HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF THE UPPER MOJAVE DESERT

VOL. 14, NO. 10
December 17, 1999

CHRISTMAS PARTY

Come to the last HSUMD Christmas Party for the millennium. It will be held on Dec. 17th, 7:00 p.m. at the Maturango Museum. Our entertainment will be the Farris Family Singers who will arrive at 7:30 p.m. to both sing to us and help to lead us in holiday songs. In addition, Charlotte Goodson will do readings from Dickens' A Christmas Carol.

Please bring your favorite holiday dessert to serve 8 or 10. That can be your favorite pie, cake, or cookies. Candy is encouraged.

We will have a fun time and a wonderful way to begin the holidays for all.

The Christmas Party replaces our regular monthly meeting for December.

JANUARY MEETING

Our January meeting will feature a large group of experts on our local history - you! The topic is "Little Known Facts of the Upper Mojave Area" with audience participation. There will be a "quiz" so bring your thinking caps. We will have a panel of experts to help with the questions.

NEW BOOKLET ON SIDEWINDER PUBLISHED

The China Lake Museum Foundation has published a new booklet, "Sidewinder -Invention and Early Days," by HSUMD Board Member Elizabeth Babcock. The booklet, which would make a good Christmas gift for your friends and relatives who are interested in our colorful history, tells the story of the world's most effective air-launched missile from its invention through its triumphant 1956 fleet introduction and 1958 use in combat over the Straits of Formosa.

According to Jack Russell of the museum foundation's board, the booklet is a "well-researched and entertaining early history of China Lake's most famous product. Liz Babcock has interviewed many of the surviving people who participated in the establishment of the Sidewinder concept. She has captured the technical breakthroughs as well as the social and political climates in those years."

The Sidewinder program began in 1949, when Dr. William B. McLean came up with the concept for a "heat-homing rocket." Employees of the Naval Ordnance Test Station then developed the missile in what Russell termed "an outstanding example of the value an in-house Navy laboratory can have when given some leeway in operation."

The 30-page booklet is on sale for $6.95 plus tax in the gift shop of the China Lake Weapons Exhibit Center. Russell encouraged everyone to visit the gift shop and check out the spectacular new Sidewinder mousepad, as well as other gift items with a China Lake theme.

Hours of the exhibit center at the China Lake Museum are 10 a.m-4 p.m. during all weekdays that the Naval Air Weapons Station is open for business.

NEW EXHIBIT CELEBRATES DECEMBER HOLIDAYS

As this issue goes to press, Liz Babcock is hard at work on the research for a new exhibit to go in the Maturango Museum's vestibule on Thursday, December 9. Not only will information about Christmas customs around the world be displayed, but exhibits on other December holidays will also be featured. Thanks to Fran Wersan and Willie Edwards, the Hanukkah and Kwanzaa exhibits will be especially interesting and colorful. Visit the museum and check out our cheerful Dec.-Jan. exhibit!

NEW MEMBERS

We welcome four new members this month:

Vernon and Jeanene Cook and

Ken and Lisa Pracchia.

Continuing Seven Days' Adventure by W K. Foley:

(Spelling, grammar and syntax have not been changed from Mr. Foley's manuscript.)

The summer weather had melted the snow that often capped their peaks as of the Sierra Madres to the right, The route ahead pointed to great distances in which desert mountains lined the horizon and all of which displayed for our impressionable minds the rapidly changing pastels of a desert morning.

Unlike today's travel, an occasional meeting on the road was usually a congenial encounter as each driver pulled to one side to share one track and exchange a greeting or swap road information current from the preceding hour's travel. A speeding automobile of twenty miles per hour could spread dust for miles and often the team would be waiting clear of the road rather than subject the motorist to the hazards of soft ground. All would wave a greeting as often a topless car plunged by with riders begoggled, capped and gloved for travel.

Following the route of earlier days we traveled along the west side of Antelope Valley. By afternoon we had reached Willow Springs and looking down and to the northeast could see the signs of railroads and their terminus at Mojave. We stopped to water the team as travelers for fifty years before us had done with teams and stages spanning their travel from each day's watering hole. Adding a few provisions and refilling the water containers we left the old settlement and soon made our way on the road for an approaching four-horse Tally-ho. Seated within were early arrivals for the Willow Springs dance that drew for miles around the settlers who not too often gathered for an evening's frivolity. A short hour's travel brought us to a likely campsite with heavy growth of bunchgrass for Jack and Teddy, and it lay amidst high greasewood and Joshua Trees. In these peaceful surroundings and at the late hour we were soon within the shadows of the mountains close by and watched their travel over the valley beyond as the blue-purples colored our first desert evening. To those seeing the desert for the first time, they were often surprised at finding vegetation everywhere and not the vast reaches of barren sands as of the Sahara. I recall Mother's comment on this impression from those visiting us in later years at our desert home.

The cool desert morning would awaken us to a crackling fire and flavorful smoke with coffee and bacon added in. The many years as outdoorsman had prepared Dad for most eventualities. With the twelve-gauge Remington handy the frying pan would easily vary its contents with quail or dove or cottontail. On such a morning I would crawl from my bed with Mom and peer from the covered wagon to survey the scene in the new light of the bright morning.

We were soon on our way to arrive at Mojave around noon of the fifth day. The old route entered the town from the west, and we stopped at a little house with picket fence and inquired about roads and the weather and discussed our travels and plans. The wind-swept town was an outgrowth of railroad intersections with Santa Fe and Southern Pacific pointing in four directions. On the Barstow run the competitors shared the rails together. This was not an oasis for travelers for water levels were lower than four hundred feet. The only available water was shipped by tank cars from Barstow. We took the road north of town, bearing a Iittle to the east. A few hours out and we watered the team at a rancher's well and camped in high brush with plentiful wild grass for grazing. In previous times the great need for a watering point prompted John Searles of the San Bernadino (sic) Borax Mining Company to establish a road station a number of miles out of Mojave. Here Grandfather shared his friendship and valued the accommodation of the settlement. Water was provided by pipeline from the mouth of Tehachapi Canyon across the valley which in itself was a sizable project. Typical of pioneer courage this man undertook large projects to develop valuable resources of the desert. According to the diary of his son this was the first "Searles Station, the second known as "Garden Station on the route to Searles Lake and Panamint mountains. We missed seeing even a sign of the old site that had numbered several buildings with a large barn and stable.

The slow rate of travel was not too tiring since it was the mode of the day and occasionally one would choose to walk a distance or take the reins and not as much as slacken the pace of the team. A youngster remembers some details for all time, like the continual grind of metal rimmed wheels on the sandy roads, never ceasing, always moving. Ours was never a problem of power. Even a burro could extricate from hopeless sand a mired car whose power and traction was only sufficient for paved or solid roads. Traveling costs were nominal depending only on water, oats, a little wild forage and a night's rest for a full day's travel.

To contrast the scenery of native land there appeared signs of the mobile generation. Seemingly, royalty was in the land as a glistening Red Crown appeared by the road or the nightgowned boy saying, "Time to retire" reminded the traveler of tires ahead. Strangest of all in this arid clime was a startling figure of the polar bear mounting a ledge of ice. Cold water ahead would have hastened our gate (sic), but the motor oil sign was empty of meaning for us. Motor travel was five times faster than ours, but was always plagued with the likely chance of breakdown and these signs of the road were good omens along the way. The motorist plied himself well with tires, gasoline, motor oil, tools and rope and was prepared to camp at the rap of a bearing or the flickering out of the Presto-Lite lamp. Water was consumed in gallons, and he occasionally shunned his own thirst to assure a cool engine. And so our own safe method encouraged us on for eventually we would reach our destination and would have made careful observation of interesting detail that our speeding traveler would evermore have lost.

The next day's travel led to the westward slope of Fremont Valley bringing into view multi-colored mountains and closing in behind a veil of blue with Baldy and other peaks no Icnger visible. At this point we were retracing a general route followed by western immigrants of 1849 when shortcut ways to California met with tragedies and called the survivors to great courage and stamina. Following these came others searching for mineral where within the volcanic hills some fabulous discoveries were made. The brushy mountains to the east drew our wonderment of this activity where within the Rand mining district fortunes were being made in rich deposits of gold and silver.

What seemed as monotonous landscape became of great interest when historical happenings were known. A few old timers of more than four score years are still to relate romance and tragedies of bygone days. Through our venture we were to know many as pioneer and prospector, among whom were stalwart people crediting our western development with honest enterprise. James McGinn of Searl's Lake (sic) recalls early history of Gralock (sic) whose buildings were vacated even during our year of travel. The water wells of Gohler Gulch (sic) justified the town where tankers hauled in water for milling the ore. The development of this area was within his time where fortunes and poverty often changed in a day. Louis Spalding of La Crescenta confirms the tales of early discoveries, who as mill operator and amalgamator, worked from the Yellow Aster to Skidoo. Dad was to know a great many of these colorful people including Indian Tom Spratt of Grapevine Canyon in our neighboring mountains and Indian George" of the Panamints.
(To be continued)

Bruce Wertenberger and Chet Creider (375-5725) Bulletin
Co-Editors e-mail: ccreider@ridgecrest.ca.us

Html by Janet Westbrook

HSUMD Web site: http://www.Maturango.org/Hist.html

Annual dues are $10.00 for the calendar year.
Payable now.

HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF THE
UPPER MOJAVE DESERT
c/o MATURANGO MUSEUM
100 E. Las Flores Avenue
Ridgecrest, CA 93555