The Wallace miner. [volume] (Wallace, Idaho) 1907-current, 1914-01-08
DEATH VALLEY STILL
A VALLEY OF DEATH
LURE OF GOLD HAS LED HUN.
DREDs OF PRosPEcToRs TO
A TRAGIC FATE.

Death valley has lost none of 1T
terrors since 1S49, when many gol'
hunters persisted in their attempts t.
reach the bonanza fields in California
| The relics Of that expedition yet re
main on Salt creek to remind passers
by of a heroic struggle against grea
odds.
Today Death valley practically Is
unchanged. True, prospectors have
dug for gold and silver and copper ir
the hills on every side; camps have
been made and abandoned here ant
there; water holes and stations estab-
Ilished in times of cross valley trave
between Panamints and Funeral ridge
A ranch has been developed on which
figs and melons and vegetables grow
in great abundance-the Mecca of hun
dreds of desert pilgrims and sightsee-
ing parties.
A stamp mill and an aerial railway
have been built and operated. with a
telephone line reaching to civilization !;
mule teams have been driven into the
depths and hauled out borax, yet
Death valley, deep between the tower
ing gray hills, sunken, treacherous,
desolate, isolated, is unaltered by the
coming of man.
Still tho Valley Of Death.
1t is still the valley of death, claim
ing it's victims one by one, and har-
boring many unmarked graves
Carl c. Clemens, writing Of the death
Of Peter Busch, friend, says that
eight years of desert experience failed
to aid Busch, who was travelling by
automobile. The car stuck in the deep
sand.
Clemens says:
zone has no idea of the oppression
of the heat in Death valley in summer
unless he has personal experience of
it. The sun rises hot and sets hot,
with a night sky full of strange lights,
like the flashing Of flrehies, the phos-
phoric phenomenon of a weird, smoky
waste.
Water in Canteens Sizzles.
"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 1t al
most sizzles under the glare OF the
sun. The air pressure, hot
rom above and below, almost staggers
you, while your thick tongue, swelling
'apidly from thirst, all but strangles
YOU.
THE sand dunes, marked only by
mesquite, swallow you without afford
ng refuge from the heat the wind
blows as If from fiery furnace; the
and shifts with the wind and the trail
s lost; the burros may stampede and
he last of your grub may be hopelessly
catered
Prospectors Die in Despair.
MANY have suffered horrible deaths
n that far-away and lonely place,
one mad from thirst and hunger,
brown away canteen, grub. clothing
nd wandered aimlessly, only to lie |
own and die, the prey of coyotes and
he grief of loved ones to whom their |
esting place Is unknown.
Some day, perhaps more fortu-
ate pilgrim has found a skeleton and f,
ug a grave, with an occasional find
+ jewelry and papers by which the re-
lains could be identified, but in the
ears in which / have been familiar
18th the stories Of the lost in Death
alley, but few missing ones have been
'cated. The valley had swallowed
lem up, as the sea.
THE desire for gold is undated; It Il
'ok me across Death valley in. 1919:
has lured many a prospector there
nee that historic day when Funeral
lnge was named, and today it is call {
g, with sure and certain toll of hu-
an life" K