Into the Valley of Death

I’ve been hearing in my mind a poem, written by Alfred Lord Tennyson:

Jo sits, tiny, under this arch in Death Valley.

Half a league, half a league,
 Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
 Rode the six hundred.
"Forward, the Light Brigade.”

It has nothing to do with our present situation in Death Valley. But it shows, again, how the human mind works. I learned the poem as a boy in Scotland. And now, as we drive into the Valley of Death – California-style – I could still hear the trailbreakers who had gone before on a mission of death and destruction.

Back in 1849, as Europeans pushed west to the gold fields of California, a party came through Salt Lake City, Utah Territory. They arrived there, way to the north of us, just after the Donner party had tried unsuccessfully to make it over what became known as the Donner Pass. The Donner party ended up resorting to cannibalism to stay alive. 

The latest settlers were anxious to move on despite the warning that it was too early.

They opted to roll south with their wagon train. But they kept running into forbidding mountains that refused to let them pass. Eventually, after two months, they hit what became Death Valley. And on they rode, into the valley of death. They made their way through the valley. But the mountains refused to release them. On the western side of the valley, where Jo and I stopped, we learned the party burned some of their wagons, killing their oxen and drying the meat before facing the high Sierra Mountains.

At the other end of the bizarreness spectrum is the story of Death Valley Scotty. He was a con man who had ridden with Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show. In his downtime, Scotty sold people on the notion that he had discovered gold in Death Valley and was offering partnerships in his gold mine. A life insurance executive in Chicago, Albert Johnson, bought into the scheme but then decided to head to Death Valley to see his investment in action.

Scotty lined up a bunch of pals on the mountainside to “ambush” the party as it moved through Death Valley. The idea being to show Johnson how difficult it was to run the mine (which didn’t exist). When one of the “ambushers” got shot by mistake Scotty called off the attack. Johnson saw through the scheme but, amazingly, his enjoyment of Scotty overcame his sense of being conned. They remained pals for the next 42 years.

A tiny part of Scotty's Castle, deep in Death Valley.

Johnson, in the meantime, fell in love with the valley. His wife and he decided to build a stunning winter home after they found a piece of land with a powerful spring on the property. They employed Scotty to be the house entertainment. He would sit with the guests and spin his yarns about Buffalo Bill and his prospecting days.

Jo and I hiked into the canyons, carrying our water supply. It was pretty hard on the hamstrings…but oh-so-rewarding to uncover the treasures that are off the beaten path. We headed south to Badwater, 272 feet below sea level, where we were able to walk out on the lake bed of salt crystals. And we climbed Zabriskie Point to watch the eternal sun sinking behind the snow-capped mountains in the west. What an experience.

Now we are headed easterly and have stopped for a breather in the fleshpots of  Las Vegas where there’s a casino on every block. We stayed in the luxury of an RV Park because it is impossible to find places where we can just pull over and park overnight for free.

We took advantage of our location to drive the car south to the Hoover Dam, a project that I knew was enormous. But I had no conception of how truly incredible it is. Back in the 1920s, the Colorado River was the giver of life and the taker of life because it was untamed. It tore apart the land during the spring runoff.

Washington decided to control it by building a gigantic dam. Construction started in 1932 and was supposed to take six years. The men were hired by the thousands to divert the Colorado River to permit the coffer dam to be started. They worked 363 days of the each year (they were off on Christmas Day and July 4) and they were paid between 50 cents an hour and $1.50, depending on the job.

The dam was so big (think Egyptian Pyramids) that much of the piping had to be manufactured on the site because no road would accommodate the trucks to transport material. The millions upon millions of tons of concrete were creating so much heat as it cured that the engineers had to engineer a cooling system that pumped ice water into the concrete in steel tubes. And the project was so well organized that they managed to complete it two years ahead of schedule.

Jo and I took the underground tour where we could see the massive generators producing the electricity from the water passing through the dam. And we could feel the thrum of the energy passing up through the concrete into our legs.

I knew it was going to be a big, impressive project. But my mind was incapable of grasping the massiveness of the dam. We stood in awe as we looked at Lake Mead, created by the dam. Even with the horrendous drought that the squeezing the West, the lake is an overwhelming sight. It’s been a long time since I’d felt such pride in the accomplishments of this nation. Maybe part of that pride springs from listening to the people from so many different nations who stood alongside us and were equally in awe of the magnificence of the dam.

Hoover Dam, right, allow the Colorado River to roll west, under this massive new bridge that transports you to the East.