| Ft Irwin Area Desert Exploratory | 1-2 April 1989 |
| The Ft Irwin National Training
Center has requested a desert land addition from the Bureau of Land Management
to provide them with a larger area for armored unit training. They now can
handle battalion-scale training operations but a need is perceived to expand
these to brigade scale. The base is located NE of Barstow between I-15 and
Death Valley. Areas remain to the W, S, and E before hitting the highway or
major towns and there are three main study options, each of roughly 300 square
miles in area. The BLM is currently studying the options to determine whether,
or what kind of, minimum impact recommendation could be made for Congressional
consideration. The only mountains which could be closed to public access by any of the options are the Soda Mts. These fill in the area W of Baker on I-15. Passing by on the interstate, they appear to be barren and uninteresting. I have scheduled DPS exploratory trips into the proposal areas in October, in case one or more become closed. Right now, the Ft Irwin command is receptive to public visitation of some of the base areas to generate good PR for their proposals. The 1-2 April weekend trip was led by Bill Neil and Judy Anderson of the Desert Protective Council and Sierra Club Desert Committee. Bill is an official of the California Department of Fish and Game (DFG). We met at Barstow's Mojave River Valley Museum. one block N of I-15 at Barstow Rd and two blocks from the BLM visitor center. We first drove to Paradise Spring, located on private land just off the road to the Ft Irwin main gate. It could become a private in-holding within one land addition option. A riparian habitat is there and a DFG biologist was along to help interpret the plant life. Warm water from the spring leads to an elaborate swimming pool. |
We entered the base and drove
through the Goldstone Tracking station with its huge spacecraft tracking
antennas. Stopping at the historic mining site of Goldstone, we saw no old camp
but only debris from more recent mining activity. We stayed overnight at Camp
Cady, a historic Mojave River army fort located on the Old Spanish Trail and
now owned by DFG. Bill Neill, the "world's authority on Tamarisk", heads a long
term project to remove this water-demanding exotic from the river basin.
Commonly called "salt cedar", it is targeted for extinction not only in the
Mojave, but also by the Dept. of Water and Power in Owens Vly. (He cuts the
stems and sprays the cuts with Garlon 4, an herbicide not on the restricted
list and the only one which he has found to work.) We accompanied Bill along the river to observe ducks, tree frogs, and the progress he has made in eliminating the hated Tamarisk. Then we began our drive along the power line corridor between Manix and Silver Dry Lake near Baker. We were joined by Cliff Walker, historian and author of "Backdoor to California: The Story of the Mojave River Trail". At a side road leading to the Alvord Mts. we parked Rose's green Dodge and took only 4WD vehicles for the drive up Spanish Cyn. At Impossible Pass, 4-foot deep rutted tracks were made by the Mormon wagons on their way over from Bitter Spring. We stopped also at the Old Burro Trail. a 22' wide trail paralleling the Old Spanish wagon trail used by settlers not having wagons with oxen. Nearby are the tracks from October's Barstow to Needles motorcycle ride. We then drove to Bitter Spring on Ft Irwin land where we were joined by an Army captain and the base archeologist. Water appears for only about 100 yards, within a grove of giant Mesquite and Tamarisk, before sinking into the sand. It's taste is not particularly bitter. We heard of the Army's plans to eradicate the Tamarisk by blowing it up. |