Outdoor Adventure USA

A year ago, we reported on a disastrous flash flood that occurred Nov 6 and then a second rain event 2 weeks later over the Grape Vine Mountains. Death Valley was virtually shut down for months during the cleanup. In late October this year 2016, we visited Death Valley and found everything back to normal with the exception that Scotty’s Castle is still closed. It maybe several years before it can be reopened.

The best time to visit Death Valley is from now until about April 15th for the best weather.

If you hurry you can just make the Death Valley Encampment November 12-16, 2016. Sponsored by the Death Valley ‘49ers the goal is to expand awareness of Death Valley and celebrate the pioneer spirit. http://www.deathvalley49ers.org/events.htm

Tonight our focus will be on some of the significant events and unique places in Death Valley.

MAP
• Death Valley National Park, the largest national park in the lower U.S.,
• Encompasses some 3.3 million acres of the Mojave Desert in eastern California.
o for comparison Anza Borrego Desert State Park, the largest CA state park is 600,000 acres
• Almost 95% is designated as wilderness
• Elevations ranging from -282 feet at Badwater (the lowest point in the Western Hemisphere) to 11,049 feet at the summit of Telescope Peak.
• About 1.2 million visitors per year
• Summers are unbelievably hot (temperatures commonly exceed 120 degrees) and dry, but the winters generally are mild, although with occasional bitter-cold storms.
• The spring and fall seasons generally are mild, but they can be windy.

• On July 10, 1913 Death Valley recorded the world’s hottest air temperature ever recorded on a properly sited and maintained thermometer of 134 F.

Original Death Valley 49ers

Frank "Shorty" Harris

• Frank Harris was born in Rhode Island in 1857
He never became rich, mostly because he shunned the hard labor of mining,

He gained a reputation as an exemplary prospector by discovering several profitable claims.

• As his nickname suggests Harris was a small man
He measured just five feet four inches tall
Was generally forced to wear clothes several sizes too big.
He had large protruding ears, a bushy mustache, and sparkling blue eyes.

• Shorty roamed the harsh environs of Death Valley for decades, "a single-blanket-jackass prospector," as his self-penned epitaphproclaims.

• It was his discovery in 1904 that sparked a mini gold rush into the Bullfrog Mountains.
Harris was traveling through the mountains with fellow prospector Ernest Cross
When the pair found a large quantity of quartz on a hill.
Breaking the rocks open with a pick, the prospectors discovered the
quartz was rich with gold.
One of the first nuggets they freed was the size of a hen's egg!
The vein was imbedded in a green rock that reminded Shorty of a bullfrog,
and so the mountain range in which it was found became the Bullfrog Mountains.

Word soon spread of the strike, fueled largely by Shorty's infamous loose tongue, and before long thousands of hopeful rainbow-chasers flocked to the area.
The town of Rhyolite, just over the Nevada border, sprang up to accommodate the newcomers.

Shorty did not capitalize on his rich find; in a drunken stupor he sold his claim for just $1,000, his partner
Cross later made $125,000 on his stake.
Shorty continued to roam the desert, mountains and consistently found good claims.

The ghost town Harrisburg (named after Shorty) grew around another of his finds.
But the hardy wanderer loved the prospecting life more than the wealth it could provide.
Each time he found riches he spent his money on booze or lost it gambling.

People who encountered him remembered an extremely talkative, generous man, always willing to buy a drink (if his luck was up) and tell a story.
A statue in Rhyolite depicts a short miner (Harris) with a penguin walking behind him.
Apparently, Shorty often talked about the penguins that followed him when he'd had one drink too many.

One of the last of the desert old-timers, Harris died in Lone Pine in 1934. As he had requested, h e was buried in Death Valley, south of Furnace Creek, beside his friend Jim Dayton, who had passed away more than 30 years earlier.

--from Backcounty Adventures: Southern California
by Peter Massey and Jeanne

Barker Ranch

• Was reportedly built in 40’s by a retired police officer, and later sold to some folks named Barker.
• is infamous as the last hideout of Charles Manson and his "family" during and after the gruesome Los Angeles murder spree.
Manson was caught hiding under the bathroom vanity.

• Fire Sometime between May 1 & 5th 2009 Burned the ranch. (I was there on March 18, 2009).

Tea kettle Juction

Chloride City & Chloride Cliffs
• Chloride City traces its roots to 1871 when A.J. Franklin discovered silver on Chloride Cliff. The mine was extremely remote during this time period, requiring a road to be constructed down the mountain range, across Death Valley, then southwest to the Mojave River at Daggett; itself a remote and lawless camp.
• The initial strike turned out to be lead chloride instead of silver chloride.
• Gold was also discovered there, in fact, on two occasions. Chloride City took on another nickname in 1878 as the "City of Gold." This boom lasted about five years. Then in 1905 gold was discovered again.
• second boom in the spring of 1905 during the Bullfrog boom and the camp consisted of a blacksmith shop, an assay office, a cookhouse, a bunkhouse, the mine superintendent's house
• By November 1905 three companies were formed; The Bullfrog Cliff Mining Company, The Mucho Mining Company, and the Death Valley Mining and Milling Company in addition to Franklin's Chloride Cliff Company from 1872.
• The first road through Death Valley was constructed from Chloride City to San Bernardino which was the nearest town 180 miles away. In the 1870's Franklin hauled his ore using trains of pack mules which would return carrying food and supplies to the camp. The road left Chloride City and plunged down to Death Valley and continued south across the salt flats to the west side of the valley to exit via Wingate Wash

Ubehebe Crater
• At the northern end of the Cottonwood Mountains, lies a field of volcanic craters.

Race Track

On the north end of the lakebed is a rock formation known as the grandstands. Rocks from the grandstands and other nearby formations break off and fall onto the lake where they move on the playa surface.

Warm Springs in Saline Valley

Saline Valley is a large, deep, and arid valley in the northern Mojave Desert
Most of it became a part of Death Valley National Park when the park expanded in 1994.
This area had previously been administered by the BLM.

Saline Valley was inhabited in late prehistoric times by the Timbisha (also known as Panamint or Koso).

Salt mining began in 1903 at the south end of the lake, and continued into the 1930s.
• An electric aerial tram was constructed in 1911 to carry the salt 14 miles over the Inyo Mountains to Owens Valley.

In the 1960s, the hot springs in the valley became popular among nudists
• were eventually improved by volunteer labor, to include concrete tubs, a shower, a sink, and three outhouses (which the Park Service later replaced with two concrete-lined latrines).