Two Ladies Traveling Through the Mojave Desert
OLD TRAVEL JOURNAL / EXPLORATIONS
travelers = Edna Brush Perkins & Charlotte Hannahs Jordan / trip in 1920 / Edna wrote The White Heart of Mojave / excerpts follow
Ryolite is a typical American ruin. Its boom was very brief.
Rhyolite = ghost town @ 35 miles from Furnace Creek & 4 miles west from Beatty / not inside the national park / BLM land
about the remains of wagons buried near Stovepipe Wells / likely original location east from Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes
Both the mountains and the valley were named because tragedies down on that white floor during pioneering and prospecting days.
One story is of a party of emigrants, men, women, and children, on the way to the gold-fields with all their household goods, who entered the valley by mistake and could not find a way out; another is of a party who were attacked by Indians and fought in a circle they made of their wagons until the last man was killed. The remains of the wagons are said to be buried in the sand near a place called Stovepipe Wells.
mentions the gold mine of Keane Wonder.
It was "Old Johnie," an habitué of Death Valley, coming home. He had an unworked gold-mine near Keane Wonder...
the national park about the access road to this mine = "Drive the Beatty Cutoff Road 5.7 miles north from Highway 190 to the marked dirt road for Keane Wonder Mine. Continue 2.8 miles to the parking area. The road is typically in rough condition and may require a high clearance vehicle with thick tires."
Salt Creek was another spot visited by Edna and Charlotte
The curious streak in the bottom of Mesquite Valley was the swamp of Salt Creek.
There were quicksands there, that you could not get out of if you got in. Men and burros has been lost that way.
it's 13 miles from Furnace Creek / this is the road junction
about Furnace Creek
Furnace Creek Ranch, the irrigated farm in the bottom of the valley established long ago in connection with the original borax-works of the Twenty-Mule-Team brand.
Skidoo is another ghost town mentioned in the book
The town of Skidoo lay in a high valley shut off from a view by the surrounding hills.
national park warns that "Skidoo is located off the Wildrose Road on an unpaved high-clearance road / nothing remains of the actual tow
a hike to this summit may be interesting
Pinto Peak is on the west side of Emigrant Pass, overlooking the Panamint Valley and all the region to the foot of Mt.Whitney in the Sierra Nevada.