195404 desert magazine 1954 april

8/14/2019 195404 Desert Magazine 1954 April

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fl M E L D G U I D E TO R O C K S H D D m i n E R D L SBy FREDERICK H. POUGH Former Curator of Minerals, American Museum of Natural History

YOU HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS BOOK Contains 234 photographs, 72 in full color, and asimplified Field Guida to identification. Every min-eral theRockhound is likely to encounter is describedin detail. This is the most important newbook that

has ever been printed for the rockhound and gemhunter. Available now. Order your copy today. Ifyou are interested in rocks, gems or minerals, thisbook is a must foryour library shelf.$3.75 POSTAGE PREPAID

0 S n D F O R f R 56 P f l G C P R I C E L I S T


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D E S E R T C A L E N D A RApril 1-4Desert Cavalcade of Im-perial Valley, Calexico, California.April 1-30 Special Exhibit, desertpaintings by Sam Hyde Harris.Southwest Museum, Highland Park,Los Angeles, California.April 2-4 Fifth Annual Fiesta.Truth or Consequences, New Mex-i c o .April 3Annual Jeep Cavalcade toCalexico, from Hemet, California.April 3-4Dons Club Travelcade toGrand Canyon, from Phoenix, Ari-zona.April 4Western Saddle Club Gym-khana, Squaw Peak Arena, Phoe-nix, Arizona.April 5-9Desert Caballeros AnnualRide. Wickenburg, Arizona.April 10Play Day at White SandsNational Monument, near Alamo-gordo, New Mexico.April 11Dons Club Travelcade toBoyce Thompson Arboretum, Phoe-nix, Arizona.April 11Desert Sun Ranchers' Ro-d e o , Wickenburg, Arizona.April 12-17 Southern CaliforniaSierra Club Easter week trip toHavasu Canyon, Arizona.April 16 Penitente Passion Play,Talpa Chapel, near Taos, NewMexico.April 18Easter Sunrise Services atThe Cross on the Mesa, Taos, NewMexico.April 18 Easter Sunrise Services,Grand Canyon, Arizona.April 18Easter Sunrise Services onHorseback, Wickenburg, Arizona.April 18-21Spring corn dances inNew Mexico Indian pueblos.April 20Old Timers' Celebration,Deming, New Mexico.April 22-24 Desert Circus, PalmSprings, California.April 24-25 Desert Peaks section.Southern California Sierra Clubclimb of Pleasant Mountain (9750')and Cerro Gordo (9217'), Cali-fornia.April 25 Annual Spring Festival,Hi Vista, near Lancaster, Califor-nia.April 25 Mounted Patrol Cham-pionship Steer Roping, Clovis, NewMexico.April 28-May 1Annual Las DamasTrek, Wickenburg, Arizona.

V o l u m e 17 APRIL, 1954 N u m b e r 4COVER

CALENDARNAT UREWILDFLOWERSIN MEMORYFIELD TRIPPRIZESW AT E RLOST GOLDEXPLORATIONEXPERIENCESCIENCEDESERT QUIZPOETRYP H O T O G R A P H YMININGI NDI ANSLETTERSCO NT E S TN E W SFICTIONCLOSE-UPSHOBBYLAPIDARYC O M M E N TB O O K S

C o m e a n d Ge t It! J O S E F M U E N C H of S a n t a B a r b a r a ,C a l i fo rn i a , t o o k t h i s p i c t u r e of h i m s e l f c o o k i n ga c a m p b r e a k f a s t a l o n g the C o l o r a d o R i v e r atLe e s F e r ry , A r i z o n a .A p r i l e v e n t s on the d e s e r t 3O n D e s e r t T ra i l s W i t h a N a t u r a l i s t :

I D e s e r t C a m p f i r e s , b y E D M U N D C. JAEGER 4F o r e c a s t for A p r i l 6" B u r ro " S c h m i d t , by A. B. C H R I S T M A N . . . 7P e t r i f i e d F l o t s a m A l o n g the C o l o r a d o

B y JAY E L L I S R A N S O M 8A n ew D e s e r t c o n t e s t : D e s e r t B i rd s 11W a t e r f l o w f o r e c a s t s for C o l o r a d o R i v e r . . . 11Lo s t W e l l s -F a rg o G o l d , by J A N E A T W A T E R . 12Tra i l to K e y n o t S u m m i t

B y LO U IS E TOP W E R N E R 14Life on the D e s e r t , b y LEE S TR O B EL . . . . 17N e w S o u r c e of ' W a t e r for D e s e r t L a n d s ?

B y G A S T O N B U R R I D G E 18A tes t of y o u r d e s e r t k n o w l e d g e 20T h e y C r a d l e Me, an d o t h e r d e s e r t p o e m s . . . 22P i c t u r e s of the M o n t h 23C u r r e n t n e w s of d e s e r t m i n e s 24N a v a j o s I H a v e K n o w n , b y JOE KERLEY . . . 25C o m m e n t f r o m D e s e r t ' s r e a d e r s 27P r i z e s for P h o t o g r a p h e r s 28F r o m H e r e a n d T h e r e on the D e s e r t 29H a rd R o c k S h o r t y of D e a t h V a l l e y 29A b o u t t h o s e who w r i t e for D e s e r t 34G e m s a n d M i n e r a l s 35A m a t e u r Gem C u t t e r , b y LELA N D E Q U IC K . . 41J u s t B e t w e e n You and Me, by the Edi to r . . . 42R e v i e w s of S o u t h w e s t e r n l i t e r a t u r e 43

The Desert Magazine is published monthly by the Desert Press, Inc., Palm Desert,California. Re-entered as second class mat ter July 17, 1948, at the postoffice at Palm Desert,California, under the Act of March 3, 1873. Title registered No. 358865 in U. S. Patent Office,and contents copyrighted 1954 by the Desert Press, Inc. Permission to reproduce contentsmust be secured from the editor in writing.RANDALL HENDERSON, EditorBESS STACY, Business Manager MARGARET GERKE, Associate EditorEVONNE RIDDELL, Circulation ManagerUnsolicited manuscripts and photographs submitted cannot be returned or acknowledgedunless full return postage is enclosed. Desert Magazine assumes no responsibility fordamage or loss of manuscripts or photographs although due care will be exercised. Sub-scribers should send notice of change of address by the first of the month preceding issue.

SUBSCRIPTION RATESOne Year S3.50 TwoYears $0.00Canadian Su bscript ions 25c Extra, Foreign 50c E x t ra

Subscriptions to Army Personnel Outside U. S. A. Must Be Mailed in Conformity WithP . O. D. Order No. 19687Address Correspondence to Desert Magazine, Palm Desert, California

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ON DESERT TRAILS WITH A NATURALISTSummer and winter for 40 years Edmund C.Jaeger has been spending a majority of his week-end s out alo ng desert trails. With bo ys from theRiverside Junior College, where he taught for manyyears, as compan ions , he has sought secludedcanyons and mesas where he could study the wild-lings of the desert in their native habitat.Out of this long association with the plant andanimal life of the arid regions has come the inti-mate knowledge of natural life which made itpossible for him to write such books as "Denizensof the Desert," "Denizens of the Mountains," "TheCalifornia Deserts," all now out of print, "DesertWildflowers," "Our Desert Neighbors," and num-erous magazine articles and scientific papers.Recognized today as the dean of desert writers,

Jaeger also is regarded as one of the foremostnaturalists of the Southwest.And now Edmund Jaeger is going to writeregularly for Desert M agaz ine read ers. The editorsof Desert have asked him to write from his mem-ory and from his field notes about his experienceswith the animals, birds, reptiles, insects and floraof the desert countryhis intimate contacts withthem w hile in the field.

The accompanying article is the first of theseriesand since his explorations are of necessitycamping tripsand he loves campinghis firstarticle this month has to do with the art of campcooking. His food and the manner in which heprepares it on his camping trips are reduced to theminimum of simplicity. This is the w ay it is done :

D e s e r tC a m p f i r e sBy EDMUND C. JAEGER, D.Sc.Curator of PlantsRiverside Municipal Museum

7O ME, and to many of mydeserteering friends, camping isnever real camping without itswood fire and food cooked over it.There is a homeyness, a feeling of self-sufficiency and pride that comes withthe building of a campfire that cannever be had by the utilization of thehot blue flames of a patent portablegasoline stove. And what pleasure isderived from the sweet-smelling smoke!Every different wood that is burnedemits its peculiar, often spicy redolence,that endears itself to the connoisseur ofsweet scents.A campfire is a very companion-able thing, not only because of itsstrengthening warmth, but because ofits strange be auty. The flow of flamesof the fire are like the waves of therestless sea, a never ending successionof changing forms. Th at is why wenever tire of looking into an open firefor hours on end. Why too, thisministrant to our warmth and pleasureso often stimulates the fabrication ofimagery and those contemplativethoughts which lead to literary inven-

tion and interesting conversation.W hat 1 mean by a campfire is nota big roaring blaze consuming arm-loads of wood but a small simply-madeone set neatly between stones acrosswhich one can place the fire-irons.

No fancy gadgets are involved in the campfires on which the naturalist cookshis meals. This drawing by the author shows the sim plicityof his cooking fire.Vessels are now close to the sourceof heat, making cooking rapid andthorough. For some reason or other,I find it easier to cook over an openwood fire than over a gas flame. Ihave yet to scorch food on a campfireand I cannot say as much for myefforts at home with a gas range.Other advantages of such a small out-of-door fire are ma ny. They are cer-tainly easier to keep warm by, easierto supply with necessary fuel, andsince they are enclosed on three sidesthey are very safe. The re are fewplaces so devoid of shrubby vegeta-tion that one cannot find enough woodfor the moderate sized fire. The bot-toms of desert dry-lakes may be wood-less but almost invariably about theirborders grow some of the numerousspecies of saltbush (A triplex), orgrease-wood (Sarcobatus) which give

not only fine fuel but sweet smokeand the most beautiful of all flames,marvelously colored deep red, char-treuse green, brilliant yellow and or-ange because of the possible presenceof salts of strontium, sodium and otherelements the plants have gathered fromthe mineral rich alkaline soils in whichthey grow. M any a campfire site inNevada, Utah and southeastern Cali-fornia is sacred to me because of thebeautiful colors of the saltbush andgreasewood campfires I've had there.The desert's hard woods are alwaysmy first choice for fuel because theygive off the least smoke, make the hot-test flame and leave behind a lastingbed of coals which may yet be glow-ing next morning and make easy therestarting of the breakfast fire. Mes-quite, catsclaw, ironwood and creo-sote bush are considered best, but true

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sagebrush, juniper and pinyon areplaced high on the list because of theirsweet aromatic smoke. Yucca woodwill make a good fire but the smokeis acrid and very irritating to the eyes.Woody cane-cactus (Opuntia) the so-called "ventilated wood," because ofthe many holes in the frame-work ofits stem, the dry canes of ocotillo andthe long woody inner ribs of the sa-guaro yield good wood with beautifuldeep yellow flame, but it is not lasting.My favorite fireplace consists of alarge flat stone, set upright to serve asa reflector and upward guide forsmoke and flame, then two small flat-topped rocks set out in front and oneither side (see illustration) to serveas a resting place for my two long fire-irons laid horizontally and parallel.Upon these I rest my cooking utensils.Fireplaces so made mark the sites of

hundreds of my temporary out-of-doorabodes scattered in wilderness areasfrom Mexico to Canada and from thePacific to the Atlantic . The re are evena few in Germany and England andW ales. May be you will find one some-time, and recognize the place as oneof my old campsites.Yes, my long-used camp kettles andskillet are deeply encrusted with a layerof black soo t. Qu ite often my fingersare blackened when I handle thesevessels of my cook kit, but not for aworld would I complain, much less

trade the black pots for new and shin-ing ones . The layers of soot have beenbuilt up from the odorous smoke ofhundreds of campfires I've builtthrough the years of a happy life ofwide wan dering in desert wilds. Howmany hundreds of gallons of appetiz-ing food I've served from them I'd noteven try to estimate.Late last October I took two of mystudents on an exploring and campingtrip through the marvelously pictur-esque deserts of Sonora in western

Me xico. Better campfires we'd neverhad for these are arboreal or tree-deserts with an abundance of hardwood everywhere. Our fuel rangedfrom tree ocotillo to palo bianco, or-gan pipe cactus, acacia and thestrange thick-leaved hote tree. At ourcamp 15 miles north of Guaymas, ourevening was made memorable becauseof the visits to our campfire of num-bers of small pocket mice, mere mid-get, neat, gray balls of fur but withextraordinarily long tails ending in apencil of soft hairs. The y had big ears ,most knowing eyes and two long-footed hind legs which proved usefulin sending them off on yard-long leapswhen occasion arose. Their two tinyfront feet served mostly as little handswith which to stuff crumbs and seeds

Edmu nd C. Jaeger observes the most m inute details of his desertsurroundings and writes his notes in the field as he works.into their capacious cheek pouches.To empty the midget loads of daintiespicked up about our feet they repeat-edly ran out beyond the light of theflames and into the dark where smallholes opened to their undergroundstore houses. Curiously, each timethe little fellows reappeared it wasgenerally from a different direction.Most exciting were those momentswhen moving about like tiny mechani-cal toys they came almost withintouching range of our hand s. Duringthe whole time we talked in naturaltones of voice. Long ago I learnedthat there is only about one thing thatwill put a wild mouse in flight, andthat is sudden mo tion. Mov e the leastbit and they leap from sight with aquickness that always amazes. Sadmoments in my out-of-door life havecome when I've witnessed these com-panionable little rodents, in their con-fusion of flight, jumping right into theburning embers. This has happenedmore than once.

Other animals which enliven themoments about my campfire are wood-rats (seen nibbling off twigs to carryoff to their homes in the rock crevices),small spotted skunks, once a curiositybent coyote, and several times dainty,light-footed kit foxesin my estima-tion, the most beautiful of all our des-ert mam mals. Generally they are un-afraid, taking food thrown out to themand long loitering about within thefringe of light, all the time cautiousbut curious about that strange thingwe call fire. One very warm night onthe high Mojave Desert a roving rat-tlesnake joined our circle, crawlingthrough camp between our feet andthe glowing coals. Yes, we moved!Here was one campfire visitor we hadneither expected nor invited. This pastautumn I saw several large tarantulasrunning toward the fire at great speed,only to back as quickly away whenthey felt the heat of the flames. I'dalways before thought of tarantulas asbig deliberately-moving spiders, per-

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haps, because I'd seen them only inthe daytime.Many years ago when campingalongside the old Bucksbaum TollRoad which passed from Death Val-ley over the summit of the PanamintMountains by merest chance I madea fireplace of several fine-grained,grayish-pink rocks. They gave me oneof the big surprises of my life. Wewere seated quietly before the brightlyglowing hot mountain mahogany firewhen there was a sudden explosive re-port and flying of rock splinters thatreally set us back on our heels. Itwasn't long before we were afraid evento stay near the place as one afteranother red hot rock flake flew outmenacingly toward us. It was all sovery interesting, exciting and mirth-provoking, yet hazardous, that cookinga meal under such conditions was al-most impossible. Do you wonder thatwe named that rock, "dynamite rock"and our camp , "Fo urth - of - JulyC amp"?

I found later that we'd made ourfireplace out of a rock called Ande-site, the name being given because ofits prevalence in certain sections ofthe Andes Mo untains. It is of vol-canic origin and is often a constituentof volcanic dikes, lava beds and certainneck-like formations called plugs. Ihave found much of it on the plainsto the east of Glamis near the Colo-rado River, and sometimes I take myfriends there to let them have theexcitement of having a "Fourth-of-July Camp" and see the dynamite rockin action.

The reason andesite is so explosiveis that chemically locked up in it aremolecules of water. Heat expands thewater into steam and this pent-upsteam, bursts forth with explosive forceand loud noise."When breaking camp always seethat you leave a little wood for thenext fellow . . . for that next fellowmight be you," was good advice givento me years ago by that veteran Coa-chella Valley prospector, Frank Cof-fey. It is an admo nition I've sincealways followed. Th e practice has onmany occasions proved to be a boonindeed. Only recently I came uponone of my old wilderness camps madesome twenty years before. The nightwas cold, windy and dark, and woodcollecting was almost impo ssible. Th ewood-pile I'd left there so long agofor the other fellow was still intactand ready to use. Th e wisdom of Cof-fey's dictum was now fully appreci-

ated, as soon we were warming ourbodies and cooking chow over a muchneeded and very welcome fire thatotherwise could not have soon beenbuilt.

APRIL WILDFLOWERS

OutlooAHigher desert areas will have wild-

flowers this year, a few places in quan-tity, but in general the outlook for acolorful display is poo r. N o annua lsare to be seen on the dunes surround-ing the Desert Magazine pueblo inPalm Desert. Even the hardy Encelia,usually so anxious to put on its robeof yellow, is struggling to support afew buds.Across the Santa Rosa Mountainsfrom Coachella Valley, Borrego StatePark is equally unpromising. JamesB. Chaffee, park supervisor, reportsprospects are from poor to fair.North of Palm Desert, on the otherside of the Little San BernardinoMountains in Joshua Tree NationalMonument, the picture is brighter,according to Superintendent SamuelA. King.Basing his predictions on observa-tions made under similar circumstanceslast year, King reports the followingflowers might be seen on a drivethrough the monument in April:Golden Gilia, Fremont Phacelia, Chia,Scale Bud, Purple Mat and DesertMallow in Hidden Valley; WoollyMarigold, large White Primrose, Small-

leaved Amsonia, White Tidy Tips andWallace Eriophyllum in Queen Valley;Lacy Phacelia, Desert Dandelion, Par-ish Viguiera, Harebell Phacelia andParish Larkspur in Indian Cove; Mo-jave Mound Cactus, Paper Bag Bushand Desert Rock Pea at Jumbo Rocks,and Desert Gold Poppy, Desert Alys-sum, Mojave Wild Parsley, RoyalDesert Lupine and Checker Fiddleneckat Salton View.From another sector of the MojaveDesert, Mary Beal of Daggett, Cali-fornia, is cautiously optimistic. "T heyoung plants are making splashes ofgreen around the Creosote bushes andbetween the shrubs," she reported latein Febru ary. "Ho w they will developdepends on future rain, but at leastthere's a start and the warm weatherwill help. April should be the bloom-ing period if they develop normally."Mrs. Jane S. Pinheiro of Lancaster,California, is not very enthusiasticabout the wildflowers in Antelope Val-ley this year. Tw o good Janu ary rainsbrought the seedlings up, but the warmweather and lack of follow-up mois-

ture have discouraged the plants.Many Dwarf Lupine, some other Lu-pine, some Poppies and Bird's EyeGilia were up by March 1, but alreadysome of the plants were withering.

o< nIn Death Valley, the annuals were

struggling. "Some of the hardiest plantswill mature," reported E. E. Ogston,chief ranger of Death Valley NationalMonument, "but at best this season'sdisplay will be mediocre." Geraeacanescens, Desert Gold or Desert Sun-flower, was the most conspicuousspecies.Bad news again this month fromA. T. Bicknell, superintendent of CasaGrande National Monument at Cool-idge, Arizona . Archeologist FredPeck reported the January rains weretoo late to save the wildflower season.In the Tucson area prospects werenot good, although some flowers arepromised. Some good rains occurredthe latter part of January, but theywere followed by warm, dry weather.Superintendent John G. Lewis of Sa-guaro National Monument believesthat the warm weather will speed de-velopment of what plants there are,and that the blooming season will beearly. From indications in February,he predicted that Penstemon would bein flower by early March, Brittlebushand Filaree by the middle of Marchand Paper Daisy by the end of March.April wildflower prospects in theLake Mead National Recreat ion Areaare from fair to good, according toPark Naturalist Russell K. Grater."There should be a good representa-tive flower display unless heat hits thedesert prematurely," he reported Feb-ruary 23. "The Yuccas and cacti lookgood and show healthy new growth.Annuals Desert Marigold, DesertMallow, Senna, Brittlebush, Lupine,Desert Dandelion, Desert Chicory,Sundrop and Phaceliaall show con-siderable promise."From Julian M. King of ApacheJunction, Arizona, came one of themo nth's most cheering reports. "Y es-terday Mrs. King and I took a longhorseback ride in the hills sprawlingat the foot of the Superstition Moun-tains," he wrote Febru ary 26 . "Allalong the southern slopes the Ocotillowere blooming with enthu siasm asthough to mock the pessimistic predic-t ions we humans earl ier had made. Wesaw a few Poppies, some Lupine andman y cactus buds. It still is unusually

dry, and I can see no basis upon whichto predict a really fine showing ofwildflowers this spring, but yesterday'sride assured us the desert will producemuch beauty in March and Apri l ."D E S E R T M A G A Z I N E


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IN MEMORYBurroSchmidt

. . . A man who set a purpose inlife and did not rest until he hadreached his goal.By A. B. CHRISTMAN

NE OF THE most unusual me-morial services on the MojavjDesert was held January 31 forone of its most unusual residents, Wil-liam Henry "Burro" Schmidt.Schmidt was a strong-willed manwho had but two major goals in life:to dig a tunnel through a mountainand to live to be 84 years old. Heaccomplished his first goal after 32years of hard labor. The second hemissed by one year and three dayswhen he died last January 27.Schmidt started his tunnel throughBlack Mountain near Randsburg, Cal-ifornia, when he was 36 years old.Working with only the crudest miningtools, he holed through the half-milebore in 1938 , at the age of 68. Fromthe time he conceived the idea of atunnel, he had no other purpose inlife. His persistence was consideredfoolhardy by many; nevertheless, itwas admired. Here was a man whohad set a goal and who had accom-plished it.

Schmidt came to the Mojave's ElPaso Mountain country around 1900to seek a cure from the tuberculosis

Burro Schmidt in front of his old cabin near the tunnel. The cabin, unusedby Schmidt in recent years, has been turned into a small desert museum byMike Lee, who took this photo.which had claimed the lives of histhree brothers and sisters at their homein Rh ode Island. He had some claimson the northern slopes of the El Pasos.The road to the smelter was on thesouth side. Ra ther than build a 12-mile access road over Black Mountain,he elected to tunnel through.

He worked at odd jobs during thesummer months to make enoughmoney to spend his winters on thetunnel. By selling one of his claims

in 1932 he was able to afford six yearsof full-time work on his project.After the tunnel was finished, Burrois said to have taken out about 20tons of ore through it. At $6 0 a ton,he therefore carried abou t $ 1200worth of mineral through the moun-tain to the smelter on the south side.It is a conservative estimate that heput in $40,000 worth of work on thetunnel during 32 years of labor. Noore was taken out of the tunnel itself.

The memorial service was held atthe tunnel entrance. Following thehearse up the winding road of LastChance Canyon, old friends and fel-low prospectors gathered at the footof Black Mountain to pay theirlast respects to strong-willed BurroSchmidt, a man who set a purposeand didn't rest until he had accom-plished it.

Johannesburg Justice of the PeaceJames B. Nosser, directly behindcasket, presided over memorial serv-ices for Burro Schmidt, held Ja nu-ary 31 at the entrance to the tunnelhe built through Black Moun tain.At extreme left facing camerais early prospector Pete Osdick,Schmidt's friend for 50 years. OnNasser's left are Mike Lee, Schmidt'spartner for the past tw o years, andWalter Bickel, who cared for himduring his last illness. Photo byauthor.A P R I L , 1 9 5 4


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R O C K H U N T I N G S T O R Y A R E A Q u f l F( PO S T E D M I LI T A R Y R E S E R V E )

L I G U R T A " " ^ e a a n m r - . '-i-r

Petrified FlotsamAlon g the ColoradoTrees from mountain forests, palm root, ironwood, assorted twigs,burls and branchesthe flotsam carried ages ago by the ColoradoRiver w as interesting an d varied. W hen the river cha ng ed its coursemuch of this drift material was deposited on what is now the CastleDome Plain in Southwestern Arizona, where it gradually succumbedto petrification. Here is the story of a ma rve lous ly diversified rock-hunting area which yields various types of petrified wood and palmroot, agate, jasper and odd-shaped sandspike novelties.

By JAY ELLIS RANSOMPhotos by the AuthorMap by Norton AllenT WAS late afternoon. The sunsettled comfortably over Califor-nia's Picacho Mountains, throw-ing long slanting rays of gold acrossthe Colorado River toward the tower-ing Castle Dome range in SouthernArizona. Dad and I, hurrying alongArizona State Highway 95 to a newmineral field just north of Yuma TestStation, hoped to reach our destina-tion in time for a quick half-hourhunting before dark.

We had heard about the field fromJoseph Baker, whom we had visiteda few miles back at his trading poston U. S. Highway 80, 11A miles eastof Yum a. Baker calls his post "N a-

vajo Center." The misnomer the"cente r" is far from Navajoland heexplains by the fact that his stocksfeature Navajo wares.Joseph Baker is all rockhound. Tall,sandy haired and spectacled, he knowsminerals first hand, from gemstones toiron ore, and he is a walking geogra-phy of field trip sites to which he'llgladly direct fellow rockho und s. Withhis carpenter's pencilhe's been build-ing his post himselfhe will jot downan accurate map showing where tofind good specimen rocks from theKofas to the Picachos.

"The re is excellent material throu gh-out this country," he told us, but

added a word of cau tion: "All thisarea between Highway 95 and theColorado River, from Yuma Test Sta-tion 15 miles north of here for nearly40 miles is a posted military reserve."He sketched the boundaries of theartillery range and the tank provinggrounds."The Yuma Test Station asks thatrockhounds get hunting permissionbefore planning a trip by writing tothe Provost Marshall at the station.There are many areas which are safeto visit. Howev er, under no circum-stances should anyone go east of High-way 95 in the vicinity of the Test Sta-tion, for this is the principal range,and firing is often scheduled everyday of the week, including many Sun-days."

My road map indicated a petrifiedforest approximately 25 miles northof Yuma, several miles up a side roadwest of Highway 95. I asked Bakerabout it."The area for petrified ironwood,palm root, jasper and agate is verylarge," he replied. His pencil describeda half-circle above Laguna. "Rightabout here, a crescent of sand hillsare loaded with rock, including sand-spikes of many odd and peculiarshapes. Actually there's fine huntingfrom one mile south of the Test Sta-

tion to about ten miles north in anarea extending from Highway 95 tothe Colorado River."Baker showed us around his tradingcenter, calling our attention to piles ofpetrified wood he had collected. Later,



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:

Above Sand hills of the Martinez Lakegem field in Southern Arizona.Below Martinez Lake specimens: top,petrified palm root; beneath it to theleft, jasper; in the foreground, two typicalsandspikes.

from inside his adobe home he broughtus samples of the wood he had sawedslash-grained and polished. Particu-larly beautiful were the slabs of greenwood with knurls and knots clearlyshowing."It 's an unusually hard rock," Joetold us, "and the larger pieces ringlike a bell when stru ck." From a backyard post he had hung a sizeable pieceof dark petrified wood, and he demon-strated by striking it sharply with an-other piece of rock, producing a clearbell-like tone."Just like calling in the hands todinner," he grinned.Saying goodbye to our host andthanking him for his detailed direc-tions, we headed north, Dad directingmy driving from Baker's penciled map.Beyond the low pass which separatesthe Laguna Mountains from the adja-cent Gila Range, we flushed a leggyjackrabbit that sprang into full strideat our approach and bounded offacross the desert.

Although it doesn't show on theregular maps, 21 miles north of Nav-ajo Center (or 19 miles north of Blais-dell) a windmill, surrounded by cor-rals, marks the turnoff of a side roadwhich strikes northwest to the fishingresort of M artinez Lake. FollowingJoe Baker's directions, we turned ontoit, descending into the broad desolateexpanse of the Castle Dome Plain.Dad looked back at the windmill,gaunt against the deepening blue ofthe evening sky. It stood where oncea highway camp had operated forcrews cutting the route through theraw desert between the Colorado Riverand the Kofa National Wildlife Rangeto the east.On our left, or west, we marked thelow roofs of the Yuma Test Station.To our right were the Castle DomeMountains, their ragged domes andcores softened by the vanishing sun,which touched their crests with goldand spilled mauve shadows down thedry washes. Althoug h the petrified

forest showing on our highway maplay several miles farther, we followedthe road exactly one mile north ofthe windmill.At this point a dirt road angledwestward toward the Test Station.Although sandy, its ruts had beensolidly packed by heavy military tanks.This was posted area, but we turnedonto the tank road, proceeding another0.2 miles. On our right, or no rth,extending in a broad low crescent,rose gullied hills, scoured by wind andgracefully decorated here and therewith a scarlet-tipped ocotillo in fullbloom.

The surface of the desert here isutterly barren, devoid of any vegeta-tion save greasewood and an occa-sional ocotillo. Tumbleweed and sandburrs added their presence to thesheltered washes.

Almost as soon as we got out ofthe car, we found our first specimens.Stooping over alongside the tank treadmarks, my father picked up a fineA P R I L , 1 9 5 4


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Joseph W. Baker with a 100-poundpetrified ironwood log in front ofthe adobe home he built for himselfat his trading post east of Yum a onHighway 80.

piece of yellow jaspe r. Th en, while Iwas getting out my camera, he almosttripped over a 10-pound sandspikenearby.Still with some sunlight left, we setout northwestward toward the lowhills a quarter mile from the road.Everywhere scattered over the rawsurface of the desert were sandspikes,from tiny finger lengths to oversizespecimens looking for all the worldlike petrified Indian clubs.Even more prolific were big andlittle pieces of petrified iron woo d. Thiswood is sought by many rock collec-tors for its deep red-brown color andthe fine, beautiful polish it takes whensawed slash-grain. I rememb ered theslabs that Joseph Baker had showedus . This wood comes in every con-ceivable shape. Mo st of it is knottyand twisted like living junipe r. It layeverywhere, eroding out of the sandhills and scattered by cloudburstsdown to the flats.Baker had given us his theory ofhow the several varieties of wood hadbecome concentrated in this extensivearea. "M ost of this wood, except thepalm root perhaps, was brought herefrom distant mountains by the ancientColorado River during its flood stages,"

he had guessed. "Yo u can look outover the whole area from the rim ofthe sand hills and just about tell wherethat ancient stream had meandered. Inflood it could move enormous bouldersas well as broken chunks of petrifiedtrees. Very likely some of the wooddecayed and petrified where it grewbefore th e river got it. M ost of itmust have come in as drift and beensilicified after the river dumped it inback eddies."Hunting rock specimens in this fieldis easier than in any collecting areaI've ever visited. Th ere is nothing tohinder the prospectorno overburdenof soil, for the scouring wind has al-ready removed it; no covering of vege-tation, for the desert is too dry anddiscouraging for any but the hardiestplants to survive. We could see speci-mens clearly outlined by the settingsun at extraordinary distances, theworthwhile material easily distinguish-able from the native rocks, black withdesert varnish, which are mostly mala-pai washed down from the mountains.Following parallel ridges we climbedthe hills, arriving on an eroded mesaswept clean by the wind. Ab out sixmiles to the west we caught the gleamof sunlight on the Colorad o River. Abroad paved airstrip showed wherethe military has based planes. Thesunlight leaped from the corrugatedhangars as from a rippling stream.Far to the north Martinez Lake ap-peared above Imperial Dam.

Beyond the rise we had climbed,the desert lay level as far north as wecould see abo ut 20 miles. All of itwas once the flood plain of the greatriver and all of it, according to JosephBaker, is rich hunting ground forwood, jasper, agate, palm root, andseveral other varieties of gem qualitymineral.The last evening light was fadingas we regretfully turned back and de-

scended toward the road by a steep-sided wash that bore southwest.Here we found an abundance ofpetrified palm root in chunks rangingfrom fist size to ten pounds or more.My father broke open a specimen,finding it well grained, the cells of theancient lily stem perfectly replaced bysilica. "Palm roo t," Bake r had toldus , "is found along the shore of theancient Gulf of California that at onetime inundated much of this samearea. It is especially frequent over onthe California side around Ogilby.

There must have been some overlap-ping of sources in these Martinez Lakesand hills."On our way back to the car, wepicked up some nice yellow wood andseveral interesting pieces of green

wood . Th e latter were small and inthe nature of float, and we wishedthere were time to trace it back intothe hills.At the car, we checked all the woodspecimens for radioactivity with aGeiger counter but got no results.Looking back over the irregular con-

tours of the terrain, we wonderedaloud at the way every wash and slopewas littered with different kinds of pet-rified wood. It was obvious that sev-eral cycles of drift deposition and ero-sion had taken place by which so muchmaterial had become buried in thosebarren dunes.No one knows for certain whatcauses petrification; no one has yetbeen able to duplicate the process inthe laboratory. Several theories havebeen offered to account for silicifica-tion, and "petrified wood" is the gen-eral term applied to all forms of re-placed wood, regardless of the agentacting on the cellular tissues. Jose phBaker is of the opinion that most ofthis wood was originally petrified inthe far distant mountains of its origin,and he may be correct. How ever, innoting that none of the pieces wepicked up were water worn but weresharply angular with annular rings andknots unusually clearly defined, I de-duced another plausible origin.Because of several varieties of wood

appearing in these sand hills, it seemssafe to presume that most of it cameto the area originally as floating drift-wood concentrated along back eddiesof the ancient Colorado River or, asin the case of palm root, by a prevail-ing westerly wind along the easternshore of the prehistoric Gulf of Cali-fornia. This would explain the inter-mingling of different kinds of petrifiedwood, as well as the absence of limbsor logs or any standing stumps of an-cient tree s. All of it is bro ken as ifworked over by a gigantic rock crusher.Judging from the types of wood wepicked up, the trees seem to havethrived at higher elevations, away fromthe probably swampy, unsavory, salt-impregnated flats along the ancientshore line. Whatever the source ofthe wood, it is certain that percolatingwaters heavily charged with silica andworking through long periods of timereplaced the original wood cells.Silicification occurs from both sur-face and magmatic waters; the majorproblem is to determine which typeof water was the principa l agent. Aswe drove on up highway 95 north be-tween the castellated escarpment ofthe Castle Dome Mountains and thedeeply eroded core of the Chocolateson the west, I was impressed by theobvious volcanism which had occurred

10 D E S E R T M A G A Z I N E


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;

D e s e r t B i r d s , " 'o w to a t t r a c t t h e my o u r h o m e . . . .Prize Contest Announcement

W hat experience have you had with desert birds? Have you founda way to attract them to your home for food or water'' Or for nesting?Actually the desert country is the homeland for many species of birds.Some of them are wildings of canyons, others make their homes in thecactus . Some prefer the mo untain s and others the desert low lands . Thenaturalists in Death Valley Monument, which includes the mountain rangesas well as the floor of the valley , hav e a check list of 179 different speciesof birds seen in that area. Some of them are migran ts, others are occa sionalvisitors, but scores of them spend all or a considerable part of the yearwithin the M onu me nt. Some of the species prefer the desert wildernessothers build their nests in the farmlan ds a nd towns. Some, like the road -runner, appear to be equally at home in the cultivated districts and in thearid back country.If you are interested in the birdlife of the desen, and have beensuccessful in attracting them to your home by providing feed or water ornesting facilities, Desert Magazine would like to have you write about yourexperiences for the benefit of other desert people.This is a prize contest with a $25.00 award to the first and a $15award to the second place winne r. In addition to the awards for ma nu-scripts of from 1200 to 1500 words, $5.00 will be paid for each acceptablepicture sent with your story.Entrants in this contest may reside anywhere, but the stories mustbe based on experience with birds in the desert areathe states of Arizona,New Mexico , Ne vada , Utah or the desert sector of California. Als o,stories must be about the wild birds of the desert regionnot aboutimported or captive birds.The contest will close May 2 0. Entries should be typewritten, dou ble-spaced, on one side of the paper and pictures should be 5x7 or larger inblack and white, well wrappe d for protection in the mails. W inningstories will be published in Desert Magazine. Unsuccessful manuscriptsand pictures will be returned if return postage is enclosed.Address entries to Bird Contest Editor, Desert Magazine, PalmDesert, California.

in ages past. Out of deeply buriedmagmas had risen the granite batho-liths of the Castle Dome and Kofaranges, and from vast faults hadspewed forth the raw lavas and mag-mas of the Chocolate and Dome Rockmountains, now so eroded away thatonly the central cores are left abovethe desert's surface.

I would guess that magmatic watersplayed a prominent role in convertingthis large area of mixed woods intoquartz-hard rock. For one thing, sur-face waters carry too little silica insolution and operate along too re-stricted zones, like stream beds, tohave silicified such enormous quanti-ties of wood found in the region de-scribed. Magm atic waters, on theother hand, are often heavily chargedwith silica, strongly acid in reaction,and are capable of attacking and di-gesting the wood substance and re-placing it with the silica held in solu-tion. In either case, here in the sand

hills above the Colorado River petri-fication has been extensive and non-selective.In addition to petrified wood, wehad filled our specimen sacks withsome nice jasper and with one- andtwo-ounce pieces of agate which we'dfound in several colors. These speci-mens were rough edged, not water-worn pebbles, and could not thereforehave been transported any great dis-tance.Stars were appearing when we drewabreast of Weaver Pass which separatesthe Chocolate Range from the DomeRock Mountains. Baker had includedthis area in his sketch as well as sitesalong the road to Cibola.We were sure that this, too, wasrich mineral coun try. Time for thepresent forced us to pass it bybutas we drove on homeward, we alreadywere planning a return trip to thisrockhound paradise on an ancientriver bed.

B e l o w N o t m $ lS p r i n g R u n - O f fDespite heavy snows in many localareas of the Colorado River watershed,

the forecast for the seasonal runoffthis season, as issued by the U. S.Weather Bureau February 1, indicatesless than a normal discharge of waterthis year.The forecast of the Bureau is asfollows:"Colorado River above Cisco: Thecurrent water supply outlook for thearea is much less favorable than thatof a mo nth ago. The light Jan uaryprecipitation necessitated decreasesfrom last month's forecasts of from 4percent to 16 percentaveraging about5 percent lower for the area aboveCam eo and about 12 perce nt lower forthe main stem of the Gunnison and forthe Dolores and Uncompahgre Rivers.Precipitation for the balance of theseason must equal the upper quartilevalues in order for normal runoff to berealized."Green River Basin: Forecasts forstreams in Utah and Wyoming drain-ing the Uinta Mountains are from 6percen t to 12 perce nt higher than thoseof a mo nth ago. Fo r the lower Utah

tributaries to the Green only slight in-creases may be noted in this month'sforecasts. Foreca sts for the Co lorad oand upper Wyoming tributaries areonly little changed or slightly lower.The Duchesne Basin in Utah may ex-pect approximately 70 percent of av-erage flow if precipitation for the bal-ance of the season is near normal.The outlook for the Colorado tribu-taries is somewhat more promising.For the extreme upper Green Basin inWyoming the outlook ranges from the54 percent of average flow indicatedfor the Pine Creek at Pinedale to 76percent of average flow for the GreenRiver at Warren Bridge."San Juan River Basin: As a resultof the below-normal precipitation dur-ing January, the current outlook issomewhat less promising than that ofa month ago. Forecasts for the tribu-taries draining the San Juan Moun-tains are for flows ranging from 80percent of average in the western por-tion to 92 percent of average for theNavajo River at Edith on the easternextremity of the basin. Fo r the main

stream, near 80 percent of averageflow is in prosp ect. Up per quartileprecipitation for the rest of the seasonwould be necessary for the water yearrun-off to equal the 1942-1951 aver-a g e . "A P R I L , 1 9 5 4 II


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For eight years the Mexican could look through these prison bars and see the exactspot where he and three fellow stage robbers had buried the Wells-Fargo bullion.The road where the hold-up occurred can be seen winding its way across thedesert toward Empire City.Alon g the Prison Road . . .

L o s t W e l l s - F a r g o G o l dBy JANE ATWATERPhotos by Adrian Atwater

5METIME between the years1870 and 1893, a Wells-Fargoexpress stage was making itsregular run from Virginia City, Ne-vada, to the state capital, Carson City,where a branch of the United StatesMint was in op eratio n. The trail itfollowed was one etched across thedesert by wheels of emigrant wagons,traders and freighters. Deeply rutted,filled with rocks and potholes and cov-ered with thick alkali dust, it was theonly route between the two towns.The regular driver was accompaniedby an express messenger, for this wasa special trip. The strongbox that layon the seat between the two men heldmore than three hundred pounds ofgold bullion, valued at about $60,000and destined for the mint. Both menwere alert and watchful. The driverhandled the six horses skillfully overthe rough road, and the guard, hisrifle resting across his knees, kept asharp eye out for Indians and bandits.

Stage robbery in Nevada in the late1800s was a recognized, and by manyapproved , occupation. The Wells-Fargo Company controlled all the ex-press business in the territory withundisp uted firmness. So high weretheir tariffs that in the opinion ofsome of the miners their operationsthemselves fell just short of highwayrobbery. To many, a stage robberywas merely a case of robbers stealingfrom thieves.Crossing the Carson River, the stagewith its precious cargo left old EmpireCity behind, and off a few miles to thewest the driver and guard could seetheir destination. The guard relaxedhis long vigil and settled back to makecaustic comments about the proficiencyof the driver and about the stage thatrocked and rattled from pothole topoth ole. Having relieved his mind ofthe tension of the trip, he began toset in motion plans for that eveningwhen their jobs were completed and

From his cell in Nevada StatePrison at Carson City, the oldMexican could see the spot wherehe and his three partners in crimehad buried the Wells-Fargo strong-bo x with its $60,000 loot. Laterpardoned, he never retrieved thestage coach gold, nor did he everdivulge its secret burial place.Here is another intriguing story forthe lost treasure hunter.

they were free to search out the enter-tainments of the town. The brightlights of the dance-halls, saloons, andtheaters beckoned gaily in the mindsof the two men.While they were thus happily pre-occupied, four armed men sprang outfrom behind the tall sage brush. Brakesscreeched as the stage came to a sud-den, jolting stop. One man steppedforward and seized the bridles of thelead team, while another held at gunpoint the helpless driver and guard.The two other bandits lifted the heavystrongbox from the seat to the ground.Then the two frightened men were mo-tioned on their way, unharmed. Theydidn't need second urging.

Soon they were in Carson City, ex-citedly pouring out the news of thehold-up to a rapidly gathering crowd.A posse was quickly assembled andgalloped out across the desert to the12 D E S E R T M A G A Z I N E


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place where the robbery had hap-pened. The trail of the bandits, whowere on foot, was picked up immedi-ately and off rushed the posse in hotpursuit. They soon sighted the escap-ing men and a pitched battle ensued.Three of the hold-up men went downbefore a rain of bullets. Th e fourth, aMexican, was captured alive and wascarried back to Carson City.It was impossible for four men onfoot to carry three hundred poundsof gold bullion very far. Before theposse had caught up with them, theyhad buried their treasure, planning toreturn for it later when the hue andcry of the robbery had faded. Noamount of threats, bribes or othermeans of persuasion could make theone remaining hold-up man tell wherethe gold was buried.

The Mexican was given a quicktrial in the court at Carson City andwas sentenced to 20 years in the Ne-vada State Prison. Th e records of theprison in those days were very sketchyaffairs, written completely in long-hand . They listed only the name , typeof crime, the possessions on the pris-oner at the time of his arrest and anyidentifying marks. One robbery by aMexican in Ormsby County (the loca-tion of the crime) in the year 1885was recorded, but the lack of detailmakes it impossible to say whetherthis was the same crime.The prisoner languished for yearswhile the Wells-Fargo Company sentrepresentative after representative tointerview him in the hope that hemight tell where the gold was buried.The prison officials tried their ownmethods of persuasion to get the in-formation but they, too, failed.After eight years of his sentencehad been served, the old Mexican con-tracted tuberculosis. A sympatheticgovernor, at the urging of the Wells-Fargo Company, gave him a completepardo n. The Wells-Fargo agents rea-

soned that if the old fellow were re-leased he might inadvertently leadthem to the place where the treasurewas buried . Detectives were assignedto watch his movements at a discreetdistance. To everybody's disappoint-ment, the ex-convict showed no inter-est whatsoever in returning to retrievethe gold.Instead, he became a pitiful sighton the streets of Carson City. He wasemaciated almost to the point of help-lessness. At last a kindly old Dutch -man offered him a job cleaning up

his butcher shop, and a bedroom inhis own home.With a good bed to sleep in andthree meals a day, the old man parti-ally regained his hea lth. Th e kindnessand thoughtfulness of the old Dutch-

man and his son gradually broke downthe reserve of the ailing ex-convict.His confidence in them grew to suchproportions that he delighted in enter-taining them with wild stories of manyrobberies in which he had had a part.He loved to repeat each detail in thepreparation for the hold-up that re-sulted in his arrest. On ce, filled withthe sound of his own voice, he nearlydivulged his precious secret. He toldhis benefactors that while he was inprison he could look out across thedesert from the window in his cell andsee the place where they had buriedthe gold. Never, though , did he re-veal its hiding place.The old butcher and his son foundthemselves more and more intrigued.Access to sudden wealth lay right thereunder their own roof! They beggedand pleaded with the old man to letthem in on his secre t. The y offeredso many inducements that finally theMexican's last resistance broke downand he set a special date to take thebutcher and his son out to dig up thegold.

Preparations were made, and allwas in readiness when that specialday arrived. Thre e horses stood sad-dled in the early hours of daw n. Thetwo men waited in nervous excitementfor the old Mexican to put in his ap-pearance.The old man came slowly from thehouse, walked up to his horse and put

one foot in the stirrup. Just as he wasabout to pull himself up he was seizedwith a hemorrhage and fell to theground, dead.For many years, the butcher andhis son searched for the gold, but theynever found it. One of the guardsfrom the state prison hunted for itevery off-duty moment, but he, too,failed. Th roug h the years many otherpeople have sought the treasure, someusing metal detectors and diviningrods.The robbery took place between theCarson River and a low swampy spotnear the state prison, in an area ofapproximately one square mile. Manyof the rocks in this location have highiron con tents. If the gold is buriedunder one of these, it is possible thata metal detector could not give theproper reaction.

The snows of winter cover theground around Carson City with aprotective blanket, but the furiousgales of spring and autumn can befriend or foe of those who seek thetreasu re. They can pile it high withsand, or lay it bare . Searche rs haveundoubtedly walked over the shallow,hurriedly-dug hole filled with gold bul-lion many times.

But the gold is still there, somewherein the strip of desert that lies to thenortheast of the prison, waiting forsome lucky person to come along andfind it.Along this road leading toward the Nevada Slate Prison stage robbersstole $60,000 worth of gold bullion from the W ells-Fargo Com pany.Although the road is much improved today, it still closely follows the oldstagecoach route.

A P R I L , 1 9 5 4 13


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Trail to Keynot SummitKeynot is an honest mountain. It rises openly above California'sInyo range, offering a single canyon route to its summit. Here was aneasy, pleasant, uncomplicated Memorial Day weekend climb for DesertPeaks members of Southern California Sierra Club. Louise Wernerwrites of another adventure of this energetic mountain climbing group.

By LOUISE TOP WERNERPhotos by Niles WernerMap by Norton Allen

hiding behind false summits, no baf-fling the climber with route-findingproblemsMt. Keynot laid its cardson the table, face up.Its originality went further. Insteadof thinning its vegetation to a balddome, Keynot had bared its midriffand covered its upper slopes with

THE Owens Valley high-way we could see Mt. Keynot's11,101-foot summit looming upout of the middle of the Inyo Rangein eastern California. A single canyoncut its western slope, opening over analluvial fan into the valley. Here wasan individual among mountains. No

Keeler'>.: TO DEBTH VALLEY

14

pines. Dwellers in the valley call it"the upside-down mountain."This was the peak 22 of usmem-bers of the Desert Peaks section of theSierra Club of Californiahad selectedfor our Memorial Day weekend climblast year. We had not been able toget much advance information aboutKeynotand that fact merely addedto the challenge of our adventure.Just north of Lone Pine our caravanturned to the right off Highway 6-395.At the narrow gauge railroad east ofthe Lone Pine station we left the pave-ment for two miles of steep roughdriving up the canyon.

From the end of the road the trailzigzagged toward a twisted pillar ofbasalt 400 feet up the slope. The des-ert had stained the boulders along theway a rich mahogany. To the right, inthe canyon bottom, a tangle of Virgin'sBower hid the trickle of French'sSpring where quail scurried under ar-royo willows and an ash-throated fly-catcher dived, clicking its beak on aninsect in midair.Niles Werner, leader, hitched up thefelt pads that kept his 30-pound packfrom cutting his shoulders, and beganwearing down the zigzags with his

slow, seemingly effortless pace. Apri-cot mallow growing out of the shalelooked surprised at 22 pairs of bootsplodding by. Traffic on the Keynottrail is light these days.Between 1878 and 1894 mule hoofsrang almost incessantly on the shale,their pack saddles loaded with goldfrom the Keynot Mine, half a milliondollars' worth. From an 8000-footridge on the other side of the 11,000foot saddle they came, clattering downthe 12-mile trail to French's Spring,there to be relieved of their loads andto drink from the trough, now a pileof planks rotting under a rusted pipe.The gold was relayed to the 20-mulcteams which hauled it 225 miles toLos Angeles. Bev Hunter of Olancharemembers the big barns spaced aboul20 miles apart up and down the val-ley, housing up to 80 mules, the relaystations for the teams. Bev was bornand raised in Owens Valley in the dayswhen eggs were a dime a dozen anda good team of horses sold for $600."I would have called anyone crazywho said I'd see that day when carswould roll along the Owens Valleylakebed," says Bev. When he was sixit took the family five days to drive125 miles from their ranch near In-dependence to the railroad at Mojave.



15/44

Desert Peaks mem bers o f the Southern California Sierra Club on the top of Mt.Keynot in the Inyo Range o f eastern California. Front row , left to right, are BobSchme lzer, M argaret Jones, Lorraine Ogg, Louise Werner; middle row , Joe Frischen,Roland Kent, Virgil Sisson, Connie Jarabin, Art W idmer, Ed Burno p; rear, FrankSanborn, John Nienhuis, Dick Kenyon, John Robinson,Jill Johnson, John Wedbe rg and Ken Rich.An up-canyon breeze cooled ourbacks, perspiring under the packs.Niles paused to look back across thevalley at the Sierra Nevada where sixpeaks over 14,000 feet high paradedtheir snowy headdresses among theirless lofty fellows."Which is Mt. Whitney?" askedRoland Kent, 14, our youngest knap-sacker. Niles pointed out the needlewhich, though it marks the highestpoint in the U.S., stood back, over-shadowed at this elevation by lesserpeaks in the foreground.At the top of the mahogany staircasewe rounded a band of basaltic cliffs.The packs lightened when we saw thetrail leveling off over a shale terracepatterned with bunches of yellow grassand gray-green sage. To our left afault cut off the terrac e. He re Nat ure

had, in one of her convulsive moods,taken the stratum in her hands andtwisted it, then brushed over the con-torted surfaces with a rich brown var-nish."What's holding up Assistant Leader

Walt Collins?" wondered Niles duringa pause on the second terrace."Birds," said Frank Sanborn, "1passed him back at French's Spring,stalking birds with his binoculars."No wonder. Walt had never beforespotted the Lutescent and Macgilliv-ray's warblers. Mary DeDec ker, amountaineer-naturalist who lives at thefoot of these mountains, was of theopinion that the warblers had soughtshelter in the desert from a recentstorm in the Sierra. Especially inter-ested in the plants of the Inyos, Maryhad already listed under "Plants Alongthe Keynot Trail," peppergrass, buck-wheat, wishbone bush, wild tobacco,peach thorn, squaw currant and asmall fern found under the shady sideof rocks . "An d they call the Inyosbarren," she laughed.

On another terrace climbing backtoward the main canyon on our right,the shale took on a grapejuice hue.Connie Jarabin, a big fellow with aready laugh, picked a leaf from thebase of a Panam int Plume. "Tastes

like cabbage," he said, offering it toRolan d. Roland tasted it, screwed uphis face, spat it out and reached for hiscanteen.Lunch timea chance to throw offthe packs, stretch out in the sunshine,and after a while revive enough tonibble a carrot, admire a coronet ofbuds on a prickly pear cactus and in-spect Jill Johnson's new Kelty pack.Nylon on an aluminum frame it weighsonly two pounds empty. With sleepingbag, ground cloth, a gallon of water,dinner, breakfast and two lunches,sweater, parka, flashlight, toothbrushand matches, the pack weighed 24pounds.Connie pointed to a scarlet locoweed and grinned at Rolan d. "Th ey'regood in sandwiches.""Yeah?" Roland grinned back, "Youeat it."After lunch we climbed toward abluish-gray streak that followed downthe left slope into the canyon narrows.The trail began dropping into the nar-rows too.

A P R I L , 1 9 5 4 15


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On the watercut walls we read someof the canyon's history. E rosion hadleft a buttress projecting out of theleft wall. On its sheared-off face wesaw evidence of faulting and tiltingof the strata and of the urgency ofhot lava searching out weak spots inthe shale, churning tunnels as itswirled. The sheared-off shale glowedlike polished walnut while the crosssections of the tufa swirls looked likethe roots of branches roughly brokenoff at the trunk. A lower plug haderoded out leaving a cave 20feet high.

At the base of this buttress waterdribbled over a lime bog. A singlewillow spread above it. 'I had heardrumors about a Lone Willow Spring,"said Niles, when some demurred athaving carried a gallon of water, "butI didn't feel like depending on a rumorto water a crowd.""Ugh'," said Lloyd Balsam, theDesert Peakers' chairman. "Now wehave no excuse for not washing."Most Desert Peakers prefer not wash-ing to carrying wash water on theirbacks. Aromatic plants like juniper,and sage may substitute quite wellfor soap and water, with the addedadvantage that they don't rob the skinof natural oils.Ken Rich dug a hole in the bogwitha tin cup and spoon and soon had aclear pool. It tasted slightly of min-erals.Three and a half miles aboveFrench's Spring we made camp on asemi-level spot bordered on the northby a 15-foot gully, just above the LoneWillow Spring. At some time duringthe past a cloudburst, a real gully-washer, must have thundered downthe canyon through the narrows, car-rying down pine trees from above Mt.Keynot's midriff. The logs came inhandy, and our fire blazed brightlythat night.Desert Peakers eat strange things forbreakfast on knapsack trips. Fewcare

to risk carrying raweggs; a frying panis hardly worth its weight in a pack.Some had brought their eggs hard-boiled. One mixed powdered eggyolkwith powdered milk and cocoa. JohnNienhuis was the envy of everyonewhen he pulled two quart cartons offresh milk out of a pocket in his knap-sack. "Long as I had to carry a gal-lon of liquid . . ." he said. We remem-bered a trip when a carton of milk ina knapsack got all mixed up with asleeping bag. Most oldtimers carryinstant coffee but Niles likes to starta long climbing day with a cup of hotjello.

The moon still hung over the southwall when we started our six-mile trekto the summit. For a mile or so wefollowed the gully. The narrows, deep

"SI

3Jill Johnson's Kelly pack, nylon onan aluminum frame, weighs onlytw o pounds empty. With sleepingbag, groundcloth, gallon of water,dinner, breakfast and two lunches,sweater, parka, toothbrush, matchesand flashlight, Miss Johnson carried24 pounds on the Mt. Key not climb."It is the lightest pack I know of,"says the author.

in shadows, were left behind. As theyfell below, the slopes took on a round-ness, except where scarred by volcanicdikes.The sun, though it would not showover the crest of the Inyos for hoursyet, caused the Sierra snows to blush.Mormon tea was a lively green grow-ing out of the same shale as sage and

bunchgrass, which paled into the back-ground.We zigged right to avoid the cliffsof the midriff, then zagged back to-ward the almost straight line abovewhich the pines hadsurvived. The first

pines, white and dead, marked a forkin the trail. The right branch led uptoward the Burgess Mine on the ridgeseveral miles to the south. We hadtraveled toward the sun for two hourswhile it had traveled toward us, yetwe had not met; the ridge stood be-tween us.W e had been hiking in forest forsome time when castle rampartsloomed on the skyline nearby. At8:30 we pulled up to the saddle andmet the sun. A hitching rack of pinepoles sagged beside the trail. Did themuleteers enjoy the view while theyrested the mules after their three-milepull from the mine? Or were theybored with slopes falling away beneaththeir feet, and hankering for the levelliving below? We of the cities enjoyedthe canyons filled with tall pines thatstreaked down toward the Saline Val-ley.Here in his youth, Bcv Hunterroped bighorn sheep. Some of therams had a horn-spread of three feet."Then you had the rough job of bull-dogging them to get your rope back,"he says. Bev's skill with a bronc anda rope later led to his sharing a bunkwith the late Will Rogers in a WildWest Show.On the saddle the trail deserted usto contour down the cast side to theKeynot Mine. With the help of themap we picked out Keynot Canyon,

but even with binoculars we couldn'tspot the mine. The Mineralogist's Re-port which had described "the Keynotvein, free gold in granite . . . seventunnels . . . a five-stamp mill . . .water from Hahn's Canyon three milessouth . . ." didn't mention the scoreof shacks that mushroomed out ofrock, pine-poles and brush, or thepiano that rode mule-back over the11,000 foot saddle. Keynot's littleboom was hardly heard among thebig noises of Panamint City and CerroGordo. No tourists prowl among therockpiles that once housed its hopefulminers.A half-mile of trailless scramblingpu t us on the summit. Friendly rangesrose all around; northeast , the LastChance Range where we had once ex-plored Dry Mountain , to the east thePanamints where we had visited Tele-scope Peak not long ago, beyond, withDeath Valley hiding between, theGrapevine Range.The register placed on Keynot PeakOctober, 1950, by another DesertPeaks group showed that we were the

fifth party to climb the peak since then.In the pines a Clark's Nutcrackerscolded and little birds chickadee-dee-deed andeverything seemed pleasantlyuncomplicated, just as the mountainhad promised us at the start.16 DESERT MAGAZINE


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L I F E O N T H E D E S E R TBy LEE STROBEL

IN 1916 business wastough in my line around LosAngeles. Fighting with my manycompetitors for what little there wasfinally broke me down. I needed arest, and preferably far away from theclash and clamor of human society.As if in answer to my problem, Icame across a rugged individualist whocalled himself a land locato r. I shallrefer to him as Mr. Smith, for I can-not remember his name.For a modest fee Mr. Smith locatedpeople on public lands where, "with alittle energy and gumption," theycould grow rich in a few y ears. Hissole mission in life, he convinced me,was "to help young fellers" like my-self get ahead in this rough and tumbleworld. His enthusiasm was inspiring.

A day or two later, on a dirt roadabout ten miles west of the town ofMojave, California, he brought hisbattered and boiling Model T Ford toa halt in a wilderness of sagebrushand greasewood. He turned to me andsmiled. "Here is the place," he an-nounced.I got out to survey the lonely land-scape. No t a house was in sight, nordid it appear that the hand of man hadever disturbed a bush for miles around.Apparently Destiny had chosen me topioneer the region."How about water for irrigation?"I asked."That's easy. Drill a well. Plentyof water close to the surface aroundhere," Mr. Smith said with convincingfinality.Upon our return to Los Angeles wewent to the U . S. La nd Office. 1 fileda homestead on 160 acres and handedM r. Smith $16 0 for his services. Inour parting handshake he said force-fully, "Now git agoin' out thar soon'syou can, young feller. You 'll mak e akillin' in a couple years. I'm gonnarun out to see ya once in a while."I never saw Mr. Smith again.As a veteran of the Spanish Ameri-can war, I could gain title to the landby living there seven months, pro-vided that ten acres had been clearedand planted to some sort of crop . ]could try dry farming if I chose. Lateron I could put in a well and pump ifconditions warranted.The first thing to do was to put upa rouse for my wife, two small chil-dren and myself. I designed a 10x20cabin, and had a lumber firm at Mo-jave deliver the necessary materials.

With the help of several friendsover a couple of weekends, the cabin

Luther Burbank's amazing spineless cactus and the teparybeans of the ancients were just the crops to plant on hisdesert hom estead , thought Lee Strobel. But he neg lectedto consider the appetites of his jackrabbit neighbors.was completed and I turned mythoughts to farming. 1 must take ad-vantage of the approaching spring ifI was to prove up and get my titlebefore the year was out. Just whatto plant 1 had not yet determ ined, butthe question was soon answered.Big advertisements appeared sud-denly in Los Angeles newspapers ex-tolling the virtues of Luiher Burbank'sremarkable new discovery, spinelesscactus . It was a boon to civilization,they shouted, the greatest feed forcattle ever found! The arid wastes ofCalifornia, Nevada and Arizona in abrief few years would be swa rmingwith fat herds relishing this wonderfulnew forage!

I hurried to the address given, en-tered the lavishly equipped offices andwas greeted by a beaming gentlemanof substance and imp ortanc e. 1 hadcome for some descriptive matter andgeneral information, I told him. thenmentioned my new venture out in theMojave Desert."My dear sir! How fortunate youare that Mr. Burbank has just per-fected the most suitable thing to growout there," he said with assurance. Histen-minute sales talk convinced meand I invested a considerable sum ofmoney in a sackful of Burbank's won-drous product.An astounded public hardly hadtime to digest this botanical sensationwhen another burst upon the scene.The tepary bean had been found! Asealed olla full of them had been un-earthed in the ruins of an Arizonacliff dwe lling, it was repo rted . Thebean had been a staple item in thediet of the ancients who found it hardyenough to be grown in their harshdesert environment. Newsp aper ed ;-tors and feature writers discussed withgreat enthusiasm the probabilities ofspineless cactus and tepary beans sup-planting sagebrush and greasewoodfrom Los Angeles to Chihuahua.I decided to try out both of thesegreat discoveries on my desert home-stead. Mo re of my dwindling fundswere spent for enough of the wonderbeans to seed ten acres.The beans and cactus were dulyplanted, and a good rain came at theright moment to get them started.When I moved my family to the home-stead two weeks later, the beans weretwo inches high, and every slab ofcactus had new shoots on it.The plants thrived, and I alreadywas calculating mv harvest returnswhen I began to notice more and more

rabbit droppings in the bean field. Tomy distress, 1 saw more and more ofthe lush bushes, heavily laden withswelling pods, fall victim to the in-creasing number of rodent vandals.The fast growing cactus also showedevidence of gnawing.

By the time the beans were readyto harvest, at least half of the fieldhad been destroyed. I took a gunny -sack, ran a wire around its mouth tohold it open and went to work. Whenthe bag was stuffed full of uprootedbean bushes I emptied it upon a widecanvas. When the canvas was loadedI dragged it to a corner where theshed and privy adjoined and emptiedit. In a couple of days my qua drup edcompetitors and I had cleaned the field.My share of the crop was a curingstack about as high as my head.

Upon completion of the bean har-vest the rabbits went to work on thecactus, and in a few days the patchwas gnawed to the ground.When the beans were cured I beganto thresh them. Using the big canvasagain, I put a pile of bean bushes onit and beat out the beans with a club.The net result of the laborious opera-tion was three grain sacks full of beans,weighing about a hundred poundsapiece. They looked and tasted likesmall navies.I was ready to admit the rabbitshad won, and I was convinced if Iwanted to make a living I would haveto return to the city. My improvedhealth was worth the seven months oftime and the several hundred dollarsI had invested in the venture.The homestead fell victim tovandals and the eleme nts. By 1929there was no sign left of my seven-month occupancy. The depression hadknocked me flat, and when a strangeroffered me $250 for my 160 acres, Itook it.I have not seen nor heard of a te-pary bean for 35 years. As to thespineless cactus, I heard a plausiblestory which explains its early demise.According to my informant, cattle whograzed exclusively on the "wonderplant" soon died. Autopsies revealedtheir deaths were caused by ballsabout the size of oranges and the con-sistency of rubber which had formedto plug the digestive track.It would make me very happy toknow that the rabbits who ate mycactus on the homestead were similarlyaffected and were punished for theirthievery with whopping big stomach-aches.

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Primary water is most likely to be found in the mountains rather than on valleyfloors. At extreme right is the new 1500-gallon water well on Riess Ra nch highabove Simi Valley, Ventura County, California. Photo courtesy Primary WaterDevelopment Company, Beverly Hills, California.N ew Sou rce of w aterfor Desert Lan ds?Most water is "secondhan d." Over and over ag ain it go es throughthe cycle of evaporation, condensation, precipitation, evaporation.Wea ther is the master. But Stephen R iess believ es it is possible to tapprimary sources of water at their original source. Not many geolo gistsshare his revolutionary theories as to the availability of primary orjuvenile waterbut her e is his story.By GASTON BURRIDGE

AM FAIRLY certain most of thewater any of us use todaynomatter where we happen to beis "secondhand" water, secondhandmany times over, many years over.Stephen Riess, a German born andtrained geochemist and geologist, isnot interested in finding secondhandwater. He is looking for firsthandwater. It is called "prim ary," "juve-nile" or "magmatic" water .Perhaps "secondhand water" is nottoo apt a description for ordinarywaterwater of the hydraulic cycle.The hydraulic cycle begins with18

evaporationmostly from the oceans.From here, the sun's heat lifts watervapor. This water vapo r rises untilit contacts cooler air which condensesit into tiny drops of water. Thesedroplets combine to make clouds.Clouds eventually become cooled suf-ficiently to allow their minute dropsto comb ine into larger ones. Thes ebecome so heavy that the force ofgravity soon outweighs those factorsholding them aloft, and they fall asrain, hail or snow. Prob ably m ost ofthis precipitation falls back into thesea, but some of it falls on land.

I

Of that portion falling on land about50 percent runs off immediately inrills, creeks and rivers, and returns tothe ocean relatively soon. Of the re-maining 50 percent which sinks intothe ground, 38 to 40 percent is re-turned, sooner or later, to the surfacethrough capillary action and the trans-piration of plant life. Eve ntually, ] 0to 12 percent reaches the water tableto feed our pum ps. It too, joins thehydraulic cycle soon after use. This,then, is secondhand waterwater usedover and over again in the hydrauliccycle.

Primary water is water which hasnever seen the light of day before,never felt the throb and rhythm ofocean waveswater which has neverknown what has always seemed to memust be the most thrilling ride in allthe worldthe ride with the clouds.Neither has it ever been through theprocess of evaporation."Primary water is the child of dark-ness," says Riess. "It is conceived inconvulsion and heat, in the interiordepths of the earth where giant batho-liths of fluid magmas continue to coolgradually and form first crystals ofthe more basic foundation stone. Pri-mary water is, in my opinion, theD E S E R T M A G A Z I N E


19/44

original source of all water on ourglobe."One of the most exciting possibili-ties of juvenile water is that it can befound as easily in desert country asanywhere else. Perhaps easier. " Walkon granite," says Riess, "and you walkover primary water."In the fissures and pipes of igneousand plutonic rock flows this newsource of H2 O . It can be found read-ily in the desert because there surfacerock is more naked of top soil, thusrevealing true faulting and contours.Stephen Riess is not a seer. He isnot a "water witch," a dowser or waterdiviner. He uses neither crystal ballnor gadgets. He uses his head. Riessis a trained geologist and geochemistwho employs scientific methods. Muchof the information he obtains, uponwhich his decisions are based, is pro-

duced in any one of several commer-cial laboratories, from their analysesof submitted samples. Riess studiesthe petrographic. the crystal'ographicas well as the chemical analysis of asite's rocks . How he uses this infor-mation is the important thing. Tha tis his secret! A secret ferreted out thehard waythrough long years of pa-tient work, thinking, experimentingbeing laughed at from many quarters.'"I did not promulgate .the primarywater theory," says Riess. "Such geo-logical bigwigs as Dr. Oscar Meinzerof the U. S. Geological Survey andDr. Waldemar Lindgren of Massa-chusetts Institute of Technology havewritten on primary water, but youwon't find out much about it in geo-logical textbooks."What Riess has done is to applythis theory, to learn how to use it inactually locating sources of this newkind of water.Juvenile water is as wet as anyother water. It tastes the same , boilsthe same, looks the same as that spill-

ing from the spigot or dipped from anirrigation di^ch. Ordinarily, primarywater is softer than average well waterfound in the West.To date, Riess has located 70 waterwells60 in the United States, six inMexico, one in Canada, one in Braziland one in Peru. The Brazil and Peruwells were found and drilled in 1922.They were the first and second wells.His third well was drilled on his ownranch 19 years ago. All save threeare eminently successful and, he says,"I believe I now know why those

three failed to meet my expectations.I learn something new with every well."Such a reco rd, b uilt over so 'widean area, either makes Stephen R'essone of the luckiest men in the world who could far more profitably spend

Stephen Riess, German-born geo-chemist, whose revolutionary theories onprimary water have stirred a tempest among geologists.Photo by the author.his time in Las Vegas, Reno or MonteCarloor it is evidence as to the val-idity of his thinking!

Riess lives high above Simi Valleyin Ventura County between the SantaSusana Mountains and the Simi Hillsabout 35 miles east of Ventura, Cali-fornia. Th ere, on his own land, hehas three wells which he believes tapthe source of juvenile waterthe onedrilled 19 years ago, one drilled twoyears ago and one just brought in.There is not one ordinary water wellin Simi Valley which has not sufferedgreatly from a constantly sinking watertable. M any wells have played outcomp letely. Some can only be pum peda short time, then must be rested fordays. Riess says his wells neverchange. The 19-year-old one deliversas much water today as it did whenfirst brought in.

Primary water wells are not affectedby surface climate. Drouth is as far

from affecting them as the moon . IfSimi Valley received no rain for ahundred years, Riess believes his wellswould continue to deliver as muchwater. "Severe earth qua kes may affectprimary water wells temporarily, orpermanently, by restricting or closingtheir orifice," explains Riess, "but cli-matenever!"

Riess does not go to the valleyslooking for juvenile water, although,on occasions, it may be found there.N o, he hikes to the mountainsandnot the mountain valleys or canyon-bottom s, either. He seeks the highsides of mountains, sometimes eventheir higher tops. The wells which tapprimary water are drilled through basicrock, into and through the very bonesof the continent, because juvenilewater is found flowing in fissures,cracks, flutes or pipes of these rocks.Primary water does not come fromsedimentarv collections of earth sur-A P R I L , 1 9 5 4 19


20/44

face materials caught in a basin andheld for eons. The deepest well Riesshas drilled for juvenile water is 1400feet. His shallowest is 232 feet."All primary water may eventuallyfind its way into the water table, or

directly into water courses or into thesea," says Riess. "But I do not attemptto tap it there. 1 tap it long before itgets that far down!"Juvenile water comes from deep,very deep within the heart of the rocks

D e s e r t Q u i z There 's a bit of geography, history, botany,mineralogy and general lore of the desertcountry in this Quizand you will find it aninteresting and stimulating experience to test your own knowledge of thisfascinating land of sun, sand and solitude. Twelve to 14 correct answersis fair, 15 to 17good, 18 or more excellent. The answers are on page 26.1Bright Angel Trail leads to T h e top of Mt. Whitney . . Thebottom of Grand Canyon . The shore of Great Salt LakeThe depths ofCarlsbad Caverns2Pat McCarran isA U.S.senator from Nevada . The governorof Arizona . Director of the National Park Service . Secre-tary of the Interior .3The legendary Lost Dutchman mine was in theHarqua Hala Moun-

tains . Wasatch Mountains . Superstition MountainsChuckawalla Mountains4El M o rn N ational Monument is inNew Mexico . UtahCalifornia . Arizona .5 Chinde is a Navajo word meaningDwelling place . SpringScalp . Evil Spirit6Before the Metropolitan Water district 's dam was built in the Colo-rado River at Parker, the valley where the reservoir is now locatedwas inhabited byApache Indians . Chemehuevi IndiansMormon colonists . Yaqui Indians ........7If you stood on the 12,000-foot peak of Mt. Timpanogos you wouldbe looking down on the state ofNevada . Arizona . NewMexico _ . Utah8The color of the Evening Primrose which grows on the dunes afterhea vy ' winter rains isPurple . White . YellowOrange9-The capital of NewMexico isSanta Fe . AlbuquerqueGallup . Taos .

10Kearny's Army of the West on its historic trek to win California forthe Union crossed the Colorado River atYuma . BlytheParker Needles .... .1 1Rock so light it will float on water isManganese . TalcPumice _. . Obsidian ... .12Until his death a fewmonths agoJohnny Shoshone was a well knownIndian inWinnemucca . Peach Springs ._ . Death ValleyWindow Rock13The author of Death Valley in '49 wasKit Carson . WilliamLewis Manly . W. A. Chalfant . Will Caruthers14Indian symbols incised in the rocks in many places in the Southwestproperly are called Petroglyphs. . .... Pictographs . Hiero-glyphics .... . Indian Sign language .15Fairy Duster is thecommon name given a desertHummingbirdFlower __ . Insect ... . Lizard . . . . . .16Miners refer to a surface exposure of rock as anOut c ropOverburden . Vein ........ Ledge ._ .17Stalactites found in caves generally are a form ofLimestoneGypsum . Salt __ . Quartz18The Museum of Northern Arizona is located at FlagstaffPrescott .. . Williams . Winslow19Tombstone, during the height of its mining boom, produced mostlyGold . Silver ... . Copper . Quicksilver20The historic Oatman Massacre took place nearThe present miningcamp ofOatman . Alone the Gila River . At Taos . InDeath Valley

from which it issues. Its course is longand deviousprobably as much as 40miles! Naturally no one can be sureof just how the water comes into be-ing. Riess says the trick isn't so muchin finding primary water as it is find-ing cool, sweet prim ary wa ter. Fully75 percent of all juvenile water is soho t and so highly mineralized as to beunfit for human or agricultural use.As crystallization takes place deepin the rock masses which lie beneaththe surface, great quantities of the ele-mental gases are continually formed.These are generated under tremendousand constant pressure. This pressureforces these gases into multitudinouscracks which lace this forming rock.As the gases rise, they cool. As theycool, they contract. As they contractthey leave space behind them for moregas to come along. As these gasescontinue to rise they come in contactwith other elements and combinationsof elements in different states of cool-ness andexpo sure. Here they combinewith these other elements, or some ofthem do. New compounds are formed,perhaps leaving hydrogen and oxygenfree to move on together.

Scientists now believe that watervaporcommonly cal led steamdoesnot exist as such at pressures above560 pounds per square in:h, but sep-arates into its elemental g.ises, hydro-gen and oxygen.The cool, sweet juvenile water prob-ably is born under conditions wherethese two gases travel together for along enough period to cool below the560-pound mark, then they are freeto join andbecome water vapor, whichis able to maintain its identity untilcooled enough to condense and be-come water rather quickly in surround-ings that preclude the absorption ofsolubles.Nobody knows about these things.The deepest hole man has ever drilledin the earth is slightly over four miles.Ten times that is a long way, and wecan have but theories for a while yet."It is my belief." says Riess. "thatduring a considerable portion ofEarth's early historyeven after itssurface cooled sufficiently to holdwaterthere was liti> or none here;that all water now present on earth,was once juvenile water! I believe fur-ther that the total amount of wateron the earth's surface is increasing,slowly, of course, and one day, sometw o or three billion years hence, water

w !1 cover most of that which is nowl a n d . 'Riess is 53 years old. He was bornin Bavaria. In Germany he attendeda naval academy. His teacher of geol-ogy there was a rebel thinker, geologi-

20 DESERT MAGAZINE


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cally. He instilled in Riess much in-dependence of mind and dislike forwhat Riess calls, "a lot of deadwoodof dogma" surrounding much of pres-ent day geological thinking.Riess left Germany in 1932 afterthe Hitler Putsch. "I saw the hand-writing on the wall for the Fatherland,"he says. He traveled in nearly everycountry in the world, sailed nearlyevery sea, following the career ofmetallurgist and mining engineer. Heand the late Louis Adamic, the writer,were friends. They learned Englishtogether on the deserts of California,reading a dictionary while they workedat the mining game.How does Stephen Riess locate ajuvenile water well? Th at, of course,is his secret. It is a complicated pro c-ess having to do with the angles atwhich faults and strata lie in relation

to one another and to the points ofthe compass, what the composition ofeach is in relation to its neighbor andto themselves in depth. In other words,what stratum lies on top of what stra-tum, for how far down, and at whatangle, as well as in what relation tosurrounding ridges, faults, strata andpeaks. But let us assume a case.Riess is called to make a survey fora prima ry water well. Once in thevicinity, he can tell by general lay ofthe land what the chances are of find-ing a source of juvenile water. If he

thinks the situation favorable, he makesa careful, complicated check. Thisrequires three to five days, dependingon terrain, kind of rock encounteredon the surface, position of faults topoints of compass, to ridges, to peaks."If," says Riess, "after this surveyis completed and the information ob-taine d from it eva lua ted, 1 still feelthere exists concrete possibilities fordeveloping juvenile water, we musthave core drillings ma de. Some ofthese drillings are sent to any one of

several commercial laboratories foranalyses. After the laboratory returnsits findings I assemble the informationfor interpretation and combinationwith my own findings. From these,I determine how deep the pipe or flutecarrying the water lies. Also , I canpredict then what volume of water thewell probably will produce."After these conclusions are reached,there comes the problem of drillingthe well itself. This is indeed no smallpar t of the whole schem e. Well drill-ers generally have their own ideas, and

are reluctant to take instruction. Riesssays, "I know of only four rock drill-ers capable of drilling such holes as Imust hav e." Why? Mostly becausesuch a well driller must know what heis doing every minute of drilling time.

Stephen Riess beside one of the wells he has drilled in Ve ntura County,California. He says this well is unaffected by climate conditions.Photo by the author.Such wells are no places for any guesswork . One of the most impo rtant fac-tors is, these bores must be straight!Not straight just one way, but bothways because targets are often smalland if the hole is not plumb it caneasily m iss. A near miss is as tragicas a far one!

Naturally, there is immediate inter-est as to how much such wells cost.They are not cheap, but they are notprohibitive. "Bec ause every juvenilewell is an individual proposition as todepth, kind of rock to be penetrated,roads to bring in equipment and sup-plies, etc., no general figures can beset dow n. But the most may be from$10,000 to $20,000."There is another important point.Unless one owns considerable land ad-joining mountains and unless a well sitecan be located on land so owned, itis necessary for prospective juvenile

well owners to proceed on the samebasis to acquire the well site as hewould if he were locating a mineralclaim. This is done to be certain , afterwater is found, that the owner will beallowed to use that water for purposesintended.How do we know it is primarywater? Even a cursory review of vol-cano eruption information reveals suchexplosions carry immense quantitiesof water vapor under tremendous pres-sure. Where did this water vapor comefrom? Surely not from the surface ofthe eart h! Such investigations as havebeen made there only point more inthe direction Stephen Riess is going.Primary water is new water, revolu-tionary water. It would app ear to bea constant source of water. Whetheione has a water problem or not, hereis an interesting subject for future ex-ploration.

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TfteBy OLIVE MCHUGHSalt Lake City, UtahI must go back to the mountains.To their steadfastness, grandeur andpoise;I am lost in the mazeOf the city's tense days,

Their problems, their Babel of noise.I long for the beauty of mountains,Their c::nyons andforests andpeace.I played as a childIn the depths of their wildThey will give my frustrations release.I shall go back to the mountains.They will cradle meonce I am there.With the lullaby tuneOf the creeks as they croonI shall rest anddream in their care.

DESERT'S SECRETSBy DMNA-DER FOVANESSIANCedar City, Utah

My desert keeps no secretsNor sings the same long tale.And though no voice nor eye she shows

195404 desert magazine 1954 april

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