The Ghost Town Of Providence, California

The site of Providence, California is located in the Mojave Desert just south of Mitchell Caverns State Park and north of the small town of Essex on Interstate 40 and the Providence Mountains State Recreation Area. It is reached by a very sandy dirt road and, IMO, requires a 4WD vehicle----at least I had to engage the 4WD on my Toyota 4Runner to avoid getting stuck on my way to and from the site. The sandy road eventually ends and then you get to hike about a mile to the site. Precise directions can be obtained from the rangers at Mitchell Caverns State Park or from a Bureau of Land Management office. Getting to Providence is not easy but it's worth the effort.

Providence came into being in 1880 with the discovery of a rich vein of silver in the area. By 1882, a post office had opened and over a billion dollars of silver (at today's prices) had been mined in the area. But production began to slump dramatically in 1885 and mining operations, and the post office, closed in 1892. Providence was abandoned soon thereafter. Since then there have been scattered attempts to revive mining operations, especially around 1980 when silver prices hit $50 an ounce, but all were unsuccessful.

As you reach the site of Providence, you first see the ruins of the mining operations:



There is something magnificent in Providence's isolation and the bleakness of its surrounding terrain. I visited late on an early January day, and the low angle of the sun, coupled with the dramatic background of the Providence Mountains, accentuated the drama of the ruins:



This was a curious little structure. It wasn't high enough to allow me to stand upright inside and was too small to be much of a storage area. It had a bench for sitting, but wasn't an outhouse or other toilet. What wasit? Your guess is as good as mine:



Providence was constructed from locally available stone, and as a result many of the stone walls are still standing. Alas, the wooden roofs are long gone:



This is the stone foundation-----complete steps leading to nowhere-----of what must have been an impressive building. However, I'm puzzled by the absence of any vertical walls, and this leads me to suspect the sides were probably wood instead of stone. But why was this building constructed so differently from the others in Providence? I searched for a cornerstone or other evidence of the building's identity or purpose, and came up empty. I guess the desert will keep this secret forever:




Providence was built to last, and its stone structures have survived better than most other ghost towns. There was nobody but me left there on that winter afternoon, and the wind roaring down from the Providence Mountains chilled me to the bone. Yet, it was almost as if I could've heard those echoes from the past if I only paused and listened intently enough. . . . .

Two Years Living With The Beast

Today marks two years as a cancer patient. Actually, it marks two years since the biopsy. I didn't get the "official" results until a few days later, but the look on the doctor's face after he performed the biopsy told me all I needed to know. Since then, I've had more operations, radiation treatments, and chemotherapy infusions than I care to recount here.

From a strictly scientific perspective, having cancer has been an interesting experience. The one thing I am convinced of is that cancer is largely genetic in origin, and no amount of prophylaxis-----eating lots of leafy green vegetables, exercising regularly, drinking a lot of fluids, etc.----is going to do you much good if you're carrying whatever genetic code that tells certain types of cells in your body to go apeshit at a particular point in your life. I'm further convinced that trying to find a cure for cancer is probably futile because to unlock the mystery of cancer will likely require us to unlock the mystery of life itself-----exactly why do some carbon molecules, but not others, start absorbing nutrients from their environment, grow in size and complexity, start replicating, and eventually develop awareness and intelligence sufficient to produce reality-based television programs? After all, cancer is nothing more than cellular mutation and growth gone amok. That's supposedly how we get new species of animals, so why I am not evolving into some sort of superman? Why am I getting weaker instead of stronger?

No one knows. If I've learned anything, it's that cancer is a very "personalized" and idiosyncratic disease. There's no such thing as a typical case of cancer nor a typical cancer patient. Having cancer is like playing blackjack with the dealer dealing from a four-deck "shoe"; it's all a matter of luck and there's really nothing you can to do to affect the outcome. Winning or losing is a lucky guess.

The hardest part of cancer is the guilt I feel. I often feel like I have done something terribly wrong by getting sick and am letting people down. The next hardest part is adjusting to the "new normal" of having cancer. When I went into the hospital on August 1, 2006 to have the original colorectal cancer removed, I told myself that I would celebrate on August 1, 2007 by climbing El Capitan, the highest mountain in Texas. It took me time to realize that I would never climb another mountain, never again go on a 10+ mile day hike, and never again have the strength to stack bales of hay six-high. I had always been proud of my body strength and endurance, and to suddenly find myself so "old" was a shock. I like to think I have adjusted, but there are times when my body feels like a prison cell. My spirit, my heart, still wants to do things like climb mountains and lift weights, but I can't. I feel trapped by my weakened body, and that feeling will probably get worse as I weaken. Cancer has also put my Di through some terrible stress and pressure, especially since she had a younger sister die from bone cancer. A lot of painful memories are being dredged up in her.

I have received incredible love and support from my family and most of my friends. A few friends have been quizzical in relating to me since I got cancer, like by never mentioning or discussing the disease with me. I don't take offense, since I suspect their behavior is motivated by their own fear of cancer and mortality. The fact that I got it relatively young obviously bothers some people in my age group; couldn't I have at least waited until I was in my seventies, when you're supposed to die?? And a lot of people get uncomfortable when I talk about my impending death. Hey, I don't like that prospect either, but refusing to admit that is what is going to happen won't delay or stop the event. I'm not looking for pity when I want to talk about my death, but I don't want to act like it's a terrible secret I must keep deeply hidden. It's the refusal to acknowledge an unpleasant truth that gives such truths their terrible power.

I know cancer patients are supposed to be noble, but I'm not. I'm no more insightful, virtuous, wise, or good than I was before; I'm just sicker. I also know I'm supposed to be full of sublime wisdom that I have learned over the past two years, but here is all I have learned: cancer sucks. That's it.

But I'm still here two years later, and I'm going to try the play the hand I'm holding as long and as well as I can. I am really, really grateful to everyone who has sent an e-mail or made a phone call to see how I am doing. You have no idea how much those mean to me, and I appreciate them beyond words.

Hiking Up To Kearsarge Pass, California

Kearsarge Pass isn't a mountain; instead, it's the easiest way to cross from the eastern face of the Sierras into Kings Canyon National Park. And while it's not a mountain climb, it lies at 11,811 feet-----taller than any point in Oregon, for example, or east of the Mississippi-----and makes a terrific Alpine experience. It's just like a mountain climb but without sharp vertical drops!

Kearsarge Pass is reached via the Onion Valley trailhead west from Independence, CA. The road to Onion Valley is paved and provides spectacular views of the Sierras along the way, like the one below:





The trail begins at an elevation of 9192 feet and takes about 6.5 miles to reach Kearsarge Pass. At its start, the trail is lightly forested but the trees really thin out as elevation is gained. At least they offer shade at the start and you pass some beautiful mountain lakes as you ascend. Here's a view down toward Heart Lake from the trail. If you look carefully, you can see the shape that gives it its name:





Pothole Lake is at about 10,500 feet and is at timberline, the point where it's too high to sustain tree growth. The photo below looks back at Pothole Lake from the trail, and you can clearly see where the trees fade out and give way to jumbled chunks of granite. Yes, that's real snow even though I did this trail in the last week of July:



As you can guess from the photo above, the remainder of the trail involves carefully stepping over and around large rocks as you ascend a sloping plateau toward the pass. Along the way you are treated to spectacular views of mountains such as University Peak and Mount Brewer along with glacial moraines (bowl-shaped excavations created by glacier movement) on their sides. A little more huffing and puffing, and you top at out at 11,811 feet; here I am next to the marking sign. The mountain behind me is University Peak (13,632 feet):



That sign also marks the boundary of Kings Canyon National Park, and those few feet I walked past the other side of the sign mark my only visit to that particular national park (it has been deliberately kept relatively inaccessible except to foot or horse traffic). The trails continues over the pass and down into the park, where it joins the John Muir Trail at about 10,350 feet and descends to the canyon floor. At least Kings Canyon looks pretty from Kearsarge Pass:



From Kearsarge Pass you get a good view of the Kearsarge Pinnacles, a series of rocky spires along the ridge line from the pass to University Peak. As the photo below shows, the pinnacles are actually very unstable rock piles instead of the solid rock they seem from a distance. Needless to say, climbing any of these is a task only for experienced rock climbers with the right equipment:



Blogging about my mountain climbs has been difficult for me because I realize I will never climb again; I really loved roaming the Sierras and Cascades in summer and I hate to think I have lost that part of my life forever. But at least I charged up into those hills when I was able to and have a load of memories (and photos) to console me. Thinking about that, I have some advice to offer anyone reading this: tomorrow is not promised to you; if there is something you really want to do, do it today!

I'm Not Dead; I've Just Been Reading

I got an e-mail today wondering if I'm okay because I haven't been posting much recently. I'm fine-----really.

I have been busy, though. I'm trying to wrap up my latest book, and there are only so many words in me during a day. After cranking out 2000 words for my book, I'm done and don't feel like blogging. The NCAA basketball tournament has been going on for the past two weeks, and that glues me to the TV screen. And I've been reading. I've been on a streak of three terrific books in a row that I have thoroughly enjoyed reading, and I'm going to recommend them to anyone reading this.

The first is Under the Banner of Heaven by one of my favorite authors, Jon Krakauer. This is a look at the murder of a woman and her infant daughter by two brothers, both Mormon fundamentalists, who believed they were ordered to kill them by God. But the book is far more than a murder story; instead, it looks at the origins of Mormonism, its problematic tenets such as polygamy and "blood atonement" (the concept that some sins are so hideous that only the killing of the "sinners"----such as the murdered woman and her infant daughter----can allow their sins to be forgiven by God), and the uncomfortable relationship between today's Mormon faith and its history. Not surprisingly, this book produced an outraged response from the Mormon church, which accused Krakauer of being a bigot, etc. The one thing they didn't accuse him of, however, was being wrong.

I'm amazed at how many people today think Mormonism is just another Protestant denomination on par with the Baptists, Methodists, etc., when in fact it is a very weirdass theology; if Woody Allen had decided to establish a religion, he would've come up with something like Mormonism. Mormonism was founded by Joseph Smith, a convicted con artist (he claimed he could find buried treasure with "magic crystals") who in 1828 said an angel named Moroni led him to a buried set of gold plates on which was written, in a language he called "reformed Egyptian," an account of how one of the lost tribes of Israel managed to make it to North America-----that's right; Native Americans were all a bunch of Jews!----and were visited by Jesus Christ after his resurrection. Moroni gave Joseph Smith a pair of "interpretive spectacles" to translate the gold plates, which Moroni took back to heaven (along with the spectacles) as soon as Smith finished the translation. End of story; start of new religion.

Krakauer points out that Smith apparently based a lot of Mormon concepts on Islam-----Smith even compared himself to Muhammed at times-----and, like Islam, Mormonism is a religion suffused with overtones of violence toward unbelievers and dire punishment for apostates. Mormonism adds a new wrinkle, however, in its belief that anyone can receive revelations direct from God. As a result, Mormonism has an amazing number of splinter sects and "sub-churches" based on such revelations, and those sects have become havens for disturbed people with violent tendencies, such as a pair of brothers who are convinced God wants them to kill a couple of people. Krakauer does something virtually unheard of today, namely ignoring the "everyone has the right to worship in their own way" pablum we're supposed to feel, and instead takes a hard, critical look at the Mormon faith. He reaches an unambiguous conclusion: those people are not just nuts, they're dangerous.

But sometimes religious fanaticism is secular, as illustrated by Robert Kurson's Shadow Divers. This is the story of two divers, John Chatterton and Richie Kohler, who discovered an unknown sunken World War II German U-boat off the coast of New Jersey in 1991. Despite repeated dives to the U-boat, it was not until 1997 that they were finally able to identify it----via a small tag found on a spare parts box in the boat's electric motor room----as the U-869, a boat whose routing orders were mis-transmitted, sending it to the coast of New Jersey instead of Gibraltar. It was apparently sunk by an explosion from one of its own torpedoes. The determination of Chatterton and Kohler to identify the mystery U-boat is supposed to be an inspiring story, but they struck me as more obsessed and demented than heroic. Three of their fellow divers are killed while diving the U-boat; both of them had their marriages fail as a result of the time and energy they put into solving the mystery. Yes, they achieved their goal, but was the end result worth what it cost them and others? Kurson clearly thinks so, but Chatterton and Kohler seem to me as creepy rather than heroic, both having more a severe case of obsessive-compulsive disorder than determination. We're supposed to feel for both men after their wives leave them, but I felt like shouting at the book, well, what the hell did you expect them to do?!?!

I enjoyed Simon Winchester's The Map That Changed The World, and his latest, Krakatoa: The Day The World Exploded, is another treat. As with his previous book, Winchester seamlessly blends history, science, and culture into a compelling narrative. He moves from a history of the Krakatoa eruption to how it happened (a beautiful, lucid explanation of plate tectonics) and to its impact (such as a rise in Islamic fundamentalism in Indonesia) without missing a beat; his prose is a joy to read, rich and full and without a wasted adverb in sight. Winchester points out Krakatoa was the first "global tragedy," as the telegraph allowed the whole world to become aware of it within hours after it happened. The scope of the event is mind-boggling even today; the explosion was so loud it was heard almost 3000 miles away (the British and French colonial officials may have been brutal, but they were meticulous recordkeepers, especially if they thought they were hearing the guns of distant enemy warships). There are a few things I quibble with-----contrary to Winchester's claim, the eruption of Mount Tambora in 1815 wasn't the impetus for the settlement of California!!-----but they are minor and don't detract from the book's overall excellence.

All three are the sort of books that are hard to put down once you start reading them.

The Pictographs At Ayers Rock, California

Petroglyphs are native American rock art scratched into rock (usually volcanic basalt) with stone tools, whereas pictographs are painted onto rock surfaces using naturally occurring pigments from plants, muds, etc., and natural straw and grasses as "paintbrushes." Because pictographs are more vulnerable to rain, humidity, and wind than petroglyphs, fewer survive today. One of the best preserved sites I've visited is Ayers Rock in the northern regions of California's Mojave Desert. It's east of Coso Junction on California highway 395, and is reached by a convoluted series of graded dirt roads. Exact directions can be obtained from a Bureau of Land Management office or at the combination service station/Taco Bell in Coso Junction; there's a large Cal Trans rest area just before the exit for Coso Junction. When I did this visit in 2000, the roads were suitable for passenger cars with careful driving but I think a high clearance vehicle would be a wiser choice. The distance from Coso Junction to the site is about eight miles.

There is a crudely graded dirt parking area for Ayers Rock, with a trail of about three-quarters of a mile to the site. The parking area is marked with the sign below, which gives various admonishments for visitors:

While the trail to the rock is faint------the shifting sands make a more permanently-worn trail difficult to create----the rock itself is clearly visible from the trailhead and impossible to miss. Unless you're visiting in mid-winter on a day when the temperature doesn't push past 60, I suggest carrying a snake stick or walking very carefully, taking note of the trail ahead and the areas adjacent to the trail. I took these photos on a day when the temperature was about 80, and spotted four sidewinder rattlesnakes near the trail, including one that zipped across the trail about ten feet ahead of me!






So what did I get for my courageous decision to risk death by the hand of venomous serpents somewhere in the desert hinterlands of the American Southwest? Well, I got see some really cool, surreal pictographs like the ones below:






I've tried to figure out what the image below is supposed to be; my first guess is that it is a scorpion, although it also looks quasi-human. Those zany Native Americans!






At the rear of Ayers Rock is a small, cave-like tunnel that would be adequate to shelter one person from the sun, wind, and the little rain that fell in this area. The sides appear streaked with smoke film, and I suppose fires were lit here for cooking (roasted sidewinder rattlesnake??) or for warmth on winter nights (the elevation here is slightly over 4000 feet, and freezing temperatures are common on mid-winter nights). It's easy to picture a native shaman or medicine man in here, depriving himself of food and water, smoking the vaguely psychedelic native tobacco, all to induce the hallucinations recorded in the pictographs. That's what archaeologists say, at any rate; I have a sneaking suspicion all lot of rock art was just random scrawling and doodling, much like contemporary "tagging" graffiti:







The surrounding area of Ayers Rock is littered with numerous obsidian chips, leftovers from the numerous lava flows. Obsidian was widely used by Native Americans in the Southwest for arrowheads, knives, animal skinning tools, and other applications where a strong rock that could hold a sharp edge was required. It is known that native peoples from as far away as eastern Utah traveled to this area to trade for obsidian gathered by the native peoples of the Coso Junction. As a result, many of the petroglyphs and pictographs found in this region are a mishmash of symbols representing various cultures of the natives of the Southwest.

Who knows. . . . . . . . maybe in future millennia people will visit ruins in abandoned, desolate lower Manhattan, ponder the strange symbols on a religious relic known as a "trading board," and ponder yes, this is where primitives of the distant past gathered to engage in a mystical ceremony known as "trading heating oil futures". . . . . . . .

Thoughts About Shortwave Radio

I have trouble sleeping through the night these days (it’s normal for late Stage IV cancer patients). I often find myself awake two or three times during the night, sometimes for more than an hour. Until I get sleepy again, I grab the Eton E5 portable shortwave radio I keep on my nightstand, put on headphones so I won’t disturb Di, and tune around to see what I can hear.

Why do I do that instead of, for example, listening to my iPod?

Since 1963, I’ve been obsessed with snagging all manner of “non-standard” radio signals. Those include AM and FM broadcast stations from hundreds and thousands of miles away, shortwave broadcasts from foreign countries, communications from ships and airplanes traveling around the globe, military transmissions, ham radio operators-----if it can be tuned on a shortwave radio receiver, I want to hear it. I’ve owned over three dozen different shortwave radios (some of which cost over $1000), numerous accessories (like antenna tuners and audio filters), and specialized antennas (like amplified loops for receiving distant AM band stations). I’ve belonged to numerous radio listening clubs. The first books I wrote were about shortwave listening.

Again, why?? What is it that keeps me searching the airwaves for something distant and unusual?

Part of it is pure nostalgia. Unless you were of sentient age in 1963, you can’t imagine how constricted the flow of information was and how distant the rest of the world seemed back then. The internet was just a theoretical concept and communications satellites were in their infancy. Video of events in foreign nations had to be flown into the United States for broadcast, and magazines and newspapers from outside the United States took weeks to arrive via ship mail. Trying to be aware of the outside world back then was frustrating, like trying to figure out what was going on in a room by peeking through the keyhole.

I wrote in the introduction to my Shortwave Listening Guidebook that I considered my first shortwave radio to be a “magic box.” And indeed it was. Strange languages and exotic music gushed from the speaker of my simple Hallicrafters radio. Cities like Moscow, London, Quito, Melbourne, and Tokyo were in my bedroom with me. I eavesdropped on ship-to-shore telephone calls and communications from airplanes flying routes across the Atlantic. And there were also the dits and dahs of Morse code, the “beedle-beedle” of radioteletype stations, and all sorts of other bewildering noises. I even found myself entranced by station WWV, then in Maryland, and its precise time signals, one beep exactly each second.

When I got my first shortwave radio, it was like that moment in The Wizard of Oz when the movie abruptly changes from black and white to color; the world suddenly seemed smaller and more real to me. I couldn’t visit all those distant foreign places, but they could visit me. And I still get that feeling after 45 years of shortwave. Even though my world is media saturated, with the internet and 150 TV channels available to me, there remains something special about connecting to a distant place via shortwave radio.

Another attraction is the “DXing” aspect of radio. DXing is the art of trying to receive rarely-heard stations on various frequencies. To those not interested in DXing, this must seem like a ridiculous activity, and I suppose it is. But I get a feeling of accomplishment bordering on exhilaration when I manage to identify a weak, unusual radio signal through heavy interference. Maybe the best analogy I can make is to fishing. You never know what’s going to happen when you cast a line into the water, and you never what you’ll hear when you turn the dial of a shortwave radio. Whenever I hear a faint signal barely above the background noise, I am almost forced to stop and try to identify it. It’s as if the station is keeping a secret from me----its identity----and I want to learn that secret. To solve the mystery, I have to battle fading, interference, noise, and distortion. My shortwave radio becomes like a musical instrument in my hands. By manipulating its tuning knob and controls, I can coax weak signals to become more intelligible and, when the gods of the ionosphere cooperate, those faint signals will yield their secrets to me and I am briefly, almost mystically, connected to some distant place. My desire for connections to distant places was probably my biggest motivation for getting a ham radio license.

And when I speak of the “secrets” of shortwave, I often mean it literally instead of metaphorically. I have always been fascinated with unusual and “outlaw” radio stations, such as “pirate” and clandestine radio broadcasters, covert government and military communications, and coded message to espionage agents. The latter were known as “numbers stations” because the messages, usually read by a woman, were in groups of four of five digits. I heard these in English, Spanish, German, and other languages all over the shortwave bands; the signals endlessly fascinated me. When the first pirate----stations operating illegally without a government license----shortwave radio stations took to the air in the late 1970s, they immediately grabbed my attention and I still stumble across them late on Friday and Saturday nights. My fascination with “shortwave secrets” led to my current interest in all types of government secrets, as reflected in my last two books, Inside the Shadow Government and Top Secret Tourism.

However, the era of shortwave radio and DXing is drawing to an end. The internet and communications satellites now carry a lot of the communications that once went via shortwave, and many nations have discontinued shortwave broadcasts entirely. Nations such as Colombia and the Dominican Republic once had numerous active shortwave stations but now only a fraction remain active. While this saddens me in many ways, I also realize the internet and communications satellites have exponentially increased access to information from foreign sources; I can hear far more foreign radio stations via internet audio streaming than I ever could via shortwave radio. Frankly, there’s no need to own a shortwave radio today in order to hear radio stations from around the United States and the world. This upsets some other shortwave fans. One group of them denies the reality of what is happening----to them, the internet is just some passing fad----while another group of listeners raises quasi-survivalist fears of “internet interdiction” by a future American government, leaving the lucky owners of shortwave radios as the only ones able to get information without government censorship. (Sadly, I think many of the latter are actually serious in their belief.)

But I’m less concerned about the possibility of a fascist American state than I am about the possibility there is something interesting zipping through the airwaves and I'm not hearing it. That’s why I keep that Eton E5 within reach at night. The E5 is the sort of shortwave radio I could only dream about four decades ago-----about the size of a paperback book, digital frequency readout, sensitivity and selectivity equivalent to Drake and Hammarlund radios of that era-----and costs only $125 today. Holding it, I have the whole world in one hand. I really wish I could have had something like three or four decades ago, back when there was so much more interesting stuff to hear. But I'm glad I have it now.

I suppose I never did answer why I have been so fascinated by shortwave radio for so long, and that's because I really don't know myself. All I know is that it's a big part of my life, and no one can understand me without understanding the role it has played, and continues to play, in my life.

Great Comic Book Ads From The 1950s

I was able to read before I started school, and for that I thank comic books. My parents allowed me to buy as many as I wanted, and were always willing to tell me what a word meant. As I result, I could read at a third grade level on my first day of school.

But it was the ads in those 1950s comic books that have stuck with me in the 50+ years since that golden era. Kids today don't read comics----comics are now the refuge of twentysomething guys without girlfriends-----and the ads are for high-end video games, cars (!!), and similar adult-oriented products. And this is a pity.

Take the ad for the product below. Back in 1958, a teacher seeing a student with this item would simply confiscate it and the student would suffer a few minutes of post-school detention. Not today-----the local S.W.A.T. team would probably be summoned and the incident would be broadcast worldwide on CNN, with Congressional hearings surely to follow:




I was never much into violence, so instead of a hand grenade I preferred to use Mesmerism to get my way, especially when I could buy a neat little aid like this:





One of the leading purveyors of merchandise in 1950s comic books was an outfit called Honor House Products. Look at the full page ad below; how could a six year old boy not fail to be enthralled by the prospect of owning such worldly delights?? I can only conclude that Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones must have seen this same ad and ordered that neat ring to the left of the ordering form:





There was a surprising amount of homoerotic imagery in 1950s comics ads. Of course, I never paid any attention to ads like the one below. Nope, not me, pal!





Today's comic books fill unsold ad space with bland public service "ads" exhorting kids to practice tolerance, protect the environment, and similar touchy-feely goop. But five decades ago, we instead received detailed instruction on how to kick the shit out of other kids. I definitely think we had it better back then:

The Ghost Town Of Delamar, Nevada

In 1893. John Delamar struck gold at the current site of the ghost town named for him, Delamar. This desolate spot is in east-central Nevada off Highway 93, about 17 miles west of Caliente, NV; it's not too far from the border with Utah. It's reached by a signed dirt road off Highway 93. The first ten miles of the dirt road are fairly smooth, but the final two miles are steep, sandy, and require a high clearance 4WD vehicle (or did when I visited back in 2003). I suppose one could hike the remaining two miles, but I wouldn't recommend it!

By 1897, Delamar was the leading producer of gold in Nevada. it boasted a population of 3000 along with a post office, several businesses (including saloons and a hotel), and a combination theater/opera house. There is no large-scale source of water near Delamar, and as a result water had to be carried in by mule wagons from a stream 12 miles away. Other supplies had to be transported from a railhead in Milford, Utah, which was over 150 miles away. Because water was so scarce, "dry mining" techniques were used which produced clouds of fine dust in the mines. Many miners and other residents died from lung diseases, and Delamar became known as "the widowmaker." But because wages were high for the time (over $3 a day!), there were plenty of young men willing to take their chances in the mines.

Delamar died an abrupt death in 1909 when the veins of gold ore suddenly tapped out. This setback was compounded by a disastrous fire which destroyed the wooden buildings in town and the wooden roofs on the stone buildings. Delamar was deserted a year later.

The main things left in Delamar are stone walls and foundations, as you can see in the following photos:


















































I understand the structure below is what remains of the theater/opera house. It only takes a little imagination to visualize how it must've looked in the past, complete with full stone walls and a wooden roof:


















The view below is from a hillside above Delamar and looks down on the town site. It gives you an idea of how isolated this place is (there's no cell phone service out here!) and how grim life must've been there when the mines were in operation:



















Delamar is privately owned and access to the site can be restricted at any time, so I don't know if it is still possible to visit. It takes about three hours to reach Delamar from Las Vegas, but I found it well worth the trip. It combines the remoteness, the stark beauty, and the history that so infatuates me when it comes to ghost towns of the American west.

The Ghost Town Of Reilly, California

Head east out of Trona, California on Highway 178 toward Death Valley National Park and you'll find a signed road on the right leading to the ghost town of Ballarat, California. Because of its location along one of the main entrances to Death Valley, Ballarat receives numerous visitors. Almost none of them know another ghost town-----much more fascinating and much less accessible-----lies almost directly across Highway 178 from Ballarat.

Reilly came into being in 1882 when a New York investor named Edward Reilly formed the Argus Range Silver Mining Company. Mining companies were the dot-com companies of the late nineteenth century; huge amounts of stock were sold backed by little more than wild hunches and blind greed. Reilly's company was typical; he raised over $200,000 (a phenomenal amount in 1882) and used it to create the mining town of Reilly. Before the end of 1882, there was an operating mine, a stamping mill, a general store, a boarding house, stables, a post office, and a saloon at Reilly. Reilly also built himself a fine wooden home. Miners flocked to the site and built themselves homes out of rocks they could find; some had wood roofing while others simply used canvas stretched across the top.

Reilly requires a high clearance 4WD vehicle (like my beloved Toyota 4Runner) to reach. About 4.2 miles from Ballarat, there is a faint but "line straight" dirt road to the left on Highway 178. This is the original "Nadeau Road," a wagon trail dating from 1877 used to haul supplies and materials to and from Death Valley. I exited left and drove this road for a little over a mile, and it was kick to travel a route with such history. After a mile, there is an even fainter road to the left leading uphill. I had to engage the 4WD to negotiate it, and I followed that road for a little over a mile and a half to the site of Reilly. It's a really isolated place!

There's a surprising number of structures at the site. Most, like the one below, are stone walls without any roof. Most seem to have been large enough for a single bed and not much else:

The structure below showed its owner had put some effort into its design and construction. It was built almost as a basement and, as you can see, had a crude fireplace. While Reilly is in the desert, it is at an elevation of about 4000 feet and it gets cold there in winter. This must have been a cozy place on cold January nights:

Many of the surviving dwellings in Reilly are little larger than pup tents, as shown below. This is a stack of rocks larger enough to accommodate one person; canvas or wooden boards would be used to cover the top. by the way, that's the Argus Range in the distance; Death Valley is behind them and Ballarat is at the foot of the range:




















Here's the view from inside one of the remaining structures. Maybe it wasn't very comfortable, but at least the scenery was spectacular:


















Trash collection apparently wasn't good at Reilly, because the residents left a lot of junk behind-----like steel "tin" cans----at the site for us to look at and admire:


















I suppose this must've been the home of one of the more prosperous residents of Reilly, as much of its wooden roof remains after over 120 years. The interior is comparatively spacious, about as a large as a contemporary tent sleeping five persons:



















Here's a view of the front of the structure above. The "doorway" was irregular, so any door must've been primitive and not very tight; perhaps they just used a sheet of canvas across the opening:



















As happened with many 1990s dot-coms, economic reality eventually caught up with Reilly. In 1883, the mine produced only $20,000 in silver and production began to drop by year's end as the vein "played out." By the middle of 1884, the mine and post office closed and Reilly was abandoned before the end of the year. Scavengers eventually stripped away the wood used for the general store, boarding house, saloon, post office, and Edward Reilly's fine home. But the simpler stone structures of Edward Reilly's employees remain. Maybe there's a lesson in that story. . . . . . .

Happy Anniversary To Us!

Tomorrow marks the fourth wedding anniversary for me and Di, and we're off for a few days in Corpus Christi to celebrate and relax. We got married on February 13-----a Friday, no less----at the Little Church of the West in Las Vegas. Students of fine cinema will remember that as the locale where Elvis married Ann-Margaret at the conclusion of Viva Las Vegas.

Perhaps the most difficult aspect of my illness has been the impact it has had on Di. We've spent almost half of our married life with me as a cancer patient, and the toll on her has been tremendous. When we moved to Texas in the fall of 2004, we had dreams about our horse ranch, the places we were going to see, the things we were going to do, etc. It was such a blast in 2005 to have little impromptu races on our horses around the riding trails out here; in early 2006, we enrolled in a refresher conversational Spanish class at a local community college in preparation for some travels we were going to do in Central America. And in April, 2006 the bottom abruptly fell out of my world.

Like many cancer patients, I am often filled with guilt over having the disease. I feel like I'm doing something wrong by being sick, like I'm letting Di and others down because I'm sometimes in a state where I can barely function. I find myself wishing I had never met her so she wouldn't have to go through all of this. Even though I now know such feelings are normal when you have cancer, I still sometimes feel them with great intensity. Thankfully, Di has taken things with remarkable grace and courage and not a trace of complaint or regret. There have been times when I've felt like saying to hell with everything and discontinuing all treatments (especially the chemo), but I then realize Di is hoping desperately that I'll get better and live, and I know I have to do everything I can to fight on, not for me but for her. When someone loves you that much, you must show you love them in return by trying your damnedest to hold out against the disease.

I have been extraordinarily lucky in my life, and having Di in my life is the biggest lucky break I've had in a long while. The photo below is one I took of her one morning at our house in Las Vegas shortly after our wedding; it captures her in her natural state and is one of my favorite photos of her. At any rate, I'm going to try my best to be around for our fifth anniversary; in the meantime, we're off to the beach!