DEATH VALLEY
Of the 157,000 square miles of territory which comprise the State of
California, 35,000 square miles are desert. Of this area more than two
thousand square miles lie below the level of the sea. The lowest point
in all this submarine field is found in Death Valley, the most
terrifying and forbidding region in the world.
Death Valley has been rightly named. It was christened with blood and
has ever lived up to its title. Sixty-eight out of the seventy Mormon
emigrants who wandered into that dread region, in 1849, gave their
lives to the christening. The story of their terrible death from
tortures of thirst and agonies of heat is too horrible to print. They
came into a nameless region and their bodies were there consigned to
unmarked graves. There lie to-day the remains of all that party save
two. These two, when they came away, left behind them a region with a
name--Death Valley.
[Illustration: TEAMING IN DEATH VALLEY
From photograph by C. C. Pierce & Co.]
Since then other names have been given to localities within this
terrible region, and they have been, for the most part, names in
keeping with the awfulness of the place. The mountains which tower
above the fearful sink, shutting it off from the great desert outside,
have been named "Funeral Mountains." There is "Furnace Creek," whose
waters, bitter, poisonous, and unpalatable, flowing through burning
sands, become heated as though literally flowing from a glowing
furnace. There are "Ash Meadows," a plain strewn with scoriac débris--a
Sodom of the Western world. There is the "Devil's Chair," a gigantic
and realistic throne worn by erosion from the huge bluffs which form
the portals to the valley, a seat appropriate to his Satanic majesty
were he to choose a throne upon earth. Indeed, according to a notice
posted by a Government surveying party in the pass into the valley, the
home of the chief of imps is not far distant. The notice reads thus:
DRY PLACE
PLEASE KEEP OFF THE GRASS
SARATOGA SPRINGS
SODA, BORAX, AND NITER
MINERAL MONUMENT
DEATH VALLEY, 365 FEET BELOW SEA-LEVEL
05 MILES TO RANDSBURG
85 MILES TO DAGGETT
20 MILES TO EVANS' RANCH
30 MILES TO RESTING SPRINGS
10 MILES TO OWL SPRINGS
10 MILES TO SALT SPRINGS
32 MILES TO COYOTE HOLES
ERECTED BY THE BAILEY GEOLOGICAL PARTY
CHRISTMAS DAY, 1900
20 MILES FROM WOOD
20 MILES FROM WATER
40 FEET FROM HELL
GOD BLESS OUR HOME
The pool known as Saratoga Springs, where this monument is erected, is
one of the wonders of the valley. From the bottom of the circular
crater-like basin, which is about thirty feet across, bubble several
springs whose tepid waters are strongly impregnated with sulphur. These
springs keep the basin full and overflowing, and the waste waters seek
a natural depression near and form a lake several acres in extent. The
waters are not fit for use, however, being rank with alkali and other
mineral substances.
Death Valley has an area of nearly five hundred square miles. It is
fifty miles long and varies in width from five to ten miles. Its
greatest depression is 480 feet below sea-level. In this limited area
more men have perished than upon any other similar area in the world,
the great battle-fields excepted. The remarkable mineral wealth of the
region has been a glittering bait to lure men to destruction. There are
in the valley golden ledges, the ores of which run in value to fabulous
sums per ton. There are vast beds of borax, niter, soda, salt, and
other mineral drugs. There is a single salt-field in the valley thirty
miles long and from two to four miles wide, where salt lies a foot or
more deep over the entire field. Turquoises, opals, garnets, onyx,
marbles, and other gems and rocks of value exist in abundance. The
valley is a storehouse of wealth, the treasure-vault of the nation, the
drug-store of the universe, but Death holds the title.
Although Death Valley is the most formidable spot in all the desert
region, it is not wanting in beauty. Color effects such as artist never
dreamed of are here to be seen. It is not the coloring given by
vegetation, however, for verdure is lacking. There are no velvety green
meadows, neither are there fields of blooming flowers. The coloring of
the mountains and plains of this region are penciled in unfading and
unchanging colors. These colors are mineral and chemical and are
blended in rare harmony--laid by the Master Hand which carved this
remarkable region out of the edge of the Western continent.
Green and blue of copper, ruddiness of niter, yellow of sulphur, red of
hematite and cinnabar, white of salt and borax, blend with the black
and gray of the barren rocks and the dark carmine and royal purple and
pale green of the mineral-stained granites.
Heat and thirst are not wholly responsible for death in this valley,
for some have frozen and some have drowned within its confines.
Thermometers register as high as 140 degrees in the valley, but
towering above the region are snow-clad mountains, and it sometimes
happens that the winds, which in the day waft waves of furnace-like
heat through the valley, bring down, by night, the frigidity of the
upper region, chilling to death the unprotected prospector who may
chance to be below.
Again, in this thirst-cursed region, which knows not the blessing of
the shower, sometimes occur terrible cloudbursts which send solid walls
of water tearing down the mountain-sides, carrying death and
destruction in its wake.
[Illustration: INDIAN CHIEF LYING IN STATE
From photograph by C. C. Pierce & Co.]
Nor are these all of the possible dangers. In this great drug warehouse
arise deadly vapors, and the passing winds whirl clouds of poisonous
dust through the air, which, if inhaled, will eat the vitals and
eventually rob one of life.
Notwithstanding the terrible character of this valley, there is an
instance where two persons sought it for the express purpose of
cheating death. A Brooklyn lawyer named Whittaker, and his wife, were
both stricken with consumption. By advice of their doctors they sought
the Pacific coast, going to Los Angeles. Physicians there advised them
to seek a drier climate; therefore, in a wagon equipped with a camping
outfit and a supply of the necessities of life, they sought the Great
Mojave Desert. Here, indeed, was air dry enough for their purpose. They
drove from oasis to oasis, and soon found themselves growing better and
stronger, notwithstanding the privations they were forced to endure.
They determined to make their home somewhere in that vast solitude, but
where was a question yet to be decided.
They continued to wander over the barren wastes till one day they came
to the gateway to the terrible valley of death. It is not certain that
they were aware of the identity of the locality. Be that as it may, the
horses were directed valleyward and they passed through the portals
which have admitted so many and discharged so few.
Inside the valley they found a man guarding a borax mine which had been
closed down because men could not be found to brave the perils of the
valley to operate it. Here Whittaker and his wife rested a few days and
then they pressed on into the valley. Their host tried to induce them
to turn back, but they would not heed him. Onward they journeyed till
they found a little cañon in the side of the mountain which formed a
portion of one of walls of the valley, and this spot they named home
and made there a permanent camp. This was in 1893 or 1894. Seven years
later the woman died. Whittaker continued to live in the old home, but
the loss of his wife, coupled with the solitude, the heat, and the
poisons of the atmosphere, was too much for his reason and he went mad.
In this condition he was found by a prospector--mad, but rich, for the
floor of his cabin was thickly littered with golden nuggets.
A great railroad, the San Pedro, Los Angeles and Salt Lake road, is now
spanning the desert. This line will pass within a few miles of the
entrance to the valley, and when it is completed the real conquest of
the valley will begin. It is predicted that a branch road will shortly
be built into the valley from this road. When this is done, and pure
water has been piped into the valley, towns and perhaps cities will
spring up in the midst of the dread region, even as they are now
springing up in the great submarine region of the Colorado Desert.
Then, from a region of terror and death, it may become a valley of
life, activity, and prosperity.