Lewiston evening teller. [volume] (Lewiston, Idaho) 1903-1911, 1907-10-02
STEERING AUTOS
BY THE COMPASS
Famous Death Valley Where
Roads are Rare and Sign
Posts Unknown.

There is one place in America where
automobile drivers steer by the COM
pass. That is out in the desert country
of southern Nevada and southeastern
California where new towns spring up
over night about new found copper and
silver outcroppings and where men are
too busy making fortunes to make
roads.
Ten years ago no one dared to go
far into the waste places that lie east
of the Sierras and east and south of
the black range of the Panamints. Only
the wandering prospector with his bur-
70 loaded with oil cans full of waM.r
ventured out into the wastes of sand
and cactus.
Now all that is gone. The mining
promoter takes the Pullman to Gold
field or south to Moiave beyond Teha-
chapt. He steps down from the plush
and leath upholstered car and into
60-horsepower auto that will whsk
him out of civilization in five minutes
and through the 5reary mour aims Of
brown Stag and sand to the newest
mining town in the heart of the parch-
ed Wilderness.
Where Mojave Stands.
Very near the country where for 20
years men have gone out into sage
and the cactus on vain hunt for the
mythical Pegleg Smith mine is the
station of Mojave, on the Southern
Pacific and Santa Fe railroads. Mo-
jave is right over the high pass in the
/ southern bow of the Sierras that d.
vides the wheat fields and fruit or
chards of the San Joaquin valley from
/ the desert that stretches away over
the continental divide into Colorado.
/ The worst part of that desert begins
at Mojave. There is a big garage al
ways ready with heavy machines that
take one on a wild plunge into the
land of mystery.
There is a semblance of a road from
Mojave over the low range of noun
tans into Death valley and beyond to
the new mining camps on the lower
ridges of the Funeral mountains. 1t is
only a semblance, and the landmarks
are always matters of keen calcula-
ton to the chauffeurs, because the
winds that race across the level sands
make and unmake mountains and blot
out trails in weeks time.
The Trip to Skidoo.
If the venturesome traveller wants to
20 to Skidoo, the mushroom camp
about the great copper deposits at the
north end of Death valley, he hires one
of the Moiave autos for a price that
seems fabulous until he takes the trip
once, then he marvels that there are
men and machines that can do the
trick and come out whole. Well wa
tered, and with extra butts of water
slowed away in every available place
for emergencies, with baggage batten-
ed down and protected against dust
by tarpaulins and with driver and pas
sengers goggled and muffled against
the whirling alkali, the big machine
puffs past Mojave's f1ourishing array of
saloons and in the winking of an eye
is out in the desert.
For the most part the floor of the
desert is hard, baked by the suns of
many years. Everywhere between the
scrawny blotches of the Joshua trees
-spindlng cacti that wither like dead
ghostly arms-the leprous scurf of the
alkali shows white. The low hills are
pimpled with the blue punches of the
scrub sage There is not one thing
green, not a thing that looks as if wa
ter had touched it since the day when
the Colorado rived damned up the
Gulf of California and left an inland
sea to stagnate there and pass away.
AS the auto ploughs over the hum
mocky floor of the plain or goes teeter-
ing down the incline of some low hill,
a heavy cloud of dust and fine sand
whirls up from under the wheels and
coats the passengers with an inch-deep
crust. The sun smashes down from
the coppery- blue sky, making the met
al work on the tonneau blistering to
the bare hand.
Red-eyed and gasping for a fresh
breath of air the men in the seats see
the glimmer of the mirage seemingly
only a half mile away, and watch the
skyline of hills melt and run into new
forms with every change in direction.
The journey seems to be over the bold
face of the moon, where everything il
long dead.
Stops at Dwelling Places.
There are some stopping places
along the road where men exist pre-
cariously. These the chauffeur may
strike or run by in his method of fol-
lowing only star course through the
painless desert. If it happens that the
man at the wheels spies the simmer
of a tin vessel or picks out the low roof
of some shack off the edge of a hill
he will turn off the course and chug-
chug up to the dwelling place of one
of these marooned people of the dry
land II NAV be only to mass the time