China Ranch offers visitors dates, a unique experience

China Ranch, a family date farm in a secluded oasis near Death Valley National Park, offers visitors a variety of attractions and unique experiences. The farm produces dates from several varieties of palms, as well as delicious date shakes, date bread and other baked goods showcased at a gift shop and snack bar. It also features a nursery with date palms, cactuses and other native plants available for landscaping. A small new museum exhibiting artifacts from the ranch's past occupies a rustic building near the nursery.

Located about 80 miles from Las Vegas, China Ranch makes an excellent destination for a cool-season outing. To reach it, drive south from Las Vegas on Interstate 15 to Highway 160, the route over Mountain Springs into Pahrump Valley. Watch for the turnoff onto Tecopa Road, which becomes the Old Spanish Trail Highway at the California border. When you climb over the pass from Las Vegas Valley, you follow the wagon tracks of travelers long ago on the historic Spanish Trail, a major overland route established by Antonio Armijo in 1830.

As you approach Tecopa, watch for Furnace Creek Road. Turn left and follow the signs about two miles to the graded China Ranch Road, which snakes a couple of miles through a steep-walled canyon past an old gypsum mine. The region once boasted many mines yielding primarily gypsum, lead, silver and talc. When exploring in the area, stay out of old diggings, which are often unstable and dangerous.

The ranch boasts a dramatic location in a canyon along the Amargosa River with possibilities for varied outdoor activities. At least six hiking trails of varying lengths and difficulty begin at China Ranch. One popular four-wheel route heads from the ranch through a canyon along part of the old Tonopah and Tidewater Railroad right-of-way. Equestrians often trailer to China Ranch to experience the area on horseback. All of Death Valley lies within easy reach north of China Ranch. Huge sand dunes at nearby Dumont Dunes invite off-road adventuring. After a day spent outdoors, many visitors relax in Tecopa's hot springs pools and mineral bath spas about four miles from the ranch.

Because the ranch lies far from city lights, its night skies remain startlingly bright and beautiful, a delightful discovery for overnight guests. Visitors stay overnight at the ranch in luxuriously outfitted teepees with dining facilities in an old adobe ranch house. Affiliated accommodations in Tecopa house guests in a former youth hostel or in refurbished vintage trailers. For bed and breakfast information, rates and reservations, call Cynthia's Unique Desert Lodging at (760) 852-4580 or visit the Web site at discovercynthias.com.

The lushness at China Ranch always surprises visitors. Water at the ranch supports stands of cottonwoods, willows and other desert trees and shrubs, as well as the cultivated groves of hundreds of date palms, including some varieties unique to China Ranch. The vegetation, creek and nearby river attract desert wildlife and at least 225 species of birds, making it a popular destination for birders. Of course, the water has always attracted visitors -- first the native people of the area and later a parade of characters, including Spanish explorers, mountain men, traders, rustlers, military expeditions, miners and railroaders.

Developed first as a truck garden, China Ranch has been under cultivation for about 120 years. It takes its name from an enterprising Chinese man who left Death Valley's borax works to raise vegetables and livestock to feed nearby mining camps. He was later driven away, but the name stayed. Thereafter, a succession of owners farmed and ranched there. Dates were introduced in the 1920s. Acquired in the 1970s by members of two pioneer families who focused on serious date cultivation, the ranch gained a name for its date production. Now it enjoys a name as a unique destination, as well.

Margo Bartlett Pesek's column appears on Thursdays.