Scenes from Death Valley Pt. 1

On our arrival in Death Valley, we were greeted with 99° heat accompanied by big wind gusts. It made for a very exciting first night.

Six of us (our older son and his family) piled into the truck for the 6+ hour long drive.
After a stop in the Visitors' Center for knowledge and exploring supplies, we set up camp at the Furnace Creek Campground, our home for three nights. The grands got to sleep in our camper's dinette while their parents tented it.
The sunset was spectacular, and the night sky impressed us all.

After dinner, it was time for the traditional S'mores! A perfect Day #1.
Day #2 was my 60th birthday. With the winds continuing, it proved to be the most interesting of the days, weather-wise. WOW.
Thankfully, we didn't need to fuel up here.
The plan for the day was to start by a hike to the bottom of Ubehebe Crater (formed about 2100 years ago during a single eruptive event).
The wind was so fierce the little ones could not get out of the truck for fear of being blown into the deep desert depression.


Next stop on our tour was to Rhyolite, a Nevada ghost town in the Bullfrog Hills. It began in early 1905 as one of several mining camps that sprang up after a prospecting discovery in the surrounding hills. During an ensuing gold rush, thousands of gold-seekers, developers, miners and service providers flocked to the Bullfrog Mining District. Many settled in Rhyolite, which lay in a sheltered desert basin near the region's biggest producer, the Montgomery Shoshone Mine.
Industrialist Charles M. Schwab bought the Montgomery Shoshone Mine in 1906 and invested heavily in infrastructure, including piped water, electric lines and railroad transportation, that served the town as well as the mine. By 1907, Rhyolite had electric lights, water mains, telephones, newspapers, a hospital, a school, an opera house, and a stock exchange. Published estimates of the town's peak population vary widely, but scholarly sources generally place it in a range between 3,500 and 5,000 in 1907–08.
Rhyolite declined almost as rapidly as it rose. After the richest ore was exhausted, production fell. The 1906 San Francisco earthquake and the financial panic of 1907 made it more difficult to raise development capital. In 1908, investors in the Montgomery Shoshone Mine, concerned that it was overvalued, ordered an independent study. When the study's findings proved unfavorable, the company's stock value crashed, further restricting funding. By the end of 1910, the mine was operating at a loss, and it closed in 1911. By this time, many out-of-work miners had moved elsewhere, and Rhyolite's population dropped well below 1,000. By 1920, it was close to zero.

After 1920, Rhyolite and its ruins became a tourist attraction and a setting for motion pictures. Most of its buildings crumbled, were salvaged for building materials, or were moved to nearby Beatty or other towns, although the railway depot and a house made chiefly of empty bottles were repaired and preserved.


I love ghost towns and the thought of what might be.
Did I mention the weather was exciting? The was the first time we'd ever been rained on while in Death Valley. It was exhilarating and a bit frightening. Flash floods are a big danger here.
Our last stop was at the Keane Wonder Mine.
"Death Valley became a place of legend for people traveling westward, for its extremes and its potential as a place to strike it rich. The modern history of the park is still visible when you visit today due to its status as a protected landscape. There are over 18,000 mining features, including structures such as the aerial tramway towers and terminals at the Keane Wonder Mine. These impressive pieces of our past inspire us to imagine one of many similar stories that took place across not only Death Valley, but much of the west."
"Claims were staked in December of 1903, and by 1907 the Keane Wonder Mine was in full operation. The ore buckets you can still observe along the mile-long aerial tramway would have transported 70 tons of gold ore a day during peak production. The extreme environmental conditions that are present in the park today were a factor in the lives of the workers at the mine. Summer temperatures that limit our daytime activities caused equipment to overheat. Reduced spring output made water less abundant and limited production."

"By 1912, the value of the Keane Wonder Mine ebbed with a lack of raw material to continue mining profitably, and by 1942 the last attempt to continue operations came to a close. The preserved structures at Keane Wonder inspire us to imagine the miners who walked these same trails in search of a different value in the landscape."


Each time we return to Death Valley we are as awed as the times before. There is so much to discover in this the "Hottest, Driest and Lowest National Park".

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1 comments:

Mark and Carol- "On the road again" said...

While camping and motorcycling, my son, Aaron and I came up to a shallow mine head in.....AZ? We jumped down the 3-4' and off about 10-15', where the mine was dark and sloped down, came the loudest rattle from a rattler I've ever heard!!!! We fly out of there- whew !!

April 1, 2022 at 10:17 PM

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