Titus Canyon Road grew out of the boom and bust of Leadfield, a mining town along the route that reached a population of 300 in its 1926 heyday and is now a ghost town. The canyon was named for mining engineer Edgar Morris Titus, who disappeared in the summer of 1905, when 13 others also died there from heat and dehydration in Death Valley's deadliest year. Klare Spring, farther along the route, was a reliable water source used by an earlier people, whose rock images remain there.