Leslie and David's Wanderings: 25 July 2021 Castle Mountains NM and Mojave Desert Preserve

Castle Mountains NM is one of three “gap filler” national monuments created by the Obama administration when they could not get legislation through congress to set these lands aside. Right in the middle of Castle Mountains NM is the huge open pit Hart Silver and Gold mine. There are no trails, no park facilities and no visitor center. Nor are there plans for any to be built. We took US93 south out of Las Vegas to Seachlight. There we topped off on fuel before taking Nipton road to Walking Box Ranch Road. Walking Box Ranch Road is the main road into the NM that was built for the Hart Mine. But it is a well-maintained, compacted dirt and gravel road that we were able to travel along at 45mph for most of the distance. The road ended at the entrance to the Hart mine at mile marked 17. Other than the sign at the entrance to the NM, there was not much to see beyond desert, lots of Joshua Trees, mine trash and the brown rock Castle and New York Mountains. There are the remains of other small mines in the NM and a series of four-wheel roads going to them from the Hart Mine road. All of them are closed now except the Hart mine (which is not actually running at the moment). We decided to take a different route back and followed some of the unmaintained four-wheel drive roads out of the NM and into the Mojave Desert Preserve. The lands in the Castle Mountain NM were specifically excluded from the Mojave Desert Preserve when it was created by congress in 1994 to protect the mining interests. We followed these roads past some abandoned mines and ranches before reaching the main road in the preserve, Ivanpah Road. We took Ivanpah north until I-15. Near the junction with I-15, there is a massive solar power facility that uses mirrors to focus the sun light onto the top of a tower. You could see the reflection off the tower from a long ways away and it looked like alien space ships landing from a distance. Jumping on I-15 north, we were a bit surprised by the amount of traffic heading toward Las Vegas. It backed up at the state line where people were slowing down to get a picture of the welcome to Nevada sign. We hit some rain near the border but it dissipated quickly. So we crossed another NM off our list and enjoyed the adventure.