Things to do in Shoshone, CA. Cave homes, a mammoth and a warm pool.

Shoshone sits on Highway 127 in southeast Inyo County, California. It is a green spot on the Amargosa River, about 12 miles north of Tecopa, on the southeast side of Death Valley.

• From Pahrump: about 27 miles southwest on Nevada 372, about 40 minutes.
• From the Las Vegas Strip: about 85 miles, a little under two hours.
• To Death Valley Junction: about 27 miles north on Highway 127, about 40 minutes.
• To Furnace Creek: about 57 miles by way of Death Valley Junction, about an hour and a quarter.

Drive times are from a routing service, rounded.

The Shoshone caves are in Dublin Gulch, a short walk from the Crowbar Café, behind the old Shoshone cemetery. Miners carved homes into the hillside here, most likely in the late 1920s during the silver boom at the Noonday Mines. Some caves have split levels, stovepipes and even garages.

• The rock: the Shoshone Museum’s trail guide says the layer is volcanic ash from Yellowstone’s Lava Creek eruption, more than 600,000 years ago.
• The name: it may come from Dublin Gulch in Butte, Montana, where one resident, Joe Vollmer, had lived.
• The last tenants: some caves were still lived in into the 1970s.

From Dublin Gulch, the Shoshone Bluff Vista Trail follows white poles west on a 3-mile loop with big views and spring wildflowers, ending near the RV park.

The Shoshone Museum is at 118 Highway 127. It is open every day, year-round, 9 AM to 3 PM. Admission is free; donations are welcome. It doubles as a visitor center, with docents, maps and books.

The mammoth

In the fall of 1981, a Sonoma State University geology field trip found large bones in the Tecopa lake beds, just south of the Dublin Hills. The bones came home to Shoshone in 1997, and in 2005 they were dated to about 650,000 years old. The collection holds mammoth and mastodon bones, plus camel, horse and wolf tracks pressed in clay.

The building and the rest

The building went up in Greenwater in 1906 as a miners’ union hall, moved to Zabriskie, then to Shoshone in 1920, where it was the general store and gas station. Exhibits cover geology, borax and other mining, Native Americans, the Tonopah & Tidewater Railroad, the women of Death Valley and Prohibition in the desert.

The Crowbar is open every day, 8 AM to 9:30 PM. Breakfast runs until 11. Lunch is appetizers, salads, the house chili, sandwiches, burgers and Mexican dishes. Dinner adds steaks, Santa Fe chicken, trout and salmon. They say they are famous for their French fries. Full bar, dine in or take out. (760) 237-4134.

A little Crowbar history

The café went up in the late 1930s, and the saloon was added in the 1950s. In 1982, iron artist Jill “Lady Buffalo” Thacker welded the names of local mines onto the railroad-rail foot rest at the base of the bar. The patio and stage came in the 1990s. The wetlands trails start out back.

Where to eat in Pahrump and Beatty →

In 1921 the townspeople built the first pool at a natural hot spring, about 105°F, out of timbers and railroad ties, under the direction of Tom Weed, a Paiute elder, and pioneer Charles Brown. The cement pool you see now was dug deeper and built in 1944 and 1945.

It is for guests of the Shoshone Inn, the RV park and the campground. For a soak without a room, the day passes are 8 miles south in Tecopa Hot Springs. Every option is on our Tecopa hot springs page.

• Wetlands birding trails: the Red Loop, Blue Loop and Aqua Connector start behind the Crowbar. Follow the colored poles. The trail map is in front of the Crowbar. Spring and fall migrations are the busy seasons.
• Shoshone Spring Interpretive Trail: a short walk past the pupfish ponds and vole habitat that shelter the endangered Shoshone pupfish and Amargosa vole. It starts next to the warm spring pool.
• Bluff Vista Trail: the white-pole 3-mile loop from Dublin Gulch, with views over ancient Lake Tecopa.

Gas in Shoshone is at the Charles Brown General Store, Gift Shop & Gas Station: gasoline, diesel and propane, plus groceries, supplies and Native American jewelry. It is open daily, 7 AM to 8:30 PM.

The store opened in 1949 on the site of the “Snake Room,” where the old-timers played poker. Fill the tank in Pahrump on the way in anyway.

Shoshone Inn

Seventeen rooms with Wi-Fi and a suite. Five rooms have kitchenettes. The Whiffletree bungalow has a full kitchen and a living room; Death Valley geologist Levi Noble named it and used it as his base camp in the 1940s and ’50s. One bungalow is ADA compliant. Inn guests get the warm spring pool free. Check-in runs 2 PM to 10 PM, and there are no arrivals after 10. (760) 852-4335.

The first inn here, the “Old Timers Inn,” went up nearby in 1925. The 12-room motel wing was added in 1958.

Shoshone RV Park

A Good Sam park at the north end of the village, next to the pool and the trails. It has 25 full-hookup sites, plenty of campsites, a laundromat, restrooms, showers, a library, a community room, a fire pit, filtered spring water and free Wi-Fi. Vacation rental homes are booked through the RV park. (760) 852-4569.

Shoshone Campground

Tent sites near the pool, laundromat and showers. You need a tent set up to stay in the campground.

• To Tecopa Hot Springs: about 8 miles south on Highway 127 and Tecopa Hot Springs Road, about 15 minutes.
• To downtown Tecopa: about 12 miles, about 20 minutes. Death Valley Brewing and the Kit Fox Café are next door to each other there.

Drive times are from a routing service, rounded.

China Ranch, near Tecopa, is the trailhead for the Amargosa River Trail. The Old Spanish Trail, the old Tonopah & Tidewater railroad bed, waterfalls and a slot canyon are all within walking distance of the ranch, and the full trail runs 7 miles one way to downtown Tecopa.

The full rundown: things to do in Tecopa and Tecopa hot springs. Heading north instead? See the Amargosa Opera House, Ash Meadows and Amargosa Valley, or our Death Valley guide. Beatty is the gateway on the north side.

Ralph Jacobus “Dad” Fairbanks, a Death Valley prospector and freighter, founded Shoshone in 1910 in a mesquite grove called Metbury spring, at a stop on the Tonopah & Tidewater Railroad. That same year Charlie Brown, once sheriff of Greenwater, married Stella Fairbanks. In 1920 Charlie and Stella bought into the town with Dad. Dad moved on to Baker in 1927, Charlie became a California state senator, and in 1938 the town passed to his son, Charles. It is still in family hands.

The railroad’s rails were pulled up during World War II for the war effort. Look around and you may spot a house built from its ties. The adobe building in the village replaced the railroad’s restaurant, which burned in 1925; the T&T bridge gang built it from adobe brick made on site, and the Inyo County Sheriff works out of it now.

Long-term averages from the Shoshone weather station, 1972 to 2011:

• January: highs around 59°F, lows around 39°F.
• July: highs around 109°F, lows around 78°F.
• All year: about 4.8 inches of rain.

Fall through spring is the season for walking, riding and sitting on the Crowbar patio. Summer is for the pool.