Valley of Fire Entrance Fee and Opening Hours

The full price list

Nevada State Parks sets these rates and they apply at both entrance stations. Last verified August 2026.

How you pay

Both entrance stations are staffed during daylight hours. When a booth is unstaffed, a self-pay envelope system applies, so carry cash as a backup even though cards are normally accepted.

The fee is charged per vehicle rather than per person, which makes the park unusually cheap for a full car and comparatively expensive for a solo driver. Nothing inside the park costs extra: no trail fees, no parking charges, no separate charge for the visitor centre.

Included in the $15

Everything you can reach on foot or by car in a day.

• All roads, including Mouse's Tank Road and the White Domes loop
• Every trail and trailhead car park
• The visitor centre and its exhibits, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
• Picnic areas including the shaded ramadas at Seven Sisters
• Restrooms, both plumbed at the centre and vault toilets elsewhere

Not included

There is no food service, no shop beyond the small counter at the visitor centre, and no fuel anywhere in the park. Bring everything you plan to eat and fill the tank in Las Vegas, at the Moapa exit on Interstate 15 or in Overton.

Camping is charged separately from day entry, and the Lost City Museum in Overton, which one guided tour visits, has its own admission and sits outside the park boundary.

State park, not federal land

Valley of Fire is a Nevada State Park, established in 1935 as the state's first. America the Beautiful, Senior, Access and Military passes cover federal sites managed by the National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, Forest Service and their peers. They do not extend to state parks in any state, and Nevada is no exception.

The confusion is understandable on this particular drive, because Red Rock Canyon, an hour away on the other side of Las Vegas, is Bureau of Land Management land where federal passes do work. Two red-rock parks near the same city, two different systems. Our comparison of the two sets out the rest of the differences.

What does reduce the cost

Nevada plates halve it, from $15 to $10. Nevada State Parks also sells an annual pass covering entry to state parks, which pays for itself quickly for residents and rarely for visitors on a single trip.

For everyone else the practical saving is arithmetic rather than paperwork: the fee is per vehicle, so four people in one car pay $3.75 each.

Atlatl Rock and Arch Rock

The park has two campgrounds, Atlatl Rock and Arch Rock, holding 72 sites between them near the west entrance. Both are first-come, first-served, so a busy spring weekend can fill them by early afternoon.

Standard sites cost $25 per vehicle per night for out-of-state visitors and $20 for Nevada residents. Sites with utility hookups add $10. Atlatl Rock has showers and flush toilets; Arch Rock is the more basic of the two.

Why people camp here

The park is open sunrise to sunset for day visitors, which means the two best hours of light bracket the moment you have to leave. Campers are the only visitors who are legitimately inside the park at both ends of the day.

In the summer closure months, camping is also the only way to walk anything at first light before the heat arrives, though nine trails remain shut regardless of where you slept.

Two sets of hours

The park itself is open every day from sunrise to sunset. The visitor centre keeps far shorter hours: 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., daily.

That gap catches two groups. Anyone arriving for sunrise photography finds the centre shut, and anyone staying for sunset finds it shut again on the way out. If you want the exhibits, the paper map or a water refill from a tap rather than a bottle, plan to pass the centre in the middle of the day.

No reservation, ever

Day entry is first-come and there is no timed-entry system, no quota and no online booking. On the busiest spring weekends the constraint is car parking at the trailheads rather than entry at the gate.

That is a genuine advantage over Red Rock Canyon, which requires a timed-entry reservation from October through May.

Self-drive against a guided seat

The entry fee is the small number. What decides the cost of the day is how you get there.

Where the line falls

A solo traveller pays more to drive than to be driven. Two people break roughly even. Four people driving save real money, and that is before anyone counts the value of not driving 50 miles back to the Strip after a day in the sun.

What a fare buys beyond transport is a guide who knows which stop holds shade at which hour, and the entry fee handled at the booth. The eight trips are compared on our Valley of Fire tours from Las Vegas page, and the cheapest with lunch included is the six-hour half day at $99. If you would rather walk than ride between viewpoints, the guided hike at $129 includes tips as well as entry.

The fee is charged again if you leave and come back

Entry covers a single vehicle entering the park, and there is no re-entry stamp of the kind national parks issue. In practice, staff at the booths generally wave through a car that has already paid on the same day and can show the receipt, but nothing published guarantees it.

If your plan involves leaving for lunch in Overton and returning, keep the receipt on the dashboard and expect to explain yourself. The simpler answer on this particular drive is to bring lunch: there is no food service inside the park, and the shaded ramadas at Seven Sisters are the best picnic tables in southern Nevada.

Cash still matters

Cards are normally accepted at staffed booths. Outside staffed hours the park runs a self-pay envelope system, which wants cash, and there is no cash machine anywhere inside the boundary.

Carry $20 in notes. It also covers the gratuity most guided trips expect if you switch plans, and the water at the visitor centre counter if your card reader argues with the desert signal.

What the fee funds

Nevada State Parks operates on a mix of state appropriation and fee revenue, and the fees pay for maintenance of the roads, the campgrounds, the vault toilets and the ranger presence that enforces the summer trail closures.

That last item is worth the money on its own. The closure list exists because this park has a documented history of heat rescues and deaths, and the rangers who enforce it are funded from the same envelope you drop at the gate.

Carry $20 in cash even though cards are usually accepted. Unstaffed booths run on self-pay envelopes, and there is no cash machine inside the park.