The Pads

I was surprised with how nice this is.

I do a lot of photography professionally and Death Valley is one of my favorite places to do so.

This spot is an amazing place to stay to access the park.

When staying here, you are only about a 30 minute drive to Dante's View, 25 or so minutes to Furnace Creek, 45 minutes to Badwater, 45 minutes to Mesquite Dunes.

The place is level and graded and there are a number of cement pads from it's previous life.

There is left over remnants of rebar and so on around the perimeters of the cement pads, but it should be of little to no concern. Most of it has been bent over and will do little if any damage should you drive over a piece. Honestly, as long as you don't show up after dark, you are going to be fine. Totally fine.

There are a LOT of places to park here. I would have a hard time believing one would show up and not find a place to set up camp.

We use Starlink so cell service is of no concern for us, but I will tell you that we had zero service...and we are on the T-Mobile network.

We stayed for 5 nights and loved it. Amazing place to set up camp.

Weather for our stay was perfect. As it's at 3000 feet it's much MUCH cooler up here than down in the Basin. I recommend this spot highly.

We camp here whenever we go to Death Valley. The cement pads are level but some are not easily accessible. We can walk our dogs off leash and off road and not worry about NP personal chasing us down. NP's are not pet friendly! Lots of sun and great night star viewing. We had great weather while we were there. The day we left the wind was blowing hard. Our 42' coach fits on the pads but we like to have our awning facing south so we did not park on a pad. Our solar panels maxed out every day so we never ran our gen. Hardly any trash. I think most RVers are careful that way. There is no cell coverage here. I talked to several campers and no one had cell coverage. You can go to Furnace Creek in the park or about 7 miles south and get coverage.

We actually planned to spend already that night in one of the NP Campgrounds, coming from Pahrump, heading towards Furnace Creek Death Valley. Saw 'The Pads' and decided to stay. Looked for and found a concrete pad where we could actually park our 39ft Class A but would not have to disconnect our toad. Would have been hard with most of the pads since they have different shapes and sizes AND the edges are not level with the surrounding sandy areas. But we found a good one on the left hand side of the entrance road. Perfect spot! But don't come after dark - or explore the area with a flash light before you drive in. There's a lot of old 'infrastructural' stuff like sewers, cables, poles you don't want to hit or drive over.
Btw.: asked a NP Ranger about the place next day and she told us it was some kind of a mining camp, so the pads have not been built for RVs but mobil homes.
Besides us there was only one guy in a truck up on the hill, two bikers/hikers left before dark, plus three RVs or trailers far enough to the right we could not really see them.
We could hear the traffic on HW 190, especially some trucks, but 2 or 3 per hour didn't bother us. With more traffic we would chose a site not as close to the highway.

We stayed here for a few nights in December of 2022, at the time there were very few other campers. Nice to have the cement pads to park on and not have to worry about tracking dirt into the trailer. Pretty convenient to get to the East side of the park, Badwater basin, Dantes View, etc.. We moved over toward the west side when we wanted to Explore there. I will say - in our site, which was about the middle of the area, there was a nasty piece of metal pole (looked like rebar perhaps) sticking out just about 12 or so inches. If you came in at night and didn't see that it could be pretty bad on the tries. So get out and inspect before backing in.

Note there was no Cell service for us (Verizon or T-Mobile) but Starlink worked great.

Lots of level pads to camp on of many sizes. Large RV friendly. Access is dirt with some gravel. No hook ups. No cellular connectivity. Very close to Death Valley entrance. Use Death Valley Junction for researching weather for your arrival. Great views and sunsets. Be prepared for wind, like most deserts. Clean location for the most part. Above 3,000 elevation and can be pretty cold at night.
DO NOT drive over a rock over a piece of metal or wood. These often will have man holes under originally intended for maintenance of abandoned park RV project. Will swallow your wheel