The Nome nugget., 1938-03-26

QlQn TedCIl dClllC coast Spaniards till years later. Barriers of distance and desert were such that even after California joined the Union, in 1850, it still took weeks to get mail from Wash ington. 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 dreads. 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 a stones throw of where dying pioneers found not even mouthful of alkali water!
 The sting has been taken out of Death valley completely by mod ern transport. Much of it is now national monument, and winter wis itors swarm in over new roads, lured by its astounding physical ge ography.
 You can imagine that here gi- ant smashed the world to bits, baked it. then split 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 CTS high above the floor of Death valley. and you can see over more than l50 miles of this weird. in comparable region.
 Far 10 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 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 a few other minerals first made Death valley a busy place. Ii was then that the famous 2O-mule teams hauled the big freight wagons with a ter-tank trailer, taking weeks on the long, rough round trip out to a railroad station on the Mojave desert.
 Mining is abandoned now. Thc borax diggers found a richer, more convenient deposit near Kramer, on the Mojave desert where they can bring up huge chunks of glistening, glassy 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 comm on-place re- ality; 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 its 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, its destiny seems from that of other California deserts criss-crossed by mans ir- rigation ditches!
 Once Arid Regions Now Gardens.
 Maps of barely 30 years ago bore the words Colorado desert' across what is now Imperial county, with 60, ,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 ths na- tion's hothouse.
 Years ago a plant explorer for the United States Department of Agri- culture brought some date suckers