GOLDILOCKS SEASON
Death Valley’s wildflowers are “superblooming” and tourism is super booming.
The national park is in its Goldilocks season, the time between mid-February and early April when the temperatures are bearable and the desert landscape is flush with white, purple, and gold.
According to the National Park Service website, Death Valley is having their best bloom year since 2016. People are flocking from all over the country to see the wide array of desert golds, notch-leaf phacelias and gravel ghosts. The bulk of the park’s more than 1 million annual visitors come during this time.
On Sunday, I drove three hours south to see what all the rage was about. I wanted to see who was visiting the park and why.
“We came for the flowers,” said Vicki Harmon and Becky Murdoch, a pair of middle aged sisters I met at Stovepipe Wells, a visitor station in the park. “We went to Badwater, Furnace Wells, and all the way up to the crater at the north end. They were everywhere.”
Harmon and Murdoch told me it was their second and third time visiting the park, respectively.
Harmon lives in the Central Valley of California and Murdoch resides in Eastern Nevada.
They’d decided to meet in Death Valley for two days as their annual sister trip. They stayed in a motel in Beatty, Nevada, ten minutes away from the park’s entrance.
Some visitors weren’t as satisfied with the superbloom viewing.
“This is the second or third time I’ve been here in 30 years,” said Randy Jackson, another visitor from Reno, Nevada, who’d come with his wife Laura Jackson. “We came back to see the wildflowers that don’t exist this year.”
The Jacksons were staying in Lone Pine, due to the “sweet memories” the couple shared there, of hiking Mt. Whitney in their youth and visiting the film museum. Laura told The Sheet that if they were to visit again, they’d consider staying in the park instead. But the Jacksons didn’t know they would return.
“Never a negative experience,” Randy remarked. “It’s just far.”
Later on in the day, I stopped for a milkshake at Panamint Springs Resort, an independently owned gas station in the park. There, I met the manager Richie Mulligan, a second year Death Valley park employee.
“Peak season is right now,” he said. “There are huge swings in tourism based on the heat. It’s definitely something to contend with.”
Mulligan lives in “the village,” a collection of single occupancy trailers that house the 12-20 employees working at Panamint.
Living and working in Death Valley can be lonely, Mulligan told me. He initially intended on only living in the park for a few months, but he was entranced by the diverse natural landscape and the intricate indigenous history.
“I fell in love,” Mulligan said. “There’s so much to learn. There’s so much to explore.”
The majority of people living and working in the park are in their late thirties to early sixties. It’s an eclectic bunch, usually composed of older seasonal workers.
“It’s not the most popular place for seasonal workers,” he said. “Occasionally, we’ll get some people who are in a rut and stumbled across us without gas or money and just happened into a job. And sometimes that’ll work out.”
In Aug. 2023, when Death Valley was ravaged by Hurricane Hillary, Panamint Springs furloughed the majority of their staff. When the team restructured, an older, less party-prone crowd of employees was ushered in, Mulligan explained.
Mulligan found community in the towns on the outskirts of the park. Two times per week, he drives an hour and ten minutes to Ridgecrest to play the saxophone in Big Band X-Press, a 23 member community band. Mulligan helps run the operation, which consists of 15 horns, a bass, a piano, a drum set, a guitar, and vocalists. They play jazz and feature musicians of all ages, spanning from middle and high school students to the elderly.
Sometimes, Mulligan will go to the film museum in Lone Pine or to concerts in Bishop.
“I think Lone Pine is just nifty,” he noted.
Another difficulty of living in Death Valley? Dating. The pool in the Valley is small, and, as Mulligan said, dating on the site of Panamint is never a good idea.
“I’ll set the radius on my dating apps to 80 or 90 miles, and at that point, it’s just not worth it,” he lamented.
Despite the challenges, Mulligan plans to stay in Death Valley for a few more years. He hasn’t seen all there is to see of the 3.4 million acre park. He says the novelty is the best part.
“Death Valley is extreme in a metal kind of way,” he said. “There are so many places to be new here.”
Mulligan lives in “the village,” a collection of single occupancy trailers that house the 12-20 employees working at Panamint.
Living and working in Death Valley can be lonely, Mulligan told me. He initially intended on only living in the park for a few months, but he was entranced by the diverse natural landscape and the intricate indigenous history.
“I fell in love,” Mulligan said. “There’s so much to learn. There’s so much to explore.”
The majority of people living and working in the park are in their late thirties to early sixties. It’s an eclectic bunch, usually composed of older seasonal workers.
“It’s not the most popular place for seasonal workers,” he said. “Occasionally, we’ll get some people who are in a rut and stumbled across us without gas or money and just happened into a job. And sometimes that’ll work out.”
In Aug. 2023, when Death Valley was ravaged by Hurricane Hilary, Panamint Springs furloughed the majority of their staff. When the team restructured, an older, less party-prone crowd of employees was ushered in, Mulligan explained.
Mulligan found community in the towns on the outskirts of the park. Two times per week, he drives an hour and ten minutes to Ridgecrest to play the saxophone in Big Band X-Press, a 23 member community band.
Mulligan helps run the operation, which consists of 15 horns, a bass, a piano, a drum set, a guitar, and vocalists. They play jazz and feature musicians of all ages, spanning from middle and high school students to the elderly.
Sometimes, Mulligan will go to the film museum in Lone Pine or to concerts in Bishop.
“I think Lone Pine is just nifty,” he said.
Another difficulty of living in Death Valley? Dating. The pool in the Valley is small, and, as Mulligan said, dating on the site of Panamint is never a good idea.
“I’ll set the radius on my dating apps to 80 or 90 miles, and at that point, it’s just not worth it,” he lamented.
Despite the challenges, Mulligan plans to stay in Death Valley for a few more years. He hasn’t seen all there is to see of the 3.4 million acre park. He says the novelty is the best part.
“Death Valley is extreme in a metal kind of way,” he said. “There are so many places to be new here.”
