I have heard the Indians would go to the reeds in the riparian areas where aphids fed in large numbers, brush away the tiny bugs and scrape their shiny-sticky waste from the blades. En masse the material would be shaped into a large, heavy loaf with a hardness and sweetness similar to rock candy. In Jedediah Smith’s first expedition across the Mojave his guides recovered a cache of the sweet bread to supplement their then meatless diet.
“But men accustomed to living on meat and at the same time travelling hard will Eat a surprising quantity of corn and Beans which at this time constituted our principal subsistence.”
~ J.Smith, 1826
“Two men were in charge of a station at Egan Canyon in Nevada. One morning a band of Indians captured them, after a battle. The chief chose to make the prisoners feed his braves before murdering them, and compelled them to cook an immense quantity of bread. The Indians gorged themselves during the day, while the captives toiled and sweated over their cooking, probably no more cheerfully because of a promise that they would be burned at the stake at sundown. A wagon tongue had been driven into the ground to serve as a stake, and preparations for their roasting were in progress, when in true story-book style, a company of cavalry happened along and saved them. This was the narrative given out as absolute truth in after years given by one of the men.”
Freeman Station was established by the ex-stage driver Freeman S. Raymond in 1872. On the last day of February, 1874, the Station was attacked by Tiburcio Vasquez. Although the station occupants had surrendered, “Old Tex” (who was sleeping in the barn) awoke and fired at Vasquez, wounding him in the leg.
Tiburcio Vasquez the ‘Gentleman’ bandito.
Vasquez returned fire and delivered a leg wound to Tex (Pracchia, 1994). In 1894, Freeman’s parcel became the first homestead in Indian Wells Valley. ~ R. Reynolds
Skidoo came to life because of fog. When Harry Ramsey and a man called One-eye Thompson lost their way on a road leading to the new boom camp of Harrisburg, they stopped to rest near a log lying against an outcropping of rock. When the fog lifted, the rock turned out to be gold. This was back in 1905. In deciding upon a name for the town that sprung up, a numerologist associated a popular expression of the day, 23-Skidoo, with the fact that a Rhyolite man named Bob Montgomery had successfully piped water from Telescope Peak 23 miles away and suggested the name Skidoo. So it became.
Downtown Skidoo. Death Valley National Park
Old-timers say the camp produced over a million dollars worth of gold ore between its discovery and its demise some 20 years later. Skidoo’s chief claim to fame, however, was not its riches. Rather, it was an infamous lynching of a scoundrel named Joe Simpson in 1908.
On a tour to the ghost town of Skidoo in 1962, we were privileged to be accompanied by an 87-year-old gentleman named George Cook. The interesting thing about Mr. Cook was that it was he who pulled on the rope at the lynching. His participation had only recently been divulged to a few intimate friends—after all others involved had passed on to their rewards, or whatever.
Joe “Hooch” Simpson
“Joe Simpson,” Mr. Cook told us, ‘was a would-be villain who had killed a man at Keeler after shooting-up Jack Gun’s Saloon in Independence the preceding year. He’d somehow gotten off and drifted to Skidoo where he became a partner with Fred Oakes in the Gold Seal Saloon. Across the street was Jim Arnold’s Skidoo Trading Company.
“Arnold was a friendly, well-liked man and had always been on good terms with Simpson, but Simpson became drunk and abusive one April morning and decided to hold up a bank situated in part of Arnold’s Skidoo Trading Company. Apprehended, his gun was taken away and hidden by the deputy sheriff, but a little later Simpson found his weapon and returned to the store to shoot Jim Arnold. He then turned on two other men who had come to the rescue, but his aim was poor and both escaped. Eventually, Simpson was overpowered and placed under guard in the deputy sheriff’s cabin. Unfortunately,” Mr. Cook lamented, “the popular Jim Arnold died that night.”
Skidoo went wild with indignation. After Arnold’s funeral, which the entire camp attended, a group went to the improvised jail, led the prisoner out at the end of a rope, and hanged him to the nearest telephone pole. When Sheriff Nailor from Independence arrived, after a hazardous trip over rough roads via Tonopah and Rhyolite, he made the now famous statement, “It’s the best thing that ever happened to Inyo County; it saved us $25,000!”
But this wasn’t the end. Several spectators had forgotten their cameras and wanted pictures of the hanging. So, Joe Simpson’s body was obligingly strung up again, this time from the ridgepole of the tent where he was “laid out.” News of this gruesome encore spread and the lynching won everlasting fame. In his private narrative of the event, George Cook added a factor never before related: “Joe was dead before we got the rope around his neck; he died of a heart attack (from fright) and was already gone when dragged to the telephone pole scaffold.”
It was also he, George Cook confessed, who assisted Dr. MacDonald in removing the head from Simpson’s corpse. The doctor, it seems, had once performed an operation on Simpson s nose and wanted to make a further medical study of the case. Going at night, they performed the severance at the lonely prospect hole where Simpson’s body had been tossed. (No one in Skidoo would give him a decent burial, so great was the indignation at his senseless crime). The skull was exhibited for a period in a showcase at Wildrose, but later disappeared.
The remainder of the skeleton resisted oblivion, however. Years later when George Cook returned to Skidoo to work in the mill, an agitated prospector appeared one day to report a headless skeleton of a man who’d evidently been murdered. Because Cook was the only old-timer around at the time, he was consulted. Indeed a crime had been committed sometime, he agreed, but of the details, he had conveniently forgotten.
Last year George Cook passed away. Small in stature, religious, mild-tempered, and given to writing sentimental verse, he was the antithesis of our Western idea of a vigilante. The role forced upon him by his acute anger over the murder of a friend bothered this good man to the end of his days. His belief that Simpson did not expire at his hand appeared to be a real comfort. And, perhaps he was right. We cannot disagree, for George Cook was there.
Much interesting history is connected with the now-defunct Skidoo. Following its early boom, the town was deserted for a period, then, under new management, the mine and mill reopened during the 1930s and a period of production occurred. The old wild days never returned, however, and its fame as a mining camp still rests upon the lynching incident —to which we add, “Joe Simpson did not die because of a rope and a telephone pole. He died of a heart attack!”
by Myrtle Nyles – November 1964 – Desert Magazine
Editor’s Note: This is but one version of this story, and it is worth saying that it has generated many other versions and stories through its telling.
In January 1906 two wandering prospectors, John Ramsey and John (One-Eye) Thompson were headed towards the new gold strike at Harrisburg. Along the way a blinding fog came in and the two camped near Emigrant Spring for fear of getting lost. …More …
In August of 1907 a brakeman at Cajon Summit station failed to secure a train while unhitching helper engines and over fifty cars began rolling out of control down the grade into the Victor Valley. After seven miles of plummeting down the tracks thirteen cars derailed. A few miles further thirty more cars failed to make the curve before passing through the Upper Narrows. One after another they hurtled into the river bursting into flames. There were cattle on the train too. Many survived the initial accident, but died soon afterward. The last nine cars, with a frightened local rancher on the lead caboose, rolled to a stop in Oro Grande.
In the ashes of one car that burned for over a week, there were four hats found. The brakeman, it was discovered, had been selling rides to hobos for $1. Those at the scene agreed that there were at least that many that died.Photos – courtesy B.F. Minister
“The point of view is born of the desert herself. When you are there, face to face with the earth and the stars and time day after day, you cannot help feeling that your role, however gallant and precious, is a very small one. This conviction, instead of driving you to despair as it usually does when you have it inside the walls of houses, releases you very unexpectedly from all manner of anxieties. You are frightfully glad to have a role at all in so vast and splendid a drama and want to defend it as well as you can, but you do not trouble much over the outcome because the desert mixes up your ideas about what you call living and dying. You see the dreadful, dead country living in beauty, and feel that the silence pressing around it is alive.”
Jack and Margaret Nelson, were a very nice couple, who lived on the corner of Olive and E Street. They had three dogs, two were copper-colored police dogs, named Penny and Copper, and one chow dog, named sugar. My parents became very good friends with them. They had a cow, and we soon started buying our milk from them, until they moved away.
After the Nelsons left the area we started purchasing our melt from the Snell Dairy and Creamery Company that was located in Apple Valley. Dick and Winnie Weening took over the milk routes, serving all the high desert, as far as State Line in 1942. In 1943, the Weening family purchased the dairy and the name of Snell Dairy. The milk was delivered in glass bottles and the empty bottles were picked up with the next delivery. The milkman would even put the full milk bottles in the refrigerator. There will never be service like that again.
This photo was taken in 1945 or 1946, and was provided by Barbara Weening Davisson, daughter of Dick and Winnie Weening. She notes, that the picture is of the Johnny Weening, driver and Iva Weening Carpenter, with son Jerry (standing), Phil McGurn, being held.
One day a man passed by a ranch and saw a beautiful horse. Hoping to buy the animal, he said to the rancher: “I think your horse looks pretty good, so I’ll give you $500 for him.”
“He doesn’t look so good, and he’s not for sale,” the rancher said.
The man insisted, “I think he looks just fine and I’ll up the price to $1,000.”
“He doesn’t look so good,” the rancher said, “but if you want him that much, he’s yours.”
The next day the man came back raging mad. He went up to the rancher and screamed, “You sold me a blind horse. You cheated me!”
The rancher calmly replied, “I told you he didn’t look so good, didn’t I?”
This is a crummy picture of ‘Betty.’ She is about 3 inches tall and rides on the dashboard of my truck tucked up against the windshield. She keeps me company. She reminds me of Betty in the old Archie comic books. She was the sweet one as opposed to her shallow-minded ‘frenemy,’ Veronica. I had a Veronica too. One day, as I was driving down Main St. here in town, Veronica starts up with her spoiled whining and demands. I really didn’t want to hear it. So I grabbed her by her skinny little ankle and tossed her out the window.
Single Blanket Jackass Prospector Shorty Harris’ burial beside Jim Dayton in lower Death Valley was quite an occasion. Four hundred CCC boys, an army chaplain and a goodly gathering of desert rats and interested visitors gathered at the site near Eagle Borax and awaited arrival of the hearse from Bishop, as the sun dropped to the crest of Telescope Peak. All day two old miner friends had been digging the grave aided and abetted by a jug of firewater hidden behind a clump of greasewood.
When the casket arrived and was measured the grave was too short as the diggers had figured on the length of the “Short Man” and not the coffin.
As the sun dropped behind the Panamints and the chaplain and mourners fidgeted uneasily, a voice came from the grave.
“Bend the so and so in the middle and let’s plant him. He won’t give a damn.”
However it wasn’t feasible to bend a coffin but it was lowered on an angle and Shorty was buried with his head up.
—Told by T.R. Goodwin, Superintendent Death Valley National Monument
Harry Oliver’s Desert Rat Scrapbook
— Most people like to do things the easy way, but not Johnny Westen. Recently he attempted the impossible and went fishing on Dry Lake which did have a bare covering of water due to southern Nevada’s unusual weather of the past week.
His first day’s catch was nothing. Undismayed, Johnny fished another day, and another, and on the fourth day, he had the last laugh, for he returned with a gallon jar of lung fish.
Pictures were taken of the fish and a couple were preserved as samples. How they live in the mud of the lake was told; the way the mud forms a protective coat, but melts off when the rains come, and then forms up again as teh [sic] lake dries up. The fish, a type of lung fish, have both eyes on top of their heads and a half shell effect. What Johnny intends to do with the rest of his catch isn’t known for the average size of the lunk [sic] fish is between three quarters and one and a half inches.
Thanks to S.G. Buck, Indio
Harry Oliver’s Desert Rat Scrapbook
There are as many deserts as there are people in them, just as there are as many worlds. Being a “Desert Rat” is like being a lover, for the desert is like a woman with a million faces.
Her flowery make-up in the spring is like a your chorus girl. There’s real beauty there if you can get past the sand verbenas and cloying perfume. Most visitors see only the surface charm. She’s in a flirting mood then is anybody’s girl. If you want to be a “stage door Johnny,” you can pay a high price for a cheap thrill and feel a bit silly afterward, carrying home a mass-produced flashy painting of the desert in bloom like a Paris postcard.
The desert possesses a rich dowry and some woo her for that alone, but the money leaves a bitter taste with a secret hatred for its source. For business reasons or to cover up their frustration, such persons may try to act and talk like real desert rats, but it won’t work! Even if they ride silver-saddled Palominos, wear embroidered shirts, teach their butler a western drawl and serve champagne in tincups.
Anyone can be a desert rat who can see and love the beauty of the desert in all her moods. There’s beauty and wild music in a desert sandstorm. The lightning and thunder of a summer cloudburst are the flashing eyes — the emoting and tears of a high-spirited, beautiful actress “putting on a scene.” They are soon over. There’s beauty in crisp cool winter mornings and hot sultry summer afternoons, but most of all there’s the intimate beauty of being alone with her on long walks on lying on her warm breast on balmy summer nights counting the stars in her hair — listening in the silence to your own heartbeat as it matches hers.
Being a desert rat and liking it is like being in love — you just can’t help it.
First published in Desert Rat Scrapbook, Winter 1946-47
Back before Route 66 made crossing the desert easy, three friends wanted to cross the Mojave. Of the three buddies there was a “smart dude,” a “not so smart dude,” and a “not smart at all dude.” Before they left the “smart dude” says, “We’ll meet here in an hour. Bring something useful to cross the desert with.”
An hour passes. All three friends return.
The “smart dude” says, “I brought some ice packs to keep our heads cool.”
The “not so smart dude” says, “I brought a pail of water to keep us properly hydrated.”
The “not smart at all dude” smiles real broad and says, “I brought a car door so I can roll down the window when it gets hot.”
Way in back of a mining claim in a crack near a knob on a knoll up near Rattlesnake Flats there is some thick brush grown around a wobbly old picnic table.
Roy Rogers
My friend tells me that this table once belonged to TV legend, Roy Rogers. I believe this to be true. I am told that, well, look at it; it is a much longer table than normal. My friend has lived down the street and around the corner from the Rogers for years before Roy and Dale passed away. My friend is quite credible.
Roy Rogers’ old picnic table
I sat at the table for a moment. I hardly had to close my eyes to see cowboy cuffed shirts, checkered table cloths, barbecued ribs, potato salad and hear some old time country western pop. The table spoke to me — it said, “Yep — they sat here.”
Gritts, the grocer, poses a pretty straight and put on his No. 1 smile As the lady with the I’m-placing-a-thumping-order air entered the shop. She wanted some cheese.
“Yes, madame.” smirked Gritts. “I have some delightful Derbies, madam, a quantity of choice cheddars, and a parcel of prime Parmeasans.”
Particular about Cheese
Madam would certainly like to taste some if she could. Certainly, Madam could, if she would. Gritts flourished his gauge over this cheese and that. Madam nibbled at 11 different samples. No; none of them was quite “it.”
“Of course, Madam,” said Gritts at length, “if you require Stilton–” and he handed her a generous taster.
“Ah,” nodded the lady, as she smacked her lips, “that will do nicely! now, if you’ll give me a matchbox all be getting home. I only want to bait a mouse trap!”
I left Fulton city on the first Monday in May, for Bashan, the land of peace, with my family, nine in number. About 30 miles from there, my little boy, about 3 1/2 years old, fell out of the wagon, and the wheel ran over his neck. I took him up and saw that he was about to depart this life. But not feeling willing to part with him, I administered to the child according to the law and order of the gospel, and the Lord blessed him, and he soon recovered, and is now hearty and well.”
By Ivan Summers, from the SANTA MONICA EVENING OUTLOOK, Automotive Section, Thursday, January 29, 1925.
“Oh My Gawd”! The explosion of words roused my dog snoozing nearby. What else would you say when, while pawing through an old box of family junk, an eighty eight year old newspaper smacks your eyeballs? Especially if you’ve had a lifelong addiction to desert minutiae. The absorbing yarn of about 2000 words (with no byline) entails a journey by two Franklin automobiles into and out of Death Valley including a successful meeting with the legendary Death Valley Scotty. The (crumbling) newspaper itself is an historic gem laced with ads touting “Balloon Tires,” the new Maxwell Coupe, the Rio Roadster, the Hudson super six–all iconic in U. S. car history. As well, splashed front page, are several pics of the famous air cooled Franklins in the valley and a photo of that career rascal himself–Scotty!
According to the writer (unnamed) there had been an attempt the previous summer to negotiate Franklin cars from Furnace Creek Ranch to Scotty’s digs. But 126 temp and road (or no road) conditions turned them back for another try in January of 1925.
Good stuff here. They breakfast in Mojave, proceed to Randsberg, Leach Springs and Owl Springs. You can’t do that today as Leach Springs is on sacred military ground. That trip assuredly went
over what still is the Steamwell road out of Johannesberg, through Granite Wells connecting with Owl Springs and on to the Harry Wade road. Then east on Bradburg Wash to Shoshone. Tough going today if
you could even find it.
These guys eventually got to Scotty but with an interesting little aside in Rhyolite. The mining camp had only been “partly disassembled.” A moving picture company was filming something to be entitled “The Air Mail.” (Film archives)??
Scotty, apparently a genial host, saw that the travelers were housed and fed. The writer goes on to inform that Scotty’s house was furnished with elaborate stuff from China with maybe a $6,000 import fee plus other niceties that exceeded $150,000. The story implied that these were Scotty’s digs done with Scotty’s money There was mention by Scott of his ‘partner.’ Albert Johnson, who Scotty mentioned was going to build a million dollar house near his.
Apparently what the Santa Monica writer didn’t know in 1925 was that Scotty was one of the magnificent cons of the early 20th century. He’d been exposed in 1906 and again in 1912 as a fraud and hoaxer. He relieved numerous gullible investors, including Johnson, of many thousands–invested in nonexistent gold mines. He even did some jail time in 1912. Despite this egregious behavior he remained in Johnson’s affection until Johnson passed in 1948.
The Franklin car party’s announced intention was to negotiate the length of the valley, in this instance from North to South. From Scotty’s out of the south end. The article states “this had never been done before.”
Well, uh, not exactly the case. This writer’s father, Herbert S. Summers, made a journey in 1923 in a Model T Ford from south to north at least as far as Furnace Creek Ranch. His route was from Barstow north east past Bicycle Lake, Garlic Springs, Cave Springs and directly up the valley to Furnace Creek Ranch.
Summers wrote a delightful little tale of their adventure describing the perils of mid-summer travel and took numerous photos–still in the family archives.
On exiting Scotty’s, the Franklin party passed by something referred as the “lost wagon” and another site called “Surveyors Well,” neither of which appear on today’s maps. They evidently turned west to take the Wingate Wash (Pass) road paralleling the Epsom Salt Mono Rail and eventually found Mojave, unaware that it was possible to complete the North-South transit through Cave Springs and to Barstow. It in fact (in reverse) had been done.
Death Valley survived Scotty–and is a better place for it
In The Year 1910:
Only 14 percent of the homes in America had bathtubs.
A three-minute call from Denver to New York City cost $11.
There were only 8,000 cars in the U.S. and only 144 miles of paved roads.
The average U.S. worker made between $200 and $400 per year.
Two out of every 10 U.S. adults couldn’t read or write.
On the Mojave Desert where water, like gold, in considered a precious element, a bath is often possible only through divine intervention plus human ingenuity. When Bob Alexander, dusty and dirty from a month-long prospecting trip through the Mojave Desert Mountains, awoke one morning in 1867 to an overcast sky and smelled moisture-laden dust in the atmosphere, he grinned from ear to ear.
“Rain, by jeepers!” he prognosticated. “And here’s where Bob takes a bath!”
He hurried through breakfast, and just as he’d finished scraping the last spoonful of chuck from his plate, the rain began to fall. He stripped his clothes off, stepped out of his tent, and stood for a long time under the ample shower. Wet from head to foot, he ducked back into the tent for soap and worked up a generous lather all over his body. He chuckled with glee.
“Better than going to church,” he told himself. “After four weeks of dry camping, cleanliness is sure on a par with godliness, as the feller says.”
With eyes closed to keep out the soap, Bob left the tent. “Hell’s Bells!” he exploded. Typically, the desert shower had ceased as abruptly as it had begun. He squinted at the clouds from under a carefully raised eyelid. They were rising. The sun was breaking through.
Ugly words like blue flames flicked from his angry lips. He groped his way back into the tent, took the first rag he could lay hands on and wiped the soap from his eyes. The sun blazed forth, and the clouds disappeared over a distant mountain rim. Bob watched their departure with baleful eyes.
Providence Mountains
“Dry gulched by a rain storm!” he thundered bitterly, “without enough water to wash a horned toad!” The soap was beginning to dry and draw on Bob’s skin. A quick rub-down served only to increase the irritation. There was nothing to do but to hike to Fort Rock Springs, five miles distant in the Providence Mountains. Here he could find water and relief. Donning his dirty clothes, Bob struck out across the country.
When he reached the Fort entrance, his feet, tough though they were, smarted like blazes and his skin, drawn and puckered under his clothes, itched unmercifully. He stopped in agonized surprise when the sentry order:
“Halt!”
“What the hell!” Bob remonstrated.
“You can’t go in there. The Fort is quarantined. Measles.”
“I’ve got to go in there. I’m all lathered up with soap!”
“Drunk or just crazy?” interrogated the sentry.
“Neither,” Bob returned, exasperated. His voice took on a pathetic tone as he stripped off his shirt to illustrate his story. The sentry listened and looked, his face changing from astonishment to amusement and sympathy.
“Mister,” said the sentry, “orders from Lieutenant Drumm, Commander of this here fort, are that only officers of the Fort, people with passes, and details, are permitted to pass through here.”
Bob was desperate. He retired abjectly. But not for long. In a few minutes, he marched up towards the sentry again, this time, simulating, awkwardly enough, the gait of a soldier on parade. The sentry smiled.
“Halt! Who comes there!” he sputtered, fighting back laughter.
“Detail of one, bound for the Fort,” returned Bob, grimly.
“Pass, detail!” shouted the sentry.
Bob passed, on a dead run, headed for a tub and water.
Taken from The Old West, Pioneer Tales of San Bernardino County
The latest flying saucer report comes from Silver Lake airport near Baker. Two aircraft communicators stationed at Silver Lake report they watched a brilliantly-glowing object speed through the desert sky for nearly 10 minutes Saturday night before it disappeared on the western horizon.
Their report was confirmed by crew members and 25 passengers of a United Airlines plane and by aircraft communicators at a station in Las Vegas, Nevada.
David Stewart of Redondo Beach, first officer of the United plane, said the object was more cigar-shaped than the previously reported pancake-shaped “saucers”.
L. M. Norman and R. E. Connor, the two aircraft communicators at the Silver Lake airport, said the object might have been a meteor.
“We first saw it some 15 degrees above the horizon north of Silver Lake,” Norman said. “It appeared to be a big ball of fire with a large luminous vapor trail.”
“We watched it from 7 to 10 minutes. It looked like it might have been falling, but then it swung off toward the west and disappeared.”
The fiery object was observed not only by the two communicators at Silver Lake, but also by four pilots who had stopped at the airport for an overnight stay.
While the Silver Lake men watched the object, their station was in contact with the United Airlines plane which also spotted it.
Steward, the United officer, said his crew of five men all saw the object, as did the plane’s passengers.
He said his ship was flying at 14,000 feet and that the object flew a parallel course for 20 miles then faded in the distance. He estimated its speed as faster than his plane’s 290 miles per hour.
The tools of the desert dwellers varied with specific material available and with the individual Takic or Numic bands of Uto-Aztecan speaking Indians: Vanyume, Paiute, Chemehuevi or Kawiisu. Simple wood fire drills enabled Native Americans to make fire. By burning roots of a tree or bush, the Paiute preserved the fire. Use of rolled up juniper bark which when lit held fire for a long time.
They made stone mortars and metates (some portable) for grinding food and paint. A stick served as a stirrer; a tortoise shell, sheep horn or pottery as dippers; a rabbit scapula or carved wood as a spoon; a sheep’s horn, coiled basketry or pottery became dishes. Tortoise carapace had been reported used as diggers, bowls, dishes to hold seeds. In Oro Grande specimens of tortoise shell rattles have been found. Waterproof baskets, animals’ stomachs, and pottery “canteens” served as water carriers. Knives and drills were, of course, made from flaked stones and shaped bone. The yucca spine with fiber attached served as needle and thread. Sinew provided strong twine and backing for bows. Glue came from boiled sheep’s horn. For tanning skins, aborigines used the brain of larger animals. Professional tanners contend that the brain size of each animal is large enough to tan that animal’s skin. Paiute people utilized desert hardwood for their three to four feet long bows, sometimes
backed with sinew. Chemehuevi sinew-backed bows, often recurved, were powerful and accurate. Some Paiutes and Utes made bows from juniper trees by cutting through the bark. When that section died, they took it off the juniper tree and carved it into sturdy bows.
“When that section died, they took it off the juniper tree and carved it into sturdy bows.”
Arrows, made from reeds or arrow weed, were tipped with local quartz, chalcedony, jasper, or traded for obsidian obtained from the Paiute or Shoshone of Owens Valley. Netting and snares added to the survival tool kit.
Dozens of varieties of juncas, reeds and grasses made baskets for cooking, wearing (as hats) and storing. Some baskets with pitch added to them held water.
Their migratory yearly rounds made it necessary to store food to be retrieved during poor winters. They built water resistant caches with rocks, or into caves, or tree trunks. If grasses came late in January, runners went to their caches for food.
These tools allowed desert Indians to survive in a harsh environment for 5,000 years.
A selection from: Sun, Sand and Solitude
— By Randall Henderson
Here’s a solution for those who are appalled at the thought of mastering all those tongue-twisting names the scientists have
given the various species of cactus which grow on the desert. George Wharton James offers an answer in his book Wonders of the Colorado Desert. James said he once asked an old desert prospector how many varieties of cacti he was familiar with.
Stick you cactus
“By gosh,” said the prospector. “You city fellers have no idea how many kinds we got. I know every one of ‘em. There’s the “Full of Stickers, All Stickers, Never Fail Stickers, Stick Everybody, Stick and Stay In, Sharp Stickers, Extra Sharp Stickers, Big Stickers, Little Stickers, Stick While You Sleep, Stick While You Wait, Stick ’Em Alive, Stick ’Em Dead, Stick Unexpectedly, Stick anyway, Stick In And Never Come Out, Stick Through Leather, Stick Through Anything, Stick & Fester, Barbed Fishhook Cactus, Rattlesnake Fangs Cactus, Impartial Cactus, Democratic Cactus, The Deep Sticker, and a few others.”
Bathtubs when first introduced in 1840 and laws were passed against their use due to safety reasons. Someone conceived the idea of a bathtub on wheels which visited homes by appointment. The idea worked so well these wheeled tubs were introduced in most of our larger cities and were quite a moneymaker. Most of them were built of steel and copper and about 7 feet long and nearly as wide. At least curtains on a frame gave some privacy.
(Capper’s Weekly, 1930)
Gary, the white-tailed antelope squirrel, succumbed to type II diabetes on July 29, 2011 after 4 years of surviving solely on corn chips provided by campers and tourists visiting his native national park habitat.
Ed Lizard – Long-nosed leopard lizard. Died at the pointed beak of an adult roadrunner, June 4, 2008.
Hesperia, was initially purchased in anticipation of the railroad coming through. Investors stood to make a nice profit from not only the railroad, but in the real estate near by as communities grew.
Hesperia, Ca.
But the railroad was built to Mojave, where trains could easily be routed southward toward Los Angeles, or over the Tehachapis, then north to San Francisco. The Hesperia investment languished and then was passed on to others. The railroad came through much later, but it was not so much of a big deal then.
This is Silverwood Lake. It is named after some guy named Silverwood rather than the silver wood that grows around the lake and Summit Valley. Before they could have the lake there had to be the dam. The dam in this picture is Cedar Springs Dam. Before the dam there was Cedar Springs. It was a small town. It was flooded to make the lake. Everyone moved out first. Some other stuff happened here before that.
So the way it went is that the guys that were shooting at me fell over when I drove through just like I bowled a strike (and that’s why all the bullet holes are there). Some other guys started chasing me and I was going so fast that people said they could see my dust blowing in the wind for 32 miles. I come barreling down the road and the road turned and I didn’t so I went airborne over that there hill and landed in a dead stop right there where you see it. The old flathead engine was running so hard and fast still and afraid to do anything but go full throttle and it come bursting right out of the hole in the front you see and hurtled into space. About every 80 days the motor still flies by just a humming, spinning, and gleaming in the sun. I swear–true story.
Apparently what the Santa Monica writer didn’t know in 1925 was that Scotty was one of the magnificent cons of the early 20th century. He’d been exposed in 1906 and again in 1912 as a fraud and hoaxer. He relieved numerous gullible investors, including Johnson, of many thousands–invested in nonexistent gold mines. He even did some jail time in 1912. Despite this egregious behavior he remained in Johnson’s affection until Johnson passed in 1948.
