During the nineteenth century, two groups of Native Americans occupied the Amargosa Valley: the Southern Paiute and the Western Shoshone.

The Old Spanish Trail and the later wagon road called the Old Mormon Road or Salt Lake Road, ran through the south end of Amargosa Valley, passing from Resting Springs, east of present-day Tecopa, 7 miles to Willow Spring on the east bank of the canyon of the Amargosa River (then called Saleratus Creek), below Tecopa and above the mouth of China Ranch Wash.[3] After the Donner Party's disastrous winter of 1847 in the Sierra Nevada mountains, which happened just before the news of California gold became public, a loose group arrived in October 1849 at the Great Salt Lake.

The Old Spanish Trail had long been used by Indians, traders, explorers, and mountain men as a convenient but rough route, confined to horseback and pack animals, to California.

It ran north from Santa Fe to the Salt Lake area then back south along the edge of the mountains to San Diego, and had been used ever since the days of Cabeza De Vaca's journey through the country.

He assured them that a more direct route across the southern deserts existed which was quite passable for wagons and showed them a copy of John C. Fremont's map of his explorations.

James Brier, and Asahel Bennett, all experienced outdoorsmen and farmers out of the Wisconsin farm country who decided to risk it on the assurances that Smith, with the map, would accompany them.

Smith and Hunt both arrived with their parties in San Bernardino after tough but quick journeys around Death Valley.

Many of their oxen had died from lack of forage and they were immobilized, as the few remaining animals were starving and were too weak to pull wagons up and over the mountains to the west and south, even if a pass were found.

The Briers made a heroic climb over the Panamints to safety, while the Bennetts waited huddled around their wagons with water but no food.

His body was found by Manly & Rogers only a couple of miles short of the Bennett camp on their return trek from Rancho San Francisco.

Two members of another group of emigrants, the Jayhawkers, who had been traveling with the Bennett/Arcane Party, died along the trail west of the Panamint Range; their names are given in Manly's journal as Mr.

Amargosa Valley is near the controversial Yucca Mountain Repository, a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) facility on federal land, designed for the storage of high-level nuclear waste.

President George W. Bush signed House Joint Resolution 87 on July 23, 2002, authorizing the DOE to proceed with construction at Yucca Mountain, although the facility was not expected to accept its first shipments of radioactive materials before 2012.

[citation needed] The facility's main entrance will be in Amargosa Valley, approximately 14 miles (23 km) south of the storage tunnels.

In 2009 President Barack Obama stated that the repository was no longer being considered as a site for the long-term storage of nuclear waste.