Cree Camp Road

Only a short distance North-East of Baker, California, is Cree Camp Road, which takes you through the typical Mojave Desert with its sparsely spaced creosote bushes and desert holly. Almost the entire length of the road skirts along the eastern edge of the Hollow Hills Wilderness and passes through the foothills of the Turquoise Mountains. Hollow Hills was designated as a wilderness area in 1994 and consists of 22,000 acres of hills and large, broad alluvial slopes east to west. The low hills in the east crawl toward the Turquoise Mountains. Cree Camp Road provides extraordinary opportunities for solitude for this seldom-visited area. Due to the adjacent wilderness area, on a lucky day, you might even see wild horses and burros in the distance on a lucky day. Several registered mines are on or near the trail, along with many more unregistered mines and prospects, and invite careful inspection. The road's namesake, Cree Camp, still has standing living quarters, a storage shack, and remnants of an ore crusher that can be found nearby. Some of the mine shafts are still open and often were dug straight down with no visible bottom. The mine shafts near the road have been fenced off, which speaks to the risks of exploring too close.