The salt flats are accessible April 1 through October 15 each year, sunrise to sunset. You will take a left at that sign on to a 5 mile paved road. 3 miles south of the town of Cherokee, you will see a large sign for the salt flats on your left hand side. At the junction of Highway 8, take a left to head south. To access the salt flats of Great Salt Plains State Park, take a left out of the state park entrance on highway 38 and proceed until you reach the junction for Highway 11. These areas are restricted on a rotating basis to ensure that the birds remain protected and that the new selenite crystals receive adequate time to grow. Also, be mindful of areas closed off to the public.

Be careful when driving through the designated access roads, as the surface is very shallow and muddy. This is the only area in the entire world that allows these crystals to be dug up by the public for free. There are hundreds of species of birds that are protected in this location and are beautiful for photographs as well. The best time to photograph the salt flats are just before sunset and right after sunrise on the weekdays. Additionally, the area contains countless hourglass selenite crystals.

Located in western Oklahoma and close to Great Salt Plains Lake, is the salt flats of Great Salt Plains State Park. With nearly 18 square miles of layers of salt that had been deposited from a prehistoric ocean, it is quite an incredible landscape to photograph. With around 11,000 acres of endless white salt embedded hourglass shaped selenite crystals available for digging, the salt flats of Great Salt Plains State Park are an out-of-this world natural wonder to photograph.

Great salt flats