A few photos to give you a small hint on what you can see in the general Gold Point / Gold Mountain area:
GOLD POINT
A 2008 overlook at the town of Gold Point. There are numerous historic buildings left and about a dozen or so permanent residents. This scene is looking southeasterly from maintained dirt Wiley Road, which cuts across Lida Valley from NV266 just east of the semi-ghost of Lida.
A smaller 2003 image of Gold Point, looking northerly from the end of the paved road in from NV266.
Herb Robbins and his interesting Fairbanks-Morse gas engine, the Briggs & Stratton of its day.
Herb's Fairbanks-Morse under power. It has no exhaust system - only an exposed spring-closed poppet exhaust valve - yet spinning at 450 RPM is surprisingly quiet.
STATELINE GHOST TOWN
Stateline, Nevada. Scene looking westerly across northernmost Death Valley, the Last Chance and Inyo Ranges to the snowy Sierra Nevada near Bishop, California. There are about two or three dozen easily accessible stone ruins, plus a standing wooden adopt-a-cabin in the townsite.
A nice spot to lunch or camp with a view of the town and beyond is this headframe that dominates a high point above the main townsite. However, an open near vertical shaft with a dilapidated barbed wire strand fence surrounding it - easily passed through by inquisitive kids - is likely not a good place to camp in your case since you mentioned that you will be bringing your children along.
Near the headframe is a road heading westerly that stays high for a short distance before dropping back down into the main townsite and makes for a good camping spot. This was taken in 2000 with my previous truck, a 1996 Chevrolet S-10 4WD pickup. This view looks southeasterly at the Gold Mountain region. It's in close proximity to the photo above, but far enough from the mine shaft that you might feel more comfortable about setting up camp with your children.
ORIENTAL GHOST TOWN
In the photo above, the site of Oriental is visible in the distant left edge of the photo along the eastern flank of Gold Mountain. It is marked on most maps of the Death Valley region and on topographic maps as "Old Camp."
This view is northwesterly back across Stateline to Mount Magruder and the distant White Mountains. Nevada's highest peak is at the northern end of this range, the rest of the range south is inside California and tops out at 14,242 foot high White Mountain Peak. This building - said to be a former post office, was standing until about 2006. I have numerous photos of the building previous to its collapse, but I have very slow dial-up Internet connection, this has been a time consuming affair just doing this much. There are a dozen or so other stone ruins in the immediate vicinity and down another canyon running into upper Oriental Wash in connection with Oriental.
ORIENTAL WASH
This road comes up from the northernmost portion of Death Valley and is pretty regularly maintained on the Nevada side. This view is in the lower portion of the wash, several miles inside Nevada, and looks westerly to the Sierra Nevada. The road splits in the upper portion of the wash; with branches heading north to Stateline and Gold Point, east to Oriental, to Tokop ghost town and the mountain top repeater site (with great views in all directions) and another over a saddle in Gold Mountain and over to Bonnie Clair.
TULE CANYON
Get out your history books and you'll see that Tule Canyon has been mined over a couple of centuries. In the late 1800s and early 1900s several small communities with post offices popped up in this shallow trough that runs north off the northern face of Mount Magruder and down in an arcing fashion into the northernmost tip of Death Valley. This is a scene of upper Tule Canyon looking westerly from its lip at the edge of Lida Valley west of Gold Point. The canyon begins at the northernmost tip of Death Valley at an elevation of about 4,000 feet in creosote scrub, then into a small Joshua forest then pinion pines as it heads to its 7,500 foot head. Shady forest roads head out northward to NV266. You can access the road up Tule Canyon from Death Valley, Oriental Wash or Gold Point.
This cabin is found in lower Tule Canyon at the site of Roosevelt City, a short lived 1905 attempt to populate the canyon. I've watched this cabin decay drastically since about 1995. I last visited it in the spring of 2008 when this photo was taken.
Another view of this cabin about 2000. There are other ruins in the immediate vicinity.
Topo maps, the Delorme and Benchmark Nevada atlases and Harrison's Death Valley National Park map show the Gold Mountain region and its primary roads. It's facinating, historic and scenic. Roads are dirt but generally good. You can see most or all of it in a single day, although overnight and parts of two days would be better.
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FAQ
I did buy a 20gauge Mossberg today and will carry that along on the trip as well.
I am sure I'll shoot plenty of digital, but some of these places just deseve B&W film.