Death Valley, CA - C Cubed: the Crater, the Castle and the Coyote

Another great day in Death Valley. But then, there are so many things to see and do that it’s difficult to spend a bad day here. Even in the sand storm. People have ridden it out and now everyone has a Death Valley event to talk and brag about.

Death Valley has a lot of history attached to it, and one of the most colorful characters to roam its hills was Walter Scott more commonly known as Death Valley Scotty. Born in 1872, he ran away from home and eventually found his living with Buffalo Bill Cody as part of his Wild West Show. Shortly after he married, he arrived late to work and was fired. But all was not lost since he had learned a valuable lesson from his boss: how to promote and how to market himself. Without a job and with a new bride to support he quickly discovered his new profession: gold prospecting in Death Valley. However, with his new found skill of promotion, he returned east to prospect for investors in his new ‘gold mine’ out west.

Amazingly, he found them, one of whom was Albert Johnson of Chicago. Johnson was also born in 1872 but had a much different life. He graduated from college as a mining engineer, toured the west but injured his back in a train accident. He was first told he would not live more than 6 months, then told he would die before 40, but he outlived both of these predictions. Knowing he could not be a mining engineer again, he turned to insurance and was quickly making $800,000 a year.

What a perfect investor for Scotty. And he invested. And he invested some more. Finally, in 1906, he told Scotty that he was coming to Death Valley and wanted to see the mine. Scotty took him on a grueling horseback ride through Death Valley hoping to discourage him. On one visit, Scotty arranged for his brother and several friends to rob Johnson and Scotty as they were riding. When shots were fired erratically, Scotty’s brother was hit. He jumped up and yelled that they had killed his brother. Well, obviously the jig was up then. However, even though Johnson knew there was no mine, he found his true love, Death Valley, and seemed to thrive in the dry, sunny climate. Over the next decade, he visited every year, driving his beloved Packard down on Route 66 from Chicago with his wife, Bessie.

Every now and then he got stuck on the rudimentary roads out west. His original Packard was a 1914 standard 7-passenger touring car and he was running it on roads that today call for 4-wheel drive.

Now Bessie put up with living in a tent for several years (Albert even dug out hip and shoulder holes for her in the sand) but then she told him that she wanted a home. And what a home he built. Because it was in Death Valley, it presented certain problems: power and water. Being an engineer he equipped it with many new technological inventions. The home was a beautiful, comfortable home but Johnson solved the problems of supplying water and electricity in most unique and inexpensive ways.

So, with the background out of the way, our tour today was of Scotty’s Castle. There are two tours, one of the home itself, the above ground tour, and then a tour of the tunnels underground, showing how the house was supplied with electricity and water. The National Park Rangers, dressed in the clothing of 1939, the heyday of the ‘castle’ led the tours. (If a NPS site gives historical presentations in costume, that site gets to keep all the money charged, rather than sending it to the NPS - interesting fact we learned today.)

Here are some photos I took of the inside of the actual home. It was decorated in Spanish Colonial but had lots of craftsman furniture in it. Johnson wanted it to look sumptuous but he also wanted to save money (it was the Depression, you know) and so he had lots of copies made. Not many originals, but lots of good copies. He even constructed a waterfall on a wall in the living room to cool the home.

There were so many tiles in the home that it is a virtual testament to the tile industry. There are tiles on the floors, the fireplaces and the walls. The tile workers @ $5.00 per day were among the highest paid at the home. They spent hours working to refine a technique to make the tiles appear aged. They also filed down the corners to make them appear as if they had been walked on for years. Johnson hired artisans in other areas also. Hand wrought iron fixtures appear throughout the Castle. Wall sconces and chandeliers were in every room. The lighting fixtures were made to look as if they were kerosene but were actually electric.

Johnson was also thrifty in how he provided for the utilities for his home. He tapped into a spring above his home which flowed at 190 gallons per minute for the water and then installed a solar water heater

(which was actually all the rage in the 30’s), and he also installed several Pelton water wheels which cranked turbines to provide electricity. Below is a small one. The water came in through the pipe in the lower left, turned some paddles inside the metal barrel which turned the metal pin which powered a dynamo and charged a bank of batteries which provided electricity. 

The water came down to the home via aqueduct from the spring above. The washing machine had its own Pelton water wheel and they dried the clothes hanging on lines in the basement. For heat (yes, they did need heat in Death Valley) Johnson had purchased a local RR line for $1500 AND 100,000 RR ties to burn in the fireplaces. When he died there were 40,000 left and they are still stacked neatly and ready for use in back of the house. Of course it cost $40,000 to haul the ties to his home.

The story of Johnson and Scotty is an interesting one: 2 disparate individuals developing a life-long friendship. Scotty was a rough-hewn outdoorsman with little education. Johnson was a strait-laced highly-educated engineer who made a fortune in insurance. But they got along famously. Even though Bessie prohibited smoking, swearing and drinking in her home, all of which Scotty did, she tolerated Scotty because he was Albert’s friend and she credited him with saving her husband and giving him a new lease on life. Albert loved being a cowboy, he loved the west, he loved Scotty’s stories and went along with them all. Once, when a visitor asked him what he was doing in Scotty’s home, he said that he was Scotty’s banker. When Scotty was entertaining tourists at dinner in the formal dining room, the Johnson’s ate in the kitchen around the corner, bemused by all the stories he was telling them. Here Scotty is on the right with Johnson and Bessie.

They also put a bedroom in the home for Scotty which he always maintained was over his mine. It has been kept as it was when he was alive with his trademark red ties hats hanging on the walls and his clothes hanging neatly in the cabinet. Interestingly, he never slept in this room. He actually lived in a small ranch down the road.

He told people that when thieves came, he suspected that one would come to the door and one to the window, 5’ away. He even drilled a hole in the wall, put this contraption on it and said it was a ‘shot splitter’ so he could shoot his shotgun into it and kill both with one shot. Look closely to see the hole in the wall under the metal ‘shot splitter.’

Scotty was a character and, when Johnson died, he provided for Scotty in his will. Johnson said “Why have I staked him all these years? He repays me in laughs.”

We toured the home at 9:30 and scheduled the 3:15 underground tour. In the meantime, we hiked around the Ubehebe Crater, 15 miles away. An inactive volcano now, about 1500 years ago it shot hot magma up which hit water-soaked bedrock, and wet sediment which created steam and an immediate reaction occurred. A deafening explosion sent rocky debris shooting up blowing a 770’ hole in the ground. Whoosh. Ubehebe is 1/2 mile across and 500’ deep.

The ‘trail’ we took down into the crater was all volcanic ash and tiny rocks which, when we strode down, sent up clouds of dust with each step, like this.

Going down was easy but we kept looking up knowing that we’d need to climb back up through this. At the bottom, we marveled at how dry it looked and how the mud had shriveled leaving 2” - 4” deep cracks.

But, look at the greenery here and how it contrasts with the rusty-colored sand. The slog back up was less difficult since we took an alternate path which went up at a less steep angle. Whew, it was still work. When we got to the top, we overheard a group of people talking about Cedar Rapids - in fact, the parking lot was filled with 3 different groups of Iowans. Hey, who’s tending to things back home?

Then, back to Scotty’s Castle for the underground tour, after we ate lunch in the shady picnic area there. Here we saw more of the Pelton water wheels, the bank of batteries, the thick walls for insulation and other ideas of Johnson’s for heating and cooling this home in the desert. He was truly a man ahead of his time.

In 1931 new land surveys indicated that the land Johnson actually owned was 1 mile away. He halted construction on the home, began litigation and, when he finally got Congress to pass legislation for the National Park Service to sell him the land he had built on, he did. However, WWII was starting and the house was never completed. During the Depression, the Johnson’s whose fortune had been hurt, and they began offering lodging to tourists along with meals, curios and tours. Besides, they had Scotty to tell the tourists all his stories.

As we walked out of the Visitor Center, we turned towards the parking lot and Gary noticed the coyote across the way. I was ready and got this shot.

Gary, of course, had ATV envy when he saw this fine vehicle.

Being frrom Iowa we didn’t understand how many of these vehicles were out here in the desert Southwest. Since much of the land is public land managed by the BLM, these vehicles are all over. We’ll be driving down a road and see no one for miles until we come upon a group of RV’s, pick-ups and trailers off in the desert a ways. Scooting around the desert here will be whole trains of people on ATV’s and over there climbing the dunes will be more. We’ll see caravans of RV’s, pick-ups and trailers on the roads on Fridays heading off to their favorite place to play. On Sunday’s we’ll see them heading home after a weekend of fun.

The guy who owns this vehicle has taken it all over Death Valley on all the roads which are both 4-wheel drive and high-clearance and even more challenging. It’s quite a culture that we knew nothing about.

Finally back at the campground, Gary gassed up again. Death Valley is the largest park in the contiguous 48 states and getting anywhere takes time and gas.

Doesn’t he look like he’s turning in to a desert rat? Or does he look more like the REI suburban desert rat?

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