Coulee City dispatch. [volume] (Coulee City, Wash.) 19??-19??, 1937-09-30
Prepared by National Geographic Society.
Washington, D. C.-WNU Service.

N EWS that the Thirteen
nj Colonies had become the
1 Y United States didn't
reach Pacific coast
Spaniards till years later. Bar
riers of distance and desert
were such that even after Cali
fornia joined the Union, in 1850,
it still took weeks to get mail
from Washington. No other
state was ever so isolated.
Men hated the desert then and
feared the horrors of death from
" thirst. Every trail across it was
strewn with bones of men and oxen
and abandoned wagons.
Now the desert is mans play
ground.
Planes, trains and motors, of
course, have robbed the desert of its
breads. Now idlers in shorts, bright
colored pajamas, or bathing suits
sprawl about these desert pleasure
resorts, as in Death valley, and fret
if they can't get this or that favorite
brand of imported mineral water,
all within stones throw OF where
dying pioneers found not even a
mouthful of alkai water!
The sting has been taken out of
Death valley completely by mod
ern transport. Much of it is now a
national monument, and winter Wis
lured by it's astounding physical ge-
ography.
You can imagine that here gi-
ant smashed the world to bits,
baked it, then spilled seas of paint
over the colossal, silent ruin. Ma
lures emotions range from utmost
fury to moods of restful calm.
Stand on Dante's View, a peak
in" the Black mountains which tow
ers high above the floor of Death
valley, and you can see over more
than $50 miles of this weird, in
comparable region.
Far to the west is Mount Whitney,
highest peak in the United States,
and below you is the lowest point in
North America, 276 feet below sea
level. And up the valley floor there
stretches what looks like vast alkali
swamps; but that is an illusion, for
it is merely a coloring of the desert.
All Alone With a Chipmunk.
do you live here all alone?" a
traveller asked an old man who sat
before an empty hotel in the his
toric ghost town of Ryan.
''Me and a chipmunk," he said.
"My friend'll be out soon so you
can see him. He always comes to
eat at ten o'clock" And at ten he
came!
Borax and few other minerals
first made Death valley busy
place. 1t was then that the famous
20-mule teams hauled the big
freight wagons with watertank
trailer, taking weeks on the long,
rough round trip out to railroad
station on the Mojave desert.
Mining is abandoned now. The
borax diggers found richer, more
convenient deposit near Kramer, on
the Mojave desert, where they can
bring up huge chunks of glistening,
CLASSY boraX, with railway close
at hand So the long mule trains
are no more; but you can still see
the giant wagons standing along
Furnace Creek Wash, where the
tired, dusty mules were last un-
hitched. Beside these big wagons
visitors pose now to be photo
graphed. That is commonplace re
atty; all about is unreality. illu
sion.
Save one or two tiny favored spots
where water comes down from the
canyons, Death valley knows no cul
tivation. Despite sightseeing buses
and private motorcars that throng
it's dusty trails, there is still some
thing very significant in the warn
ing signboards which tell how many
miles it is to the next water.
Different, indeed, it's destiny
seems from that of other California
deserts criss-crossed by mans ir-
rigation ditchesl
Once Arid Regions Now Gardens.
Maps of barely 80 years ago bore
the words Colorado desert" across
what is now Imperial county, with
$4,000 people.
If the prehistoric monsters who
left their tracks about the Salton sea
could come back, they would find
plenty to eat now, for this below
the-sea region has become the ma
tons dollhouse.
Years ago plant explorer for the
United States Department of Agri-
culture brought some date suckers
from Arabia, which were planted,
experimentally, at Indio, in the Goa
chella valley