The Final Leg of Our 395 Trek
Believe it or not, the events of the last few blogs posts occurred over the course of just three days! When you have nowhere to go and all day to get there, it is amazing what one can discover.
We have been here numerous times and this visit was a first for seeing filming happening. There were actually three different shoots occurring along Movie Road. Cool.
In 1960, in the middle of nowhere, Andy and Lucy Pearson founded Pearsonville, California. The small family had just moved to their recently purchased forty-acre tract of empty high desert land with plans to start a business servicing motorists. Living in a drafty two-room shack, they built a roadside café, with an attached apartment, as quickly as possible.
The run up this stretch of isolated highway was grueling. The long, gradual grade from the Southern California lowlands into the scorching-hot upper Mojave took its toll on the cars of the day. It quickly became clear that Andy and his teenaged son, Don, would be spending most of their time towing and repairing the cars of stranded motorists. By the mid-‘70s, Pearson’s was a thriving operation, with the beginnings of one of the largest wrecking yards in the region. What was nothing but creosote scrub desert only fifteen years before had become a full-fledged town, appearing on roadmaps and regional highway signs.
After two tours of duty in Vietnam as a Navy Seabee, son Don returned to Pearsonville and took on more of the family business. He expanded it even more, increasing the size of the towing fleet and opening another yard and recycling facility in Ridgecrest, twenty miles to the south. Ever the entrepreneur, he built and operated a quarter-mile dirt racetrack on the North side of the once sprawling, 4,000 car junkyard. The “Pearsonville Raceway” saw wild action on Saturday nights for almost fifteen years, attracting racers from all over the state.
In the ‘80s, Andy retired, selling out to Don. Lucy, a Pearsonville fixture since the very beginning, took an interest in collecting hubcaps. It became an obsession for her and she amassed thousands of them. From numerous television appearances on shows like To Tell The Truth and Travels with Harry Smith, “The Hubcap Queen” and her collection became well-known all-over America. Pearsonville became the “Hubcap Capital of the World.”
Splitting his time between his businesses in Pearsonville and Ridgecrest, Don’s empire flourished and his own son, David, began to participate in the family business. They opened a modern, corporate truck-stop and gas station complex on the south edge of Pearsonville in the late- ‘90s, shutting down the original, ‘60s vintage, gas station, repair shop and cafe. By then, most of the family’s wrecking and salvage business had also moved to the more centrally located Ridgecrest yard.
When Don suddenly died in 2006, the entire family enterprise fell on David’s shoulders. With his plate already full with the Ridgecrest operation, the distant Pearsonville yard became even more difficult to justify keeping open. Within a year, thousands of cars were either sold off or moved to the Ridgecrest yard for storage and the structures fell into disrepair. Aside from the busy truck-stop at the off-ramp, Pearsonville was fast becoming a ghost town. Now, in 2022, its fate is sealed. Besides a gas station and a Subway, the town is definitely gone.
This four minute video is a great introduction to Lucy and the entire Pearsonville community (c. 1994).
Okay, not all is gone. The famous Pearsonville Uniroyal Girl who has waved at us for decades is still there. International Fiberglass made several types of fiberglass statues including the hard-to-find Uniroyal Girls. She is the female equivalent of the Muffler Man and looks a lot like Jackie Kennedy. She is 18 feet tall and weighs 230 pounds. This Gal is one of only two in all of California. I hope she remains. What a treasure.
Our last stop was at the mining town of Red Mountain. We have only driven by, looking at the town that exists right on 395. Again, we turned west and the discoveries we made were exciting. Before turning, we stopped at the Silver Dollar Saloon. Opened in 1919, this was one of the first saloons established during the silver boom. It was a speakeasy during Prohibition and for a period of time, the entire highway here was lined with brothels, gambling houses and saloons.
Okay, a little about Red Mountain, the latest of names for the community that grew up around the big silver strike in the Rand district. Originally there were two settlements Hampton and Osdick. In 1922, the United States Post Office gave the name of Osdick some legitimacy by establishing a post office for the area in that settlement. Until this time all the mail was addressed to Randsburg, and the name of Randsburg was a hard habit to kick. The Bakersfield Californian almost always referred to these settlements as Randsburg. In 1929, the P.O. decided that the area needed a new name and designated it Red Mountain.
After the famous Kelly Silver Mine was discovered down the road, many other smaller rich silver mines were discovered, and The Silver Moon was one of them. At one point it was owned by The Silver Moon Mining Company. The values in the ore ran from $22 to $80 a ton and went down to around 500 feet. Gold veins were also found at lower levels.
But the strike that put Red Mountain on the map was the previously mentioned Kelly Silver Mine. Discovered in late 1918, it was the richest Silver Mine in the United States at the time. Its total output was around $13 million ($13,000,000 in 1918 is equivalent in purchasing power to about $240,000,000 today). When first discovered, the ore was so rich it needed no processing as it was pure.
One man worth mentioning is Doc Drummond, a well-liked individual who ministered to the needs of the miners, merchants and the 'soiled doves' throughout the Rand Mining District from 1933 to 1946. When a 1946 fire destroyed his little hospital here, Doc reestablished his practice in Ridgecrest, where he became the founder of the Drummond Medical Center and the Ridgecrest Hospital. Pretty interesting history!
The Silver Dollar was one of 30 saloons operating here in Red Mountain. At the time, the Kelly Silver Mine was the richest silver ore in the United States, so this town was really hopping with hundreds of miners and later, many came to share in the mineral wealth.
The road adventure has come to an end. We have delighted in so many new discoveries along 395. One year we plan to take weeks to explore even more detours that beckon us!
“Still, round the corner, there may wait,
A new road or a secret gate.”
– J. R. R. Tolkien
1 comments:
How very cool that you got to see movies being filmed in the Alabama Hills! I love your campsite. I cannot wait to go camping there ourselves.
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