Luncheon at the Ladies Club

And Scotty went on soliloquizing:

“I was down in San Berdo the other day, and a man got me into one of them women’s afternoon fandangos;  you know, one of them afternoon affairs where they all talk and don’t say nothing.  And a “fly-up-the-creek” woman came up, all “a side-winding,” and said: ‘Now Mr. Scott, I’m sure in your desert travels you must  have lots of opportunities to do kind  deeds. What you tell the ladies the kindest deeds you ever did?”

Death Valley Scotty

“Well, lady,”  I says, ” let me think a minute. One time several years ago I been traveling all day on a horse, and I came in on a dry camp way up in one of the canyons. There was an old road leading up to it; hadn’t been used for years; but I noticed fresh tracks on it. When I got to the camp, there sat an old man and an old woman.  They must have been 70 years old  apiece. wagonWhen they saw me they both began to cry, and I said: ‘ my goodness, how in the hell did you two ever get up here?’ Well,  they said, they were driving through the valley, and it was so hot they thought they were going to die, and they come up to this road and they thought it led to a higher place where it would be so hot, so they took it and got up there, and it was night, so they camped there all night in the morning they found their horse had wandered off. They had looked for him but he was gone, and they’d been there most a week and had no food. Well, I open my packet built a fire and made them a cup of coffee and fried some bacon and stirred up some saddle blankets (hot cakes)  for them, and say, you ought to see them two old folks eat! It cheered them up considerable.  We sat around the fire all the evening and powwowed, and they was a nice old couple. We all slept that night on the ground. They was pretty cold, so I gave them a blanket I had. The next morning I made them some more coffee and gave them some breakfast. I had to be going, so I packed up and got astride my horse. I sort of hated to leave the old couple; they seemed kind enough sort of people; but there was nothing else to do; so I said goodbye, and they both was crying; said  they’d sure die; no way for them to get out. They couldn’t walk. It was 100 miles from help, and there was no automobiles in those days. But I got on my horse and started off, and then I looked around and saw them to old people a-standing there crying, and, you know, I just couldn’t stand it to leave them to old people there alone to die, so I’d just took out my rifle and shot them both. Lady, that was the kindest deed I ever did.”

“Oh, Scotty,”  I said, “Why did you tell those women such a tale as that?”

“Well, you know all them bandits you meet when you go out; you got to tell them something,  ain’t you?”

“I suppose so, but it seems to me you might think up something better than that to tell at a ladies club meeting.”

“Well, that’s what I told that bunch, anyway. You’ve got to send up some kind of a howl if you’re going to be heard. There are so many free schools and so much ignorance.”

And Scotty lighted another fifteen cent cigar (he always smoked the best), …

 

from Death Valley Scotty by Mabel – Bessie M. Johnson
– Death Valley Natural History Association

Death Valley Scotty

Same Old Bull

Wyatt Earp and his brand new Packard.
— Wyatt had bought a brand new auto and was taking Josie out to visit a friend in Arizona. Somewhere south of Needles a large, renegade bull leapt out from behind a hummock of creosote. The bull huffed and puffed and stomped and scrapped his hooves, lowered his head and charged the brand-new shiny-clean car. The bull came at the door on Josie’s side. She screamed. She was afraid the bull would kill her. However, she had no reason to fear death as her hero, Wyatt, drew his gun and shot the beast 3 times (bang-bang-bang) into his thick skull, right between the eyes. This killed the bull almost instantly. The bull messed up the door pretty bad. Some guy jumped out of the creosote yelling and screaming about the prize bull Wyatt just killed. It seemed that Wyatt knew this guy’s boss and it was his friend he was going to visit. It was pretty funny. Sort of. I don’t know who, if anyone, paid to get Wyatt’s door fixed. I imagine they ate the bull.
The End.

Springs & Things — Before Time Began

desert waterhole

I have heard that the Paiute Indians have a legend–a story they would tell about a giant who crossed the desert with an olla full of water in each arm. With each step he would leave his footprint in the ground, and water would spill from the olla into the hole as he walked on. The giant was so large that these waterholes were one day’s walk between each for a normal-sized man. The Indian learned this and used these waterholes to travel great distances and trade with other Peoples beyond the desert. As time went on and things went the way things do, one such trail became the Mojave Road. — Editor

History of Eastern Mojave & the Mojave Road

Mojave Desert Springs

Salt Lake Road

Mojave Road

Camp Cady

Legend of the Hassayampa

Wickenburg, Az.

Hassayampa River, Wickenburg, Az.

At any rate, it was not people who went into the desert merely to write it up who invented the fabled Hassayampa, of whose waters, if any drink, they can no more see fact as naked fact, but all radiant with the color of romance. I, who must have drunk of it in my twice seven years’ wanderings, am assured that it is worth while.

~ Land of Little Rain – Mary Austin
Country of Lost Borders

The legend of the Hassayampa River — The Hassayampa rises in Yavapai county on the northern slope of Mount Union- flows south and enters Gila River at Powers Butte in Maricopa county. It is said to be named by Pauline Weaver  and to mean–beautiful waters. One legend says–He who drinks above the trail is ever truthful – While he who drinks below is lost to the truth.

The Hassayampa Legend
-Andrew Downing

There’s a legend centuries old
By the early Spaniards told
Of a sparkling stream that “lies”
Under the Arizona skies
Hassayampa is its name
And the title of its fame
Is a wondrous quality
Known today from sea to sea
Those who drink it’s waters bright
Red man, white man, boor or Knight
Girls, or women, boys or men
Never tell the truth again!

Earp, California

Earp, California is an unincorporated community in San Bernardino County in the Sonoran/Mojave Desert transition next to the Colorado River at the California/Arizona state line in Parker Valley.

Welcome to Earp, California

Welcome to Earp, California

Earp, Ca. post office

Earp post office at the eastern end of Highway 62, ZIP 92242.

In 1910 the little town was named Drennan. In 1929 Drennan was renamed Earp in 1929 in honor of the nefarious Old West lawman and entrepreneur Wyatt Earp. Wyatt and Josephine Sarah Marcus, his common-law wife, lived in the area seasonally from about 1906 staking more than 100 claims near the base of the Whipple Mountains.

Vidal, California

Downtown Vidal, California

Wyatt Earp Cabin

Wyatt Earp, the legendary law man, gunfighter, gambler, businessman and miner along with his wife, Josephine, inhabited this “dream-come-true” cottage from 1925 through 1928, winter and spring months, while he worked his “Happy Days” mines in the Whipple Mountains a few miles north of this site. This is the only permanent residence they owned in their long lives.

They bought a small cottage in nearby Vidal and lived there during the fall, winter and spring months of 1925 – 1928, while he worked his “Happy Days” mines in the Whipple Mountains a few miles north. It was the only place they owned the entire time they were married. They spent the winters of his last years working the claims but lived in Los Angeles during the summers, where Wyatt died on January 13, 1929.

Happy Days Mine

Josie & Wyatt and dog at Happy Days mine west of Parker, Az.

Vidal/Parker area map

Sagebrush Inn: Route 66

Now, there is no question that Bessie catered to some wild goings on at the Sage Brush Inn, but the thing that seems to titillate people is the rather persistent rumor that she was a madam and operated a brothel. This rumor is wide spread and taken as a given by many, maybe most, and it is certainly strengthened when Bill Bender is one of those who states it to be a fact.

Sagebrush Inn

Bill lived right across the street from Bessie, was well acquainted with her, and was in a position to be in the know. He put it this way:

During World War II that [living] room did overtime as a ‘junior brothel’ for any lonesome airman stationed at George. Annie could always get in touch with a shady lady or two when the demand was there. It never really became a steady part of her business, but she was for anything that turned a profit.

There are also wild stories about how youngsters were not allowed in the place, not even during the day, and about thatched cribs, little shed-like structures, that dotted the back yard. However, in the early days as a service station this would seem most unlikely. Nor does it seem reasonable to suppose that Sagebrush Annie’s roadhouse would have brazenly had cribs on the premises with her family and friends in close proximity. Of course, in later years, with her relatives and friends gone, the situation would have been different.

from; Sagebrush Annie & the Sagebrush Route
By Richard D. Thompson

Walking the Mojave Indian Trail

Travel in General

Mataviam described travel in general to Kelly (1933: 23:7)  in the following way:

Travelers packed everything on their backs, and wore any kind of foot gear.  Children always wore shoes; if the children were too small to walk, their parents took turns carrying them.  They also took turns packing the water jar, which was carried in a burden basket (ais) or a net.  Blankets, etc., were taken.  Women took cooking utensils, including  manos, but not metates.  Men took weapons and walked ahead.  Dogs accompanied the party.  Children were given something to carry; perhaps a small skin sack, but not a burden basket or net.  Travel along certain routes had to be timed so that people could be sure that there would be water available in drier sections.  Timing  was particularly important if some of these sources were tanks and sandstone potholes.

Manos atop metates

from:
Southern Paiute – Chemehuevi Trails Across the Mojave Desert:
Isabel Kelly=s Data,  1932-33 (Darling/Sneed Symposium, AAA 2004)
Catherine S. Fowler
University of Nevada, Reno

Shorty Harris — Out to Lunch

 

Companion & Harris, Shorty, 1857-1934

Shorty Harris and companion eating next to an automobile somewhere in Death Valley during the 1920s. Rhyolite, Nevada was founded in 1904 after Shorty Harris and Ed Cross discovered Rhyolite Quartz at the Bullfrog mine. By 1906 the town had two railroad lines and a population of 10,000. The mines, however, did not produce as expected and by the early 1910s Rhyolite was abandoned. Aurora, Nevada was a silver mining boom town founded in 1860. The heyday of Aurora ran throughout the 1860s (Mark Twain briefly lived there), but it slowly declined after 1870. It went through a rebirth in 1912 when a new stamp mill and cyanide plant were built at the mines. In 1917, however, the mill closed down and by the early 1920s Aurora was abandoned. Calico, California was initially founded as a silver mining town in 1882 but by 1890 the cost of recovering the silver became prohibitive. The town, however, continued to exist until 1907 due to the production of Borax.

Shorty Harris

At Furnace Creek ranch, Mr. Harris learned of the finding of three partially decomposed bodies between Lee’s camp in Echo canon and the Lida C. [sic] borax mine, at the foot of a low hill on the north side of the Funeral range. The presence of the bodies was first reported at Ash Meadows by an Indian, who was attracted to the spot by a band of coyotes and a …

The Prospector

Shorty Harris, Death Valley

Shorty Harris

The prospector is one of the unique, one of the most exceptional and most worthy of all those remarkable characters who have exploited and led the way for the development of the west. The west owes him a debt of gratitude which the west can never pay. Always poor, often homeless, self-reliant, hopeful, generous and brave, he has been the solitary explorer of desert and mountain vastness. He is the one who unlocked from its imprisoned silence the countless millions of what is now the world’s wealth. He penetrates the most remote and inaccessible regions, defies hunger and storms alike, sleeps upon the mountain side or in improvised cabins, restlessly wanders and searches through weeks and months and years for nature’s hidden and hoarded treasures. Often-times his search ends in poverty and distress and failure, sometimes in success. Without the prospector – this poor isolated wanderer – the great mining centers of the west would not exist. Without his uneasy, never-tiring efforts, millions of dollars now on their way to minister to the happiness and comfort of the country would never have been poured into the channels of business and commerce.

(Excerpt taken from “100 Years of Real Living” by the Bishop Chamber of Commerce, 1961)

Prospectors & Miners

Shorty Harris

Ode to Barstow

The devil wanted a place on earth, sort of a summer home.
A place to spend his vacation whenever he wanted to roam.

So he picked out Barstow, a place both wretched and rough.
Where the climate was to his liking and the people were hardened and tough.

He dried up the streams in the canyons and ordered no rain to fall.
He dried up the lakes in the valley then baked and scorched it all.

Then over his barren desert he transplanted shrubs from hell.
The cactus, thistle and prickly pear. The climate suited them well.

Now, the home was much to his liking, but animal life, he had none.
So he created crawling creatures that all mankind would shun.

First he made the rattlesnake with its forked poisonous tongue;
Taught it to strike and rattle and how to swallow its young.

The he made scorpions and lizards and the ugly old Horned Toad.
He placed spiders of every description under rocks by the side of the road.

The he ordered the sun to shine hotter, hotter and hotter still.
Until even the cactus wilted and the old Horned Toad looked ill.

Then he gazed on his earthly kingdom as any creator would.
He chuckled a little up his sleeve and admitted that it was good.

‘Twas summer now and Satan lay by a prickly pear to rest.
The sweat rolled off his swarthy brow so he took off his coat and vest.

“By Golly,” he finally panted, “I did my job too well, I’m going
Back where I came from. Barstow is hotter than Hell.”

~ Anonymous

-= Mojave River Valley Museum =-