Wildrose Charcoal Kilns

Death Valley National Park

These ten remarkable "beehive" charcoal kilns can be found at the mouth of Wildrose Canyon on the west side of Death Valley.  Continue driving down Emigrant Canyon Road.  Signs will be posted, and although the road is washed out and rough in certain parts, we were able to make it just fine in our Honda Odyssey.

I do not use the adjective, remarkable, lightly.  While I love poking around old ruins and the ramshackle remains of ghost towns, it often takes more than imagination to construct an entire town in my mind.  I need old photographs and written accounts to get an accurate picture.  Not so, here.  These kilns, now more than a century old, look like they were constructed only yesterday.  Walking inside, I swear I could still smell the scent of charcoal and pine.

In 1879, the nearby Modock Mine needed charcoal to extract silver and lead from the rich ore of the mines.  Swiss engineers were hired to design the kilns and Chinese laborers built them.  Each kiln is 25 ft. high and 30 ft. in diameter; each could hold four cords of wood.  Surrounding pinyon pines were cut down, burned and reduced to charcoal.  After cooling, wagons hauled them back down to the mine's smelter, located 25 miles away in the treeless Panamint Valley.

Although the mines continued to operate, the kilns were shut down after only three years.  This fact, plus its remote location, 7,000 ft. up in the Panamint Mountains, helped preserve these remarkable structures.  They are considered the best examples of historic charcoal kilns in the west.