The Star Wars in Death Valley self-guided tour is a really fun activity to do for a day, especially if you like the movies as much as we do. To find these places, you have to search for yourself and match up the background terrain.  To do this, you will need to print out photographs or bring your laptop with the movies on it for matching purposes.  I'm going to share here my recommended route if you are interested in taking the tour.  The tour begins near the beautiful hills of Artists Palette, continues close to the entrance of impressive Desolation Canyon, moves on next to Golden Canyon and Twenty Mule Team Canyon.  Then, after a trip up high to 5,475 foot Dante's View, the tour concludes at the Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes.  (Note: All movie photos are copyright 20th Century Fox and Lucasfilm Ltd.)

The Star Wars in Death Valley route map below shows the 6 areas where the 8 filming locations are located.  The recommended order of the route is-- 1. Artists Palette, 2. Desolation Canyon, 3. Golden Canyon, 4. 20 Mule Team Canyon, 5. Dantes View, 6. Mesquite Sand Dunes.

The first tour stop is called "Sandcrawler Station", taken from Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. This is located very close to Artists Palette. Drive your car about halfway through Artists Drive until you reach the right turn which goes to the Artists Palette parking area.  Park just before making the turn and walk south up the bank to see where the Sandcrawler was filmed.

The second tour stop is called "R2's Arroyo Overlook", taken from Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. In this scene, the camera pans down to show R2D2 traveling through a narrow canyon in the desert. To reach this location (and the next one), get back in your car and drive around the corner to Artists Palette.  Park your car and walk up the very small hill to the north and you will be looking at the place where the camera was set up to film this short scene.

The third tour stop is called "Inside R2's Arroyo", taken from Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. In this scene, R2D2 runs into some trouble and eventually gets zapped by the Jawas. In order to see the exact spot where this happened to R2D2 as he was traveling along, walk down the small trail which drops you into the wash of Artists Palette.  Take an immediate left and you should now be walking in a small canyon.  Walk about 30 yards or so and turn around.

The fourth tour stop is called "Bantha's Canyon", taken from Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. In this scene, Tusken Raiders are seen riding a Bantha. To find this location, get back in your car and take Artists Drive back to Badwater Road.  Turn right onto Badwater Road and head north for 1.1 miles.  You should now see a gravel road which turns off to the right.  Turn here and drive a half of a mile until you can't drive anymore and park your car.  You will need to do a little bit of walking to get to Bantha's Canyon from here.  Start walking to the east but stay north of the small hill, instead of taking a path directly over it.  You should drop into a wash that eventually leads to Desolation Canyon.  Bantha's Canyon is just before the mouth of Desolation Canyon.

The fifth tour stop is called "Road to Jabba's Palace", taken from Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi. In this scene, Luke has sent C3P0 and R2D2 to Jabba the Hutt's Palace as a gift offering, to set the stage for his rescue of Han Solo. To find this location, drive back to Badwater Road and take another right.  When you reach the end of Badwater Road in 3.7 miles, turn right onto Highway 190.  About 4.7 miles later you will reach a turn-off onto a gravel road into Twenty Mule Team Canyon.  Turn here and drive for a short time.  Pay close attention to the scenery, because it's not far before you will need to pull over and start walking towards Jabba's Palace, just as the droids did.  For the best pictures, climb the small mud bank to your left and look south.

The sixth tour stop is called "Mos Eisley Overlook", taken from Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. In this scene, Obi-Wan, Luke, and the droids stop their landspeeder and get out to look at the view at the edge of a cliff.  In the movie, they are looking at the spaceport city of Mos Eisley, which is where they are headed to.  To get to this tour stop, continue driving through Twenty Mule Team Canyon until the road loops back onto Highway 190.  Turn right and drive around 4 miles until you see the road which turns off to the right for Dante's View.  Drive this road all the way to where it ends at the Dante's View overlook, and you will be at Mos Eisley Overlook.  Look back towards northern Death Valley and the Furnace Creek area to get the same visuals as Obi-Wan, Luke, and the droids did.  The small picture above was not filmed in Death Valley, but when you see what they are looking at, that is Death Valley.

The seventh tour stop is called "Droid Dunes", taken from Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. In the scenes which were filmed here, C3P0 and R2D2 are seen lost in the sand dunes of Tatooine.  To reach Droid Dunes, drive all the way back to Furnace Creek, and then continue on 190 to the Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes near Stovepipe Wells. It's impossible to match up the dunes in this picture exactly, as more than 30 years have gone by since filming, and dunes are an ever shifting landscape. But for the closest match, hike halfway out the dunes towards the highest peak and look northeast. If you compare the 2 pictures, the most obvious match is the mountain range in the background. But look a little closer, at the three sand dune hills in the background on the left side of the picture. The match is remarkably close, as close as you could possibly get after all this time. This tour stop was completed in March of 2008, 2 years and 2 months after my efforts to put together this Star Wars in Death Valley Tour first started.

The eighth and final stop on our Star Wars in Death Valley tour is "Jawa Canyon", taken from Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope.  The location for the scenes filmed here is Golden Canyon.  For many years, Golden Canyon was kind of a lost filming location, as not many people realized that some important scenes from the original Star Wars were filmed here.  That's why I didn't end up visiting this location and matching up scenes until December of 2011, over 3 1/2 years after I matched up the scenes from Droid Dunes.  And I only matched up five scenes, but there are actually more to be found in the canyon.  Perhaps I will match up the rest of them later.  Below you can see some exact matches, which you can find for yourself if you search carefully in the lower portion of Golden Canyon.