Ocotillo Wells SVRA
Borrego Springs / Ocotillo Wells · near Borrego Springs / Salton City · California Desert
Off-Road
At a glance
- Skill level
- beginner
- Size
- 85,000 acres of open desert riding
- Best season
- October–April · Adjacent to Anza-Borrego, same extreme summer heat warning
Permits and booking
- Permit
- California State Parks SVRA fee applies (daily vehicle fee). California OHV registration required. No permit required beyond the entry fee. Open riding within SVRA boundaries — vehicles can go essentially anywhere within the managed area. Some sensitive areas are closed seasonally.
What is here
- Terrain
- desert-wash · sand-dunes · rock-crawling
Worth knowing
- Good for a first timer
- Yes
Off-Road detail
- Vehicles
- atv-utv · dirt-bike · 4x4-jeep · any-ohv
- Signature routes
- Shell Reef Express · Truckhaven Rocks · Blow Sand Hill
- Intl tip
- Ocotillo Wells SVRA sits at the edge of the Salton Sea, one of California's most surreal landscapes — an accidental inland sea created by an irrigation canal break in 1905, now a hypersaline lake in the desert below sea level. The combination of the SVRA with a sunset drive to the Salton Sea shoreline makes for a genuinely other-worldly afternoon.
The guide
Where Anza-Borrego requires vehicles to stay on established roads, Ocotillo Wells SVRA throws those rules out entirely. The 85,…
In the Guidebook
Everything above is yours for free. The written guide to Ocotillo Wells SVRA — what it is actually like, and what we would tell a friend before they went — comes with the Guidebook.
Getting there
- Coordinates
- 33.1504, -116.1356