Death Valley and ghost towns

It seems as though I get further and further behind on my blogs as we travel.  But I keep plugging along.  How would you know what I’m doing, and how would I know somewhere down the road of time what I’ve done? 

This year must be a desert run as we headed through Death Valley on Sunday, April 5.  Jaz and I spent time here last year, and it’s a beautiful place to be during these spring months.  The heat is nowhere near what it would be in the dead of summer and you can actually walk and not drop from heat exhaustion.   

We stopped at a few places in Death Valley, the first one the abandoned site of Ashford Mill.  In 1907 Harold Ashford began working claims in this area and couldn’t come up with a strike.  He discovered that the Keys Gold Mining Company had failed to do the required assessment work on some of its claims and he started to work them.  The company discovered it but lost out to Ashford in court.   

There's not much left to see of the mill or where they loaded or unloaded ore.

Rock, brick a few timbers.  That's it.

Ashford and his brothers worked the mine but it never paid off.  They leased the mine to another who constructed a tunnel into the side of the mountain and a mill was built to do the preliminary treatment of the ore.  It was leased by many people but always went back to Ashford because it just wasn’t rich enough to justify the investment.

But there was this cute little lizard that made tramping around the mill worthwhile.

Our next stop were the salt flats at Badwater Basin where you’re 282 feet under sea level.  It’s a cool thing to see and I believe Dewey was properly impressed. 

Yep, below sea level.  Sure glad there wasn't a flash flood.  However, that wasn't likely as Death Valley is the driest place in North America with an average rainfall of less than two inches a year. 

He and I walked out on the salt flats.  The wind was blowing and I could taste the salt on my lips.  I, who love salt, was not offended by Mother Nature’s attempt to build up my salt level.

The salt flats, thousands of years of salt building up.  

Jaz catching some rays.

Next we headed to Rhyolite.  It’s a little ghost town in Nevada near Death Valley.  I’d not visited this so yep, I was in.  Something new.  Dewey had expressed an interest in ghost towns, and this one was right up his alley.  It was a fascinating place to be … with old, crumbling buildings, some of which appear to be in some state of repair to help preserve the old mining town where gold was discovered in 1904.   Several camps were set up, including Bullfrog, the Amargosa and another nearby called Jumpertown.

The ghost town of Rhyolite.

It was a beautiful day in Rhyolite.

A townsite was laid out here and given the name Rhyolite from the silica-rich volcanic rock in the area.  The town grew due to about 2,000 claims in a 30-mile radius.  It boasted a three-story building that cost $90,000 to build, a stock exchange, a board of trade, a bank, a school for 250 children and a miner’s union hall.  It appears to have been quite the little town.  There was even a red-light district that brought women from as far away as San Francisco.

The Overbury Building and Bank and Bishop Jewelry Store didn't have much left except for what appears to have been a vault.

The John S. Cook and Co. Bank.

Old bricks, old wood, old everything and a lack of people made this place a proper mysterious ghost town.  Better yet, was the lack of snakes.  I saw nothing that even resembled one … yay!!!  And we wandered around in amongst the ruins. 

There was another beautiful site ... motorcycles and mortar.

The most prominent of the mines here was the Montgomery Shoshone mine that was never really profitable.  But by 1910 things had started closing down mostly because of the financial panic of 1907.  Banks failed, many mines started closing and people left.  In 1911 the directors voted to close the Montgomery Shoshone mine and in 1916 the lights and power were finally turned off, making a sad ending to the little town. 

You can still see where the mine shafts were in the side of the hill.
 

Every town needs a casino where people can spend their hard-earned dollars.



And a miners' union hall.  Who knew even then?

You can still see mine shafts in the hills all around, and visualize the liveliness, children running through the streets, miners hauling their loads in to send off to a smelter or wherever else it would be processed, dance halls alive with music and drunken miners falling out into the streets after an evening of imbibing.  What a time to have lived.  But our time here was limited and back on the bikes, we rode down the street to the next site of interest.

As we finished our visit to Rhyolite, it had been like looking through a window, that took us back in time ...

The next site we visited was the Goldwell Open Air Museum.  Here are some very strange works of art.  This is an open air museum, and includes a life-size interpretation of the Last Supper. 

The ghost biker.  The bike was donated  by a local Beatty resident.

A tribute to Shorty Harris, a legendary prospector in Rhyolite.  His hopeful companion is a penguin, reflecting optimism.  I'd thought it was a thunderbird.  You'd think after seeing penguins in South America, I'd know a penguin when I saw one.

A couch, originally created for the Lied Discovery Museum in Las Vegas.  It was moved to this site in 2007.

I didn't find out what this was, but it was cool

 The largest display was the full-size Last Supper.

The Last Supper, desert style.

Perfect fit.

Our leader got lost in the maze.

It was an interesting place to visit, and I think the sun made us a bit goofy.  But it was fun, and then, it was time to move along.  There was no more of interest here.

What did the next day, April 6, bring?  The slab, 400+ miles, cold and windy.  But we were riding.  Running to Chuck's place to meet up with him and ride around, teaching him to be a tourist.  Yeehaw!!!