Skidoo
NP5. Location/Access:(36o 26.189’N; 117o 09.292’W) The ghost town of Skidoo is located 26 miles south of Stovepipe Wells. From its junction off the Wildrose Road, just under 19 miles south of Stovepipe Wells, a good gravel road leads 7.0 miles to the townsite. The road can be navigated by any vehicle with at least a little clearance. There is nothing left at the townsite itself. However, if one keeps to the left at the explanatory sign and continues towards the GPS coordinates (0.8 miles), one will come to the mill. You will have to park below the top of the hill at the gate and then walk 200 yards over the crest to the GPS coordinates. There are other small roads that can also lead you to the mill by keeping right at the explanatory sign.
Best Time: Anytime, all year.
Geology: The gold mining of district of Skidoo, so named because it was 23 miles to the spring from which water was piped in, was active in the early 1900’s. The majority of rock that makes up the hill that the mill and most of the mines are on is composed of the Skidoo granite, a Mesozoic pluton. There are several separate plutons of this age in Death Valley and all are outliers of the huge Sierra Nevada Batholith to the west. Gold in the Death Valley region is usually found associated with Neogene volcanic rocks (such as at Rhyolite, Nevada) or within gold-bearing quartz veins of Mesozoic age such as here at Skidoo. The hills to the northeast are composed of the Proterozoic Pahrump group. From the mill area, there is a good view west across Emigrant Canyon to the Pliocene-Pleistocene sediments that make up those hills. These rocks are the Nova formation and form the hanging wall of the Tucki Mountain detachment (Wernicke, et. Al., 1993).
