Scotty’s Castle, Death Valley National Park, CA

The history of Scotty’s Castle built during the California gold rush is as wild as some of the claims of the era.  Scotty’s Castle is located in the northern part of Death Valley National Park in California.

The castle was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright for Chicago insurance magnate Albert Mussey Johnson (1872-1948) and his wife Bessie Penniman Johnson.

The lifelong friendship of Scotty and Mr. Johnson, two completely different men was improbable.  The Johnson’s were America’s fabled rich.  Mr. Johnson’s interest in mining and the desert began in 1905 when he explored Death Valley led by the ever-optimistic and boastful prospector  Walter E. Scott “Scotty” (1872-1954), known as Death Valley Scotty.

The couple had been fond of vacationing in Death Valley with their friend Scotty.  The Johnson’s dream castle was commissioned after Bessie commented that they build something more comfortable to get away from the rattlesnakes and scorpions.  Bessie had wants better than the canvas tents they had been staying in. Construction began on the Death Valley Ranch in the1920s.  By 1924, Johnson had acquired 1,500 acres along the northeast border of Death Valley.  That February, Johnson and Frank Lloyd Wright took an automobile excursion to the castle site. The ranch site began to take on some of the Spanish-Mediterranean design styling filled with hand-wrought iron and tile features.

Scotty was originally from Kentucky and ran away from home as a young boy and joined his brother on a ranch in the desert of Nevada.  After working odd jobs he eventually settled in Death Valley.  In 1890 Scotty was discovered by a talent scout for Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show where he worked as a cowboy touring the world for 12 years.  He then found more fame and riches as a gold prospector, albeit some would say a shady one.

Scotty claimed he had a fabulous gold mine in Death Valley and convinced wealthy investors to buy stock in his mine.  The plan was to split all the profits after they gave money for equipment to extract the gold.  Scotty had no luck prospecting gold the next few years convincing his investors he was a con man.  They backed out of all their investments.  Undaunted, Scotty began appearing at the finest hotels and saloons in California and Nevada.  His spending sprees became legendary.  This was about the time Scotty met Mr. Johnson.  Their friendship captured the attention of the townsfolk.  Albert Johnson was a well-respected and highly religious  insurance magnate.  Scotty was known as a shady character with a rowdy nature.

Over the next few years Mr. Johnson gave thousands of dollars to Scotty to invest in a gold mine operation.  When the gold never appeared Mr. Johnson asked to see the gold mine in person.  Scotty took Mr. Johnson to Death Valley on a grueling horseback trip figuring he would give up the mission early on.  Instead, the often sickly city slicker Johnson (due to a nearly fatal train accident as a child) felt his health improve immensely in the dry desert climate and stayed a month.  He never saw the gold mine and he never cared.  He fell in love with Death Valley and that alone was like finding gold to him.

During construction of the Johnson ranch home, Scotty boasted that it was his home being built from the gold extracted from his gold mine.  When reporters asked Scotty if it was really his home, Mr. Johnson would play along and as joke that he was Scotty’s banker.  Johnson was being taken but didn’t seem to care, he was a friend of Scotty’s and liked hanging around and hearing his wild tales.  The name Scotty’s Castle stuck to this day.

In 1931 Mr. Johnson had to stop construction due to a survey error indicating he was building his dream house on federal land.  The house never again saw construction when The Great Depression set in.  Today the castle stands incomplete, but a reflection of the beautiful design that remained to be.

As the Depression was nearing an end, the Johnsons retired to Hollywood but would still vacation at the castle, which was now operating as a hotel and tourist attraction named after Death Valley Scotty.  When the Johnson’s passed away in the 1940s with no heirs, the castle was willed to a charitable organization which continued the tours and hotel operations.  Scotty lived in the castle the last two years of his life, passing away in 1954.  He is buried at the top of a hill over-looking the castle.  Scotty’s Castle was purchased by the National Park Service in 1970.  Admission is $11 for adults.

Let’s go!

Titus Canyon, Death Valley National Park, CA

It takes four hours to drive through Titus Canyon in Death Valley National Park California.  The road is rugged and best for 4×4 vehicles, but most vehicles can travel through the canyon without incident.  We know this for sure as our first adventures here were in our old used cars that got us through college, before our days of 4×4 rugged comfort.  Then we just stomped our feet to get the floor boards back in order in our ancient college cars.  Ah, the good old days….

We just did this trip and were excited to get back to Titus Canyon.  Since it takes ½ a day to do this, we had to plan it out to cover all the land we wanted to see.  It was our first stop in Death Valley.  We were lucky to get away last minute and didn’t have any camping reservations.  We got the last camp spot during the Thanksgiving holiday in the Furnace Creek campground.  The next morning we broke camp and headed out for Titus Canyon.  We had seen a coyote that came up to our truck on our travel day in and were excited to see another one walk pass our tent with a crow in its mouth.  The little kids in camp all stopped to stare at this unusual sight.  We knew it would be a good day.

Titus Canyon is a 27 mile long dirt road that is adjacent to the Nevada border.  We always plan to gas up in Furnace Creek, before we head out into the entrance of Titus Canyon, located at Nevada Highway 374 (or Daylight Pass Road), two miles east of the Death Valley National Park boundary road.  The canyon becomes more majestic as you drive along.  Colors become more and more abundant, seamlessly splashed along the gentle sloped mountains and steep cliffs revealing their high mineral content.

After driving miles into the canyon you come upon the Leadfield ghost town.  If it weren’t for Leadfield, there wouldn’t be the Titus Canyon road.  The town has boomed a few times in its day.  Copper and lead claims had been filed beginning in 1905.  The town saw a second and major mining boom in 1926.

The major land owner of Leadfield was a flamboyant promoter from California who was credited with the second mining boom.  In 1926 he served as president of the Western Lead Mines, the town’s leading mining company and heavily promoted the company.  That drove in the masses and by April of that year, the town encountered some of the country’s first sprawl, with 1749 lots surrounding the vicinity.  The town boomed for less than a year when the lead bottomed out in the mines and the financial decline set in.

The same fate was suffered by Leadfield as with most ghost towns.  The nation’s first great depression laid to rest the once vibrant mining town, now kept alive as part of the history in the Titus Canyon route in Death Valley.  All that remains are the mines scattering the area, along with dumps, tunnels and prospect holes.  It is fun to park your vehicle and walk among the remains of wood and tin buildings and cement foundations of the mill.

When Don and I first got together in the late 1970s, we were able to drop the pits in the mines in Leadfield.  You can actually see some of those photos in our nostalgic Death Valley slideshows on our Death Valley page, in the nostalgic section.  Now the deep mines have been all covered up and it’s impossible to enter them.  There is also a mine that broke into a cave in Leadville, but that one is sealed shut at the entrance.  If you keep walking towards the right side of the town, you will see the steel door that is the first gate.  Trips are not allowed into this cave due to the delicate formations.

The Titus Canyon road becomes narrower towards the end of the 27 miles.  In parts, the canyon narrows to less than 20 feet and can feel unsettling as you drive through in a wide vehicle.  It’s not uncommon to see folks park and walk the last few miles to scope out the road ahead to see if it’s drivable.  We have never had any problems so don’t worry about continuing your drive the last 1.5 miles at the narrowest.  It makes for fabulous photos.

Let’s go!

Rhyolite Ghost Town, Nevada

The charm of Rhyolite in the state of Nevada has always made it one of our favorite ghost town destinations.  Don and I have been going there for decades.  We have taken the kids many times when they were younger. It was to their surprise when we were getting closer to the town that they remembered the place.  We could hear the enthusiasm in their voices as the memories came flooding in.

Rhyolite has changed a lot since the first time we ever saw it.  The ghost town remains in its’ own little world, with hardly any new buildings or amenities surrounding the once active gold rush activities of its heyday.  The few remaining ruins look like something more out of a movie set than real.  The building facades are about all that remain in a few structures.  The school is still intact thanks to the Friends of Rhyolite who have done restorations to slow down the decay.  They have even put up a few signs to call out the remaining ruins.

The best building is the Train Station which is privately owned and now has chain linked fencing around the facility.  In the midst of the gold rush era, it was common to take down buildings, or move them, or reuse the building materials, when new mines struck it rich, or when old mines were depleted or stopped producing.  Legend has it that the old town buildings of Rhyolite became the new foundation for the town of Beatty in Nevada, when Rhyolite went bust.  But that’s getting ahead of ourselves.  This is how the actual town of Rhyolite came about.

When a well-known gold prospector in Death Valley, California, named Shorty Harris and his friend E. L. Cross were prospecting in the nearby Nevada area in 1904, they found quartz all over a hill. Shorty described the scene as “… the quartz was just full of free gold…”

Only one other person lived in the area at that time.  He was known as Old Man Beatty who lived in a ranch with his family five miles away.  Shorty and E.L.’s discovery was all it took and word spread quickly.  The gold rush was on. Soon there were 2000 claims in a 30 mile area.

The most promising, the Montgomery Shoshone mine, prompted everyone to move to Rhyolite, named from its silica-rich volcanic rock. The town boomed. Buildings sprang up everywhere. But this was not just a mining town, it was a significant town.  One building was 3 stories tall and cost $90,000 to build.  A stock exchange and Board of Trade were formed. The red light district drew women from as far away as San Francisco. There were hotels, stores, and a school for 250 children (which still stands to this day), an ice plant, two electric plants, foundries and machine shops, and even a miner’s union hospital.

The town citizens had an active social life including baseball games, dances, basket socials, whist parties, tennis, a symphony, Sunday school picnics, basketball games, Saturday night variety shows at the opera house and pool tournaments.

In 1906 Countess Morajeski opened the Alaska Glacier Ice Cream Parlor to the delight of the local citizenry. That same year an enterprising miner, Tom T. Kelly, built a Bottle House out of 50,000 beer and liquor bottles.  The Bottle House still stands to this day and is one of the most viable attractions in all of Rhyolite.

In April 1907 electricity even came to Rhyolite, and by August of that year a mill had been constructed to handle 300 tons of ore a day at the Montgomery Shoshone mine. It consisted of a crusher, 3 giant rollers, over a dozen cyanide tanks and a reduction furnace.

The Montgomery Shoshone mine had become nationally known because promoter Bob Montgomery once boasted he could take $10,000 a day in ore from the mine. Learning this part of the history of Rhyolite made our entire family laugh out loud.  For decades Don and I have known a caver named Bob Montgomery, whom is actually our best caver friend to this day.  So it was funny to us to learn someone with his same name was responsible for the fame of Rhyolite’s most productive mine, and not because of his boasting, but because it did out-produce them all.

The Montgomery Shoshone mine was later owned by Charles Schwab, who purchased it in 1906 for a reported 2 million dollars. The financial panic of 1907 took its toll on Rhyolite and was seen as the beginning of the end for the town.  The town and its people may be gone, but the history and its mines live on.

Let’s go!

Queen of Sheba Mine, Death Valley National Park, CA

The mine is befitting of her title.  Of the hundreds of claims and strikes in the history of Death Valley, the Queen of Sheba Mine out produced them all.

The mine was originally staked by Chester Pray whom named it Carbonate.  Chester found a vein that would assay at 15 percent lead, five ounces of silver and traces of gold per ton.  The ore in the mine was good but transporting to the nearest smelter to melt the iron was way too costly.  In time the price of lead rose with speculation of war.

It didn’t take long for the mine to capture the attention of Jack Salisbury, a Death Valley promoter who was well known.  The two men entered into a partnership in April of 1913.  The Carbonate mine was now in direct competition with other mines in the vicinity.  With names like Silver Queen, King Solomon, and Gold Crown, the men renamed the Carbonate to a name better suited for her and she became The Queen of Sheba Mine.

Jack returned to San Francisco to attend to his business interests and Chester oversaw the mining operations.  Business was good so it was a complete surprise when Chester Pray was found dead at age 40 with a few bullet holes in his head just two months later on June 7, 1913.  Mine worker Jack Gallagher testified in court that Chester’s body was found a few hundred yards down the road from camp.  His death was ruled a suicide, a case of mental derangement brought on by sunstroke he suffered years ago in the sun.

Jack took sole proprietorship of the Queen of Sheba Mine.  In her hey day, the Queen yielded 40 tons of lead a week, enough to supply the demand when WWI broke out and prices of lead ore tripled.  The legend of the Queen of Sheba Mine was forever sealed when her story was made into a Hollywood film in 1921.

We, the DeLucia family, stumbled across the Queen of Sheba Mine on our vacation last week.  It was the last day of our trip and naturally you always find the best last.  We were exiting Death Valley in California and saw a sign that read Queen of Sheba Mine and Don did a quick turn and off we were.  He didn’t have to ask me (Lisa), Dani or Josh.  He knew the answer.

The road was rough to say the least.  It only got worse the more we drove on it.  You can not do this road without a 4×4 vehicle.  It is the scree slope of the mountain and full of rocks that keep getting larger and larger and the road gets more dips as you drive.  Think of a wild roller coaster on horseback, only we were going slowly, and you couldn’t feel it with the rocking and swaying.

The closer we got to the mountain the more we realized it was worth the pain to get there.  A hole in the mountain became evident, so did some cabins.  You could see the small trails that lead to the mines and what was once a main road in the area.  As we got to the Queen of Sheba camp you could see plenty of ruins and rusty kitchen appliances, bed frames, auto parts, and mining remnants.  It’s in pretty good shape as far as ghost towns go.  We just kept walking along and exploring everything we came across, impressed by this little diversion on our drive home.

Without planning we found ourselves in front of some holes in the mountain.  We naturally had our lights but not the right footwear or clothing.  It didn’t stop us from exploring the mines.  Those sorts of things attract us like magnets.

The hike was lengthier than it looked but worth it.  The mines were more extensive than we imagined.  There was a deep shaft that we looked down with our flashlights, not equipped with rope or helmets to do it right.  We did all the horizontal passages which were impressive and some had light rail tracks on the ground.  There were sluices with rocks in them.  The mine had multiple entrances, climbing in some areas, and a big room that had a beautiful sunbeam streaming in.  You can enjoy the beam of light ­­no matter what time of day it is in our slideshow.  And the best part, you don’t have to suffer the painful road back, but that’s part of the adventure when you go outdoors and not.

Let’s go!