About this place
The Owyhee River canyon has steep rhyolite walls, from 250 feet high to over 1000 feet near the Oregon border.
Below the meeting with the South Fork Owyhee River, the west end is called the Grand Canyon of the Owyhee.
Inside that gorge there are wide areas of rhyolite pinnacles called hoodoos. A hoodoo is a thin spire of rock left standing when the softer rock around it wears away.
The rock is the show. This is the best hoodoo country in the whole Owyhee system.
Floating is popular in spring, when the water is high. In low water you can still go, in a smaller boat.
The facts
- Cost
- Free to camp
- Roads around it
- Recorded as four-wheel drive
- Type
- Open area. Camp anywhere within it
- Managed by
- Bureau of Land Management
The roads around this place are not maintained for a regular car. That comes from the Bureau of Land Management, who record the kind of vehicle that uses each route. Those records cover the roads nearby. They do not cover the last stretch in to the campsite, and nobody has checked that part. Treat this as a warning. We are not promising what you will find when you get there. If you have driven it, tell us what it was like and we will say so here.
Getting there
Six miles northwest of the Duck Valley Indian Reservation. Carry the Bureau of Land Management Riddle map, the 1:100,000 scale one.
Coordinates 42.18611111, -116.5058333
Open in Google Maps Agency page
What is near here
Nothing nationally famous is close. These are the landmarks nearby.
- Porter Peak Directions
Every distance on this page is the driving distance. A short distance can still take a long time. The road may be closed for the season, covered in snow, or washed out. Many of these roads are dirt. Plan your route before you leave home. Out here there is often no phone signal to look it up on the way.
Nearest town and supplies
- Owyhee, NV Directions
Owyhee is big enough that you’d normally expect fuel and somewhere to buy food. Nobody from here has been to check, so don’t count on it if you’re running low.
Have you been here?
Fees and access change, and the records do not always keep up. If you have been, tell us what you found.
Thank you, that is recorded. It helps the next person.
Add road notes for this site
The thing we cannot get from any government record is what the drive in is actually like. If you have done it, this is the most useful thing you can leave behind. We read everything before it appears, and we print a first name with it if you give one.
Thank you. A person will read it before it goes on the page.
Where this information comes from
The description on this page is ours. The facts in it, and the fee and facility details below it, come from the Bureau of Land Management’s own records, read in August 2026.