Fenner, Amboy and Ludlow. At the west end, food and fuel are in Baker and Barstow.

Places to stay along the way

There is no lodging inside the preserve. The preserve lists lodging in Ludlow and Needles, California, and in Primm and Searchlight, Nevada. For camping at the ends of the road, Afton Canyon Campground sits at the west end, and the Mojave preserve’s developed campgrounds are on our Mojave preserve camping section.

The route began as a Mojave trade path from the villages on the Colorado River to the coast. The Mojave carried seeds, corn, beans and pottery and came back with shells, beads and feathers.

Father Francisco Garcés was guided across in 1776. In 1857 Edward F. Beale was sent to lay out a wagon road west. After Mojave warriors turned back the first emigrants on his route, Fort Mojave was established, and the supply trains from Los Angeles turned the trail into the Mojave Road.

Dennis Casebier, a Navy physicist and historian, met the road in 1962 and spent years finding it again. The Friends of the Mojave Road formed on May 10, 1981, marked the route with the Bureau of Land Management, and had the first guide at the printer by fall 1983.