Mule Ears Overlook

Mule Ears Overlook is a roadside pullout and wayside on Ross Maxwell Scenic Drive, facing the park’s twin Mule Ears spires across open desert. It is an easy way to see the landmark without hiking the separate Mule Ears Trail. The pullout sits on a half-mile spur, 14.8 miles from the northern end of Ross Maxwell Scenic Drive. It has 21 pull-in parking spaces, plus a curb ramp and sidewalk at the overlook.

The two towers are eroded rhyolite dikes—sheets of magma that pushed up through fractures and hardened. They stand more than 1,000 feet above the desert floor and about 2.5 miles from the wayside. Look beyond the spires, too: pale volcanic tuff deposits and hard, lava-capped mountains give the surrounding country its layered look.

Mule Ears, Santa Elena Canyon, and Emory Peak have served as recognizable guides through this rugged region for thousands of years, long before digital or paper maps. The wayside tells that story and includes a 1934 recollection by Lorene Green of flying between the peaks while returning toward her uncle Elmo Johnson’s ranch landing strip.

Morning is a good time to watch sunlight reach across the desert here. For photos, keep some of the open ground below the paired spires in frame so they read as tall landmarks in a broad landscape. A prickly pear or the pale eroded slopes can add a foreground layer without crowding the peaks.