The Real Death Valley

<<<<< DEATH VALLEY 1926-1991 >>>>>

My first trip to Death Valley was some three score and five years ago, on a Glendale High School Science Club tour on a spring vacation in 1926. Park Turrill, and excellent but tough Chem Prof had started trips the year before. We had about fifty students and teachers. Cars were 10 Model T's, one Dodge and one Cadillac. Four boys could pick up a Model T and set it back on the road. We loaded up at school with camp gear and food supplies for the week. We made Mojave by noon, and there the pavement ended. The road was good until Red Rock Canyon, where we plowed through sand, but made it. The only habitation was a small store and a RR station in Inyokern. Arrived at Johannesburg at dusk and camped on the concrete floor of an unfinished bank building. It turned out that I was the only one who had any experience in cooking on a Coleman gas stove, so I was drafted to be the camp cook for the entire trip. The next morning we explored Randsburg and then on to Trona. It was then on to Searles Dry Lake and all 12 cars lined and we raced across the flat surface. Next we stopped to check out the ruins of the Epsom Salt Monorail, before crossing the well-graded Wingate Pass (all now closed to traffic). It was an easy downhill to the Ashford Mill ruins and up a side canyon to Bradbury Well for the night. Cooked again. The next morning we gathered brush for possible sand at Bennett's Well. Made it with no trouble and on past the Eagle Borax Works to the site of Shorty Harris' recent grave. It was covered with horse bones. Reached our goal of Furnace Creek, a working ranch after dark. The night ended with a dip in a swimming hole, built for the hired hands. This was years before "skinny dipping" so we split, the girls in the pool; the boys herded over behind bushes, for "decency". Unfortunately for the boys pleasure, it was the dark of the moon. The next morning we took a rough water-washed road to the then working borax mine of Ryan. The commissary was opened up for us and a young lad started dishing out cones. To my amazement, he asked "and what do you want, Walt". Turned out we had graduated from Le Conte Jr Hi together a couple of years before. We then headed for Death Valley Junction, and a scooter passed us on the narrow gauge. Turned out that my friend had rushed down to man the soda fountain at the hotel. At that time gas sold for $.50/gal at the Junction, so Turrill had shipped in several drums of gasoline, so we had our own. Cooked dinner at Shoshone, then drove over Salsberry Pass in the dark to camp again at Bradbury Well. The next day we drove south past Saratoga Spring to Cave Spring. Here a couple were mining and crushed and panned some gold for us. Our route from here was over isolated territory, crossing Bicycle Lake in what is now Fort Irwin. Camped in the park in Barstow in a rainstorm,

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