Sat 28th March: Scotty’s Castle

In all of Death Valley National Park’s  5,220 square miles ( 2/3 the size of Wales) there is but one opulent, extravagant building: Scotty’s Castle. Scotty neither built nor owned it, but was instrumental in its creation. Here’s a summary of the unusual story.

Scotty was an adventurer and a conman who claimed that he had found gold in Death Valley in the early years of the 20^th century. He persuaded a number of investors from back East to put funds into his non-existent mine, including a Chicago businessman called Albert Johnson.

Johnson was rich, a millionaire, and also a mining engineer. After some years he decided to go and see this mine for himself. When he arrived in Death Valley he was confronted by a gunfight staged by Scotty, designed to scare him off, but Johnson was made of tougher stuff and stayed. He soon realised that there was no mine, but against all odds he and Scotty became firm friends.

Johnson thereafter frequently visited the valley with Scotty where the two enjoyed cowboy style living and adventures. Johnson came to believe that the hot dry climate was beneficial to his fragile health and thought a simple dwelling where he and his wife could live for part of the year would be a good idea. He found a good

site in one of the foothills with a large spring. Johnson’s wife was persuaded to view the location and fell in love with it.

However, ‘simple’ was not in Bessie Johnson’s vocabulary, so some of the best architects of the day were commissioned to design a suitably grand residence. Frank Lloyd Wright’s submission was rejected as too austere and they selected a Spanish Revival theme from another architect. It was started in 1922 and never fully finished. This is the premises.

On closer examination it’s a showpiece based on the in theme of the day for American millionaires. The great hall has a sort of plastic medieval film-set look. An interesting feature is that some of the walls were hollow to allow some of the spring water to flow through and provide cooling from the summer heat. Johnson the engineer was fascinated by technology, and incorporated the latest methods and gadgets wherever possible.

Of course the reason for the house’s extravagant appearance was to impress guests. This climaxed in the music room where whatever was playing on this piano (it played using cylinders) could be relayed throughout the estate from the bell tower outside. That’s the separate tower on the left in the first photo. 

The whole place is a time-capsule. Everything in it is original as installed by the Johnsons. This sideboard contains traditional Indian baskets made by the wives of the local Indian workers who laboured on the building of the castle, some of whom stayed on as estate workers. There’s even Bessie’s Singer sewing machine, bottom right. 

The house was powered by water turbine electricity, all concealed in a maze of underground tunnels that also ducted the cooling water into various rooms. The generator still works and was started up by our ranger guide; it illuminated some lightbulbs. 

Changes in water flow or sudden demands on the current caused the lights to flicker sometimes, and this got on perfectionist Johnson’s nerves. His solution was to install a massive bank of batteries that would accumulate the current and then release it at a uniform rate. The batteries are still there and in working order.

Hot water was created from thermal energy, making Johnson one of the earliest eco warriors. His ingenuity was more from necessity than any thoughts of saving the planet, but it worked really well. Spring water was run through metal containers (not now there) supported by the wooden framework in the photo. The fierce sun heated up the water that was then stored in the large insulated tank behind before being pumped into the house via the service tunnels. 

Scotty himself, full name Walter Scott, was well provided for. He had the run of the “castle” and Johnson even built him a place of his own on the estate. Johnson’s will also left Scotty the use of the place should he survive him, which he did by 6 years, and is in fact buried on a small hill behind the house.

There were separate guest quarters, stables and garaging for several vehicles. Johnson’s favourite was a 7 seater 1914 Packard, a bit ancient in the mid 20’s, but a quality car in which they would trundle round the valley if not riding horses. What sort of bone jarring ride the car gave is anyone’s guess with its solid tyres on rough dirt roads.

There was a lot more detail to the story. Like Death Valley itself, it had more depth and interest than was first apparent.

Death Valley was indeed a unique and rewarding experience. Now onwards and upwards, to Lake Isabella.

Death Valley: Golden Canyon and Badwater

Golden Canyon is about four miles from the campsite so we take the motorhome and park in the canyon car park. It’s pretty full but we get a spot; manoeuvring a motorhome into irregular areas is no way as easy as a car.The canyon entrance is narrow and steep, but Jane is through it like a mountain goat.

The path soon levels off into an easy track but climbing all the time. And it’s hot, really hot. The different rock colours and formations are most unusual, so here are three photos to show how varied they are. They canyon is totally quiet; some might say we need some piped-in rock music.

We’re nearly at the top, where the dark red rocks called the Cathedral form an impenetrable wall. It’s all a lunar landscape, with Jane’s small steps for a woman and giant leaps for womankind taking us ever onwards.

Looking back the way we came gives us a view of snow-covered Telescope Peak in the Sierra Nevada range on the other side of Death Valley. 

It’s easier going down, as always. We then take the camper 20 miles further to Badwater Creek where we have lunch onboard. Badwater Creek was so named because an early explorer couldn’t get his mule to drink from the shallow creek here. Hardly surprising as it’s part of large salt-flats.

A part of the flats has been set aside for visitor access. Anyone brought their ice skates?

An information board at Badwater gave record temperatures for each month. Today was 29^th March, and the March record was 102F. It seemed incredibly hot to us so on our return we checked back with the live thermometer at the Visitor Centre near the campsite.

We knew it was hot!

Death Valley: Harmony Borax Works

Borax deposits were discovered in Death Valley in 1881 and claims laid by a certain William Coleman. A processing plant opened in 1883 and operated until 1888 when Coleman’s business collapsed. This is what’s left of the works.

The borax was mined and processed here by up to 40 labourers who were mostly Chinese. They lived in tents and were paid at a lower rate than Americans. This is the area of the desert where they lived and worked. Not much of a fun place.

The borax ore was dissolved in boiling water generated by a steam engine, and crystallised in the iron troughs shown in the photo below. Operations were transferred during the summer months to a slightly cooler location in the valley not for any consideration for the workers but because borax won’t crystallise above 120F. 

Now they’ve got borax crystals- what to do with them in the middle of nowhere? Borax is a much sought after chemical used in many everyday products, so they needed to get it to where the factories were, back East; they needed a railhead. So they put the borax into two box carts with a water container at the back, hitched up 20 mules, and drove it across the desert and over mountain passes the 165 miles to the nearest railway station at the town of Mojave. They made this journey, there and back, countless times over the five years of Harmony Mine’s existence, using the set-up in the photo. You'll have to imagine the mules, but make sure you add them to the right end. They sure were tough in them thar days.

Creatures around Furnace Creek

Wednesday 25^th March, we are up early to join the 6:30 am bird walk with a ranger. It’s cool but not cold, and we see the sunrise on the distant mountains long before it reaches us. 

You’ll be thinking that the pond and green area could be a golf course. Well, it is; Furnace Creek uses groundwater to support a golf course. The immediate vicinity is a wonderful habitat for all sorts of wildlife. You can’t see them in the photo but there’s a pack of coyotes in the gap between the trees. We were able to snap one later at much closer quarters when it quickly trotted past us having emerged from the undergrowth.

The ranger said the coyotes have learned to catch the ducks on the lake in the golf course.

We saw several, but not many, unusual birds. Nothing posed for the camera. This one’s just about ok, of a bird called a verdin making a nest. 100 Tesco points for spotting the bird in the photo.

There were many common birds around during our week’s stay, like grackles, ravens, vultures and sparrows.

Plenty of lizards everywhere. This one has a blue tail.

Dragonflies too, near any still water. This an orange one.

Many desert creatures are nocturnal, like the kangaroo rat that can go for months without drinking. Snakes and scorpions lurk, and while we didn’t see any snakes, a ranger turned up a scorpion for us on a night hunt.  

A topic of discussion everywhere in California right now is water conservation. The State is officially a drought area due to climate change. The Governor declared a 25% water reduction target across the board only a few days ago. One aspect of the debate is water usage to maintain ornamental grass areas, parks and golf courses. The golf course here in Death Valley must take massive amounts of water to survive: it gets 2 inches of rain and evaporates at the rate of 150 inches per year. It looks especially beautiful and lush being here in the desert and it does, of  course, support a wildlife habitat, as well as provide recreation. Difficult priorities to determine, but at least no one is proposing to restrict water to the brewing industry!  

Fish in the Desert

Most photos and descriptions dwell on the extreme conditions in Death Valley. It averages only 2 inches of rain each year. It can freeze at night in winter and the summer temperatures frequently top 120F (49C). It holds the world record high of 134F (57C). You would expect wildlife to be virtually non-existent.

Surprisingly, there’s a great variety. Wildlife learned to adapt and also to benefit from man’s intervention in the valley. There is even one variety of fish left from the giant lake that filled the valley 10,000 years ago. The pupfish lives, impossibly, in these highly salty rivulets. 

The fish is about an inch long and looks like this. The water is teeming with them when you peer into the streams.

We were here on a ranger led activity, and he took us along the boardwalk, following the stream towards the source where the pupfish population must migrate to endure the scorching summer heat. The lower water course dries up and some fish don’t make it. The ranger also explained other aspects of this environment, for example how some of the plants in the photo deal with the excess salt by storing it in special leaves.

There are four pupfish species in separate locations in different parts of the valley. One of these species lives in a deep natural well, also used by locals for irrigation, and is nearly extinct. To put it bluntly, these fish have nearly had their chips.

A protection order was recently placed on the well so the locals were forbidden to use it. Their response to the plight of the pupfish was to throw old car batteries into the well. Finish them off and we get our water back.

There are two sides to most things, and the locals would understandably see their livelihoods as more important than a few insignificant minnow sized fish. The well is now securely fenced off. Anyone need some old car batteries?

Monday 23rd March: Las Vegas to Death Valley

Not such a long journey, 160 miles, and all through desert. The hectic outer limits of Vegas fall away after 30 minutes driving and the traffic reduces to occasional vehicles. It’s all scrub desert, with almost no buildings. We’re climbing very slowly on a vast plain flanked by distant mountains. An hour along the road, we pass an airbase with a pilotless drone manoeuvring over it. A photo shot fails to capture it, but maybe that’s just as well as we are now flying along the southern edge of what was the most secret aircraft testing area in the States. This was Area 51.

 The long, straight road seems to emphasise the empty isolation of the region; it’s the perfect place for secret testing. Most of the USA’s cutting edge aircraft were tested here, and were mistaken for UFO’s when glimpsed in the distance or at night moving at high speed. UFO spotters said that there really were UFO’s that were observing the test planes. It’s comforting to know that everybody seems to be keeping an eye on everybody else!

Pre-dating Area 51, atomic weapons testing took place here in the late 40’s/ early 50’s when picnickers from Las Vegas would drive out to get a better view of the mushroom clouds that were only just visible from the city itself. You can imagine those hordes of luminous returning daytrippers.

There’s just one small town 125 miles from Vegas where we tank up with fuel before turning away from the main highway towards Death Valley itself. The road first climbs to 4,300 feet and then descends quite steeply to the valley floor. The white shimmer is the salt flats evaporated from a huge lake that once filled the whole valley 10,000 years ago.

It’s worth seeing how the impression of Death Valley builds up as the road drops. It looks almost like a bubbling cauldron here; the descent into Hell’s kitchen. 

The rocks reveal a multi-coloured pattern from the minerals they contain, stark and jagged as there is no vegetation to soften the outlines. Just a few bushes at the roadside so you know you’re not actually on the moon.

As the road hits the bottom it all looks empty: nothing, as far as the eye can see. Not even a much-needed ice-cream van.

We have another 20 miles to go along the valley bottom to our campsite at Furnace Creek, the main visitor centre. There are three sites at Furnace Creek, only one of which has electricity. That's full, so we’re at Sunset, which is nearly empty. A bit bare, but remember this is Death Valley; it does have water, toilets and sewerage emptying, and a great view, so an excellent $12 per night’s worth (£8). Our motorhome is equipped with fresh water, waste water and sewerage tanks, and a generator. So we’ll be fine for a week. But there’s also no phone signal or wifi (anywhere in Death Valley)…. suddenly I CAN’T COPE. 

Friday Mar 20th: Red Rock Canyon

Only 10 miles outside the Las Vegas city boundary is Red Rock Canyon Park. You could be on another planet from fun city Vegas. We had with us a family member, Stan, who had recently moved to Las Vegas. We started our tour at the visitor centre, so what better place to kick off with our first photo, of Stan and Jane against the backdrop of the mountains we are about to drive through.

The visitor centre had loads of information about the park and its geological origins. I can’t seem to relate to the timescale of when different rocks were formed, so quickly lose the plot. 10 million years ago feels the same in my head as 100 million years ago; it was all a long, long time ago.

But the rocks themselves were beautiful. This is where we stopped for lunch. One of the few advantages of driving a large motor home around is that you travel fully provisioned so making food on the go is easy provided you can park the juggernaut.  

On another side of the parking spot we saw rock climbers, another recreation provided by the park. Ralph and his friend were here a few days ago doing this same thing. The climber is arrowed in the photo as he’s a small dot, possibly frozen to the spot awaiting a helicopter rescue.

 As the drive continued, we got some great red rock views, like Blackpool rock in some places with the coloured layers.

As the road turned away from the red rocks the views became longer and the road gradually descended back to the visitor centre.