The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1906-06-06

From the Baltimore Herald.
When Francis Marion Smith, the borax
king, shall have completed his line of
steel across Death Valley, that region
of horror and mystery will have lost the
most of it's terrors, There is now hardly
an acre of It's sere and desolate length
and breadth that has not been pressed
by the foot of the tireless and undlsmayed
prospector. True, many of these have
never returned to tell the tale Of their
discoveries, and their bones are now
bleaching in the sand along with those
of untold hundreds who went before. SO
many have entered its confines but to give
new justification for it's name, and so
frightful were the sufferings of those
who managed to escape its horrors that
both California and Nevada have made
large appropriations TO dot the whole
desert with signposts pointing the thirst
tortured traveller to the nearest water
The deadly arsenic springs will be marked
or walled in, and, where possible wells
will be drilled in places where the water
holes are too far apart.
On the Nevada side the edge of the
valley is already dotted thickly with pop
Searchlight, Tonopah, Goldfeld, Rhyolite.
and Silver Peak. Along the west slope or
the Funeral mountains hundreds of min
ing claims have been staked and are
under development and tales of fabulous
wealth are daily tempting men to brave
poisonous waters, so that 1t seems no
rash prediction that in a very few more
years Death Valley will be better known
as the valley of gold.
1t is probable that no other corner of
the world of equal area, or of ten times
the area, contains so great or so diVersl-
fed wealth in minerals as Death Valley
1t is very likely that including its eastern
and western walls, the Funeral and Teie-
scope mountains, 1t contains more gold
than the Rand or the Klondike, more sill
yer than Nevada, more nitrates than
Chile, more copper than Montana, Ari-
IONA or the Lake Superior region, more
iron than the Mesaba and Gogebic ranges,
more tin that Cornwall more arsenic
than Syria and the Harz mountains,
more asbestos than Canada, more lead
and zinc than Missouri and Colorado
besides manganese. platinum, baryta
gypsum. sulphur, marble, granite, SOFA,
salt, borax, turquoise. garnets, opals'
tourmaline and a whole catalogue of valu-
able minerals. metals. drugs and chemi-
cal compound. 1t is one vast laboratory
In which nature seems to have compound
ed drugs for the healing-or for the ex-
termination-of the nations. 1t has been
desert bed as an inexhaustible storehouse
of wealth, the drug store of the universe
the treasure vault of the nation. 1t is all
of these-but it is locked and barred by
death. If the grim monster can be driven
from this his stronghold by railroads.
water wells, signposts and the prospec-
tors burros. the treasures of the lncas
and Montezumas, the wealth of King Sol
onions mines, of Ophir and Golconda, VIII
hardly be a circumstance.
Death Valley received its name of i'll
omen away back in 1850, when the Ben
nett party of gold seekers bound for Cali
fornia, looking for short cut to the
new Eldorado. passed through its portals
in the Funeral mountains. But two out
of the party of thirty survived to tell
the tale of thirst and madness, of wild
chasing after cooling fountains and placid
pools depicted by the deceitful mirage, of
slow death by torture and final open
sepulture among the sage and sand, with
the distorted Joshua tree and Spanish
bayonet for monuments. Recently when
the San Pedro, Los Angeles and Salt
Lake railroad was being pushed forward
mile by mile the construction crews found
thirty human skeletons along the narrow
strip of land that formed the right of
way within the boundaries of Lincoln
county, Nevada.
Yet the desert of Lincoln county Is not
to be compared in horror and utter DESC
lation to Death Valley. II Is only sixty
five miles long. varying in width from
five to fifteen miles long. 1t contains 500
square miles. and its lowest depression is
40 feet below the sea level. Few tender
feet. standing on the Funeral mountains
and looking across the glittering stretch
of white and gray. imagine that they
would have any difficulty in walking
across They know nothing of the diff
culties of travelling in the yielding sand.
of the intense heat that frequently