This California badland looks like an alien planet, and Hollywood keeps agreeing
There’s a stretch of the Mojave where the ground stops looking like California entirely. More than 500 stone spires rise straight out of a dry lakebed, some taller than a 10-story building, and there’s no fence, no visitor center, no fee. You just walk out onto the old lakebed and stand among them.
This is the Trona Pinnacles, and Hollywood found it decades before most road-trippers did.
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A lake that’s been gone for thousands of years
The spires are made of tufa, calcium carbonate that built up in layers wherever underwater springs met the old lake. Searles Lake sat here during the Pleistocene, part of a chain of lakes running down from Owens Valley toward Death Valley, and at its deepest this basin held roughly 640 feet of water.
The lake dried up somewhere between 10,000 and 100,000 years ago. What it left behind was strange enough that the Department of the Interior named it a National Natural Landmark back in 1968, and it’s still one of the best examples of tufa tower formation in North America.
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Hollywood noticed before hikers did
Captain Kirk meets God on this exact lakebed in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. Tim Burton shot the ape homeworld reveal here for his 2001 Planet of the Apes remake. Dinosaur and Pitch Black used it too, along with a long list of commercials and photo shoots.
It’s not the only free California rock formation with a résumé like this — Alabama Hills, a few hours north near Lone Pine, has its own decades-long movie history. Different landscape, same idea: no ticket required.
Getting there, and when to skip it
The Pinnacles sit about 20 miles east of Ridgecrest. You’ll turn off Highway 178 onto a dirt road that runs 5 miles to the site — usually fine for a regular 2-wheel-drive car, though it can wash out after winter storms.
Here’s my one opinion I won’t hedge on: skip the middle of an August afternoon here. There’s zero shade, no potable water, and the only facility is a single vault toilet, so this is a sunrise-or-sunset kind of place in summer, not a noon stop. Check current conditions with the BLM Ridgecrest Field Office before you go, especially in the hotter months.
Camping, and what’s worth combining it with
Dispersed camping is allowed right on the pinnacles’ public land, free, for up to 14 days in any 28-day stretch. Pack out everything — there’s no trash service, and in this climate even an orange peel takes years to break down.
Ridgecrest has gas, groceries, and hotels if you’d rather not camp. And if you’re already out this way, Death Valley’s Racetrack Playa — famous for its rocks that drift across the lakebed on their own — is roughly two hours further northeast.
Trip tips: grab a rental car to get out here, lock in your hotel before the good rooms are gone, or skip both and book a camper van instead.
Rules and fees change — always confirm current requirements before you go.
