The Dawson news. (Dawson, Ga.) 1889-current, 1913-11-21
DEATH VALLEY AND ITS TOLL
CLAIMS ITS VICTIMS ONE BY ONE
AND DEFIES MARCH OF MAN.
Progress of Civilization Has Failed to
Reach California Desert. Men
Vanish as Though i'm Sea.


Vanish as Though in Sea.
/ PHOENIX, Ariz.-Death Valley
has lost none of its terrors since
1S49, when many gold hunters per-
ished in their attempts to reach the
bonanza fields of California. The rel
les of that expedition yet remain on
Salt Greek to remind passers-by of a
heroic struggle against great odds.
Today Death Valley practically is
unchanged. True, prospectors have
dug for gold and silver and copper
/ in the hills on every side; camps have
! been made and abandoned here and
! there; water holes and stations es-
| tablished in times of cross-valIey
travel between Panamints and Flu
neral Ranch; range has been devel-
oped on which figs and melons and
vegetables grow in great abundance
the mecca of hundreds of desert
pilgrims and sightseeing parties.
A stamp mill and an aerial railway
have been built and operated, with a
telephone line reaching to civiIiza-
ton; mule teams have been driven
into the depths and hauled out borax,
yet Death Valley deep between the
towering gray hills, sunken, treach-
erous, desolate, isolated, is unaltered
by the coming of man 1t is still
the valley of death, claiming its vic
Tins one by one, and harboring many
unmarked graves.
Horrors of Valley Described.
Earl c. Clemens, writing of the
death of Peter Busch, friend, says
that eight years of desert experience
failed to aid Busch, who was travel
ing by automobile. The car stuck in
the deep sand. Clemens says:
"One has no idea of the oppression
of the heat in Death Valley in sum-
mer unless he has a personal expe-
rience of it. The sun rises hot and
sets hOts, with a night sky full of
strange lights, like the flashing of
firefies, the phosphoric phenomena
of a wierd, spooky waste
The night brings some relief, but
the new day dawns hotter, it seems,
than the day before. The water in
your canteen is nauseating, as it
almost sizzles under the glare of the
merciless sun. The air pressure, hot
from above and below, almost stag
gers you, while your thick tongue,
swelling rapidly from thirst, all but
strangles you.
THE sand dunes, marked only by
mesquite, swallow you without af
fording refuge from the heat; the
wind blows as if from a fiery fur
mace; the sand shifts with the wind
and the trail is lost; the burros may
stampede, and the last of your grub
may be, hopelessly scattered.
Many have suffered horrible
deaths in that far-away and lonely
place; gone mad from thirst and
hunger; throw away canteen, grub,
clothing and wandered aimlessly, on
Iy to lie down and die, their resting
place unknown.
Some day, perhaps, a more fOrtu-
nate pilgrim has found skeleton
and dug a grave with an occasional
find of jewelry and papers by which
the remains could be identified, but
in the years in which have been
familiar with the stories OF the lost
in Death Valley but few missing ones
have h9e2 located. The valley had
swallowed them up as the sea.
The desire for gold is unabated;
it took men across Death Valley in
1849; it has lured many prospector
there since that historic day when
Funeral Range was named; and to-
day it is calling with sure and certain
toll Of human life"