HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF THE UPPER MOJAVE DESERT

Vol. 21 No. 2 February 2006
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FEBRUARY PROGRAM: MARGARET BRUSH, WILDROSE STATION

The February meeting of the Society will feature Margaret "Lit" Brush speaking on Wildrose Station near Death Valley. Margaret will also host a Society-sponsored tour of the Searles Valley Historical Society Museum on the following Saturday. The meeting will take place on Tuesday, February 21 at 7:30 PM at the Maturango Museum.

Wildrose Station was for many years a stagecoach stop and later an automobile rest and service station on the road to Death Valley. The presentation will tell the whole story of the station, from when it was built in the 1890's to when it closed in 1972 when the Park Service decided not to renew its lease. She will discuss the various owners over the years, including Sy Babcock, who built the building you can still see at the site, down to the Samples, the last owners of the station. Visitors to the Station will also be mentioned, including desert prospectors and the 1949 centennial re-enactors of the first trek through Death Valley.

Margaret Brush is particularly well qualified to tell its story, as her parents, George and Annie Pipkin owned the Station from 1942-1950. Margaret has lived in the Trona area since 1928, and went to work for the chemical company there in 1945, retiring as the manager of the water company in 1993. She now serves as the curator of the Searles Valley Historical Society as well as being a volunteer with the Sheriff's Department.

As curator, Margaret will host a tour of the Trona Museum on Saturday February 25. We will meet at the Maturango museum at 9:00 AM and caravan out to the Trona Museum. If you prefer, you can meet the group in Trona at 9:30 instead. Call Jim Kenney at 371-2458 for more information if required.

The HSUMD meets on the third Tuesday of the month. All are welcome to attend. The March meeting will feature Roger Mitchell speaking on W. D. Clair and Clair Camp. For more information on these or future meetings, call Society President Bill Nevins at 375-4764. Andrew Sound

THE BICKEL CAMP VISIT

On Friday and Saturday, January 20-21, approximately 30 HSUMD members and guests ventured to Bickel Camp in Last Chance Canyon, for a tour of the grounds let by Charlie Hattendorf. Charlie has taken over the task of keeping Bickel Camp available for all to visit. We saw a cornucopia of 1930's era mining exhibits, technologies and the sometimes strange creations of Walt Bickel. My favorite is the homemade well drilling machine and the "one man shaft digger." We also saw an eclectic collection of "stuff" collected by Walt at his home of over half a century. After a nice homemade lunch, provided by Larry, the onsite caretaker, we witnessed a sampling of gold ore processed through a "dry washer" and then wet panned for gold. For further information about Bickel Camp, go to Charlie's website: www.bickelcamp.org. Jim Kenney

UPDATE ON USO/ OLD COUNTY BUILDING

The application for the grant to rehabilitate the USO/Old County building was put in the mail on January 23, nicely ahead of the deadline which was January 31.

The action for the City Council of Ridgecrest to formally transfer the ownership of the USO/Old County Building to the Ridgecrest Redevelopment Agency, etc., was supposed to have occurred at the February 1 meeting of the City Council. Two motions or resolutions were necessary. The first motion was for the council to authorize transfer of the city-owned property at 230 W. Ridgecrest Blvd. and at 229 W. Station St. to the Ridgecrest Redevelopment Agency. After discussion this motion passed. However the second motion, the one approving the disposition and development agreement (DDA) between the redevelopment agency and the Historical Society and authorizing the execution and delivery of it to the Historical Society was not approved at this meeting because a full copy of the DDA had not been provided to the council members and at least one of them had wanted to read it in full before agreeing to it. After much discussion, the passing of that second motion was deferred until the council meeting of February 15. That meeting will not take place before this newsletter is published.

APOLOGIES

Your editor had a bad time last month in getting out the newsletter. Apologies for forgetting to include the mystery photo, as well as mixing up a couple of Tuesdays which showed up as Wednesdays in the article on the Bickel Camp tours. I can't promise it won't happen again, but I sure will do my best to get everything proofread at one time, each time.
Bruce Wertenberger

RECENT DONATIONS

The Historical Society recently has received from Joan Renner's family a large display case. The Baxendale family has donated a 1920's convex mirror. We are grateful for these donations.

HELP MAKE THE HISTORICAL SOCIETY MORE FINANCIALLY SECURE

Please remember your Historical Society in your wills and trusts. The Society is a 501(c)(3) organization.

MEMBERSHIP RENEWAL

As has been noted in the past several newsletters, membership dues are now due and payable. For those of you who have not sent in your renewals, there was a renewal form in the January newsletter. Please tear it out and send it in with your check to our treasurer, Fred Weals, P.O. Box 2001, Ridgecrest, CA 93556. If you can't find the form, just send a check. Annual dues ($20 for family, $30 for businesses) help cover the cost of operating the Society, which includes the cost of the newsletter and its postage, membership in several history-related state organizations, rent (nominal) and utilities for our offices, etc.

CHANGE IN OUR NEWSLETTER MAILING PROCEDURE COMING

We soon will be changing to a bulk mailing process with the post office in order to save us several hundred dollars annually in postage costs. However, this will entail some special preparation of our 260+ newsletters, including sorting by ZIP code. Then we will have to get the newsletters to the post office within a certain time frame. If you are interested in volunteering to help us with this new process, please contact Bill Nevins (375-4764) or Bruce Wertenberger (375-2369).

**Note - this may slow up your receipt of the newsletter. Youo can always find it on-line just as soon as the editor sends it to me!!

Webmistress..

HISTORICAL ARTICLE

(Following is an article prepared by our great local historian member, John Di Pol, drawn from his library of history books. Ed).

The Charcoal Kilns of Wildrose Canyon

At the head of Wildrose Canyon in the Panamint Mountains of Death Valley National Park are ten structures which are as striking as any of our national historic monuments. (Waaal.......there may be some exceptions!). Ten in a precise row. All the same size: BIG. Like giant conical beehives, 30 feet in diameter at their base, 25 feet tall. Built using native stone and mortar. An archway door at ground level permits entry. Air holes in the wall around the periphery at the base of each with a small exhaust opening at the apex of the cone used to control the rate of burning. The stone walls, 24 inches thick at the base, thinning to 12 inches at the top, prescribe a parabolic curve. Each kiln a perfect machine for efficiently producing high quality charcoal with a charge of 42 cords of wood (equivalent to a cube about 18 feet on a side).

The kilns were built to provide charcoal for the furnace smelters at the Modoc mines located high on Lookout Mountain in the Argus Range. Discovered in 1875, the Modocs were rich deposits of silver-lead ores, with some commercial grade gold. The original claims on Lookout Mountain were purchased and organized as the Modoc Consolidated Mining Company by George Hearst, father of William Randolph Hearst of newspaper fame. The elder Hearst was a practical miner, not a speculator, having made his first fortune as an investor in the Comstock and later in the very rich and long-producing Homestake Mine in the Black Hills of South Dakota.

By early 1876, two furnaces had been constructed and were operating, using charcoal that was being produced in primitive burning pits around in the area. With the increasing output of the mines, the appetite of the furnaces for fuel was voracious. This led Modoc Consolidated, in the spring of 1877, to build the ten giant kilns in the piñon pine forest of upper Wildrose Canyon. At the same time, Remi Nadeau's Cerro Gordo Freighting Company was building a new road across Panamint Valley to connect the Wildrose operation with the Modoc; to haul the flood of charcoal, of course. For several years, Nadeau had been hauling between Los Angeles and the Cerro Gordo mines (freight up, bullion down) via his Bullion Road which passed through the west side of the Indian
Wells Valley. (See HSUMD publication "INDIAN WELLS VALLEY STAGE AND WAGON STOPS, 1874-1906"). When the Modoc discoveries were made, Nadeau quickly constructed a branch off the Bullion Road, across southern IWV into Searles Lake, then north up and over the Slate Range Crossing and in a straight line to Lookout Mt. (the "Shotgun Road.")

The kilns were in operation over the next 18 months, to late 1878, when the ore of the Modoc mines became "rebellious." It is likely that the fires of the kilns were "cooled" by 1879, although there are historical indications that some use may have been made in the year or two following.

Time, the elements, and no doubt vandalism, took their toll on the kilns. Repairs of the most grievous damage were accomplished in the 1930s by the young men in the CCC camp located at Furnace Creek. In the early 1970s the National Park Service surveyed the kilns and develop a stabilization and restoration plan. A crack team of ruins stabilization experts - Navajos from Arizona - did the restoration work.

And so they stand today. Silent, majestic in their own way. A memorial to life of 130 years ago, in a barren wilderness which, with the exception of an occasional SUV or motor home, is still existant.

Ref: WILDROSE CHARCOAL KILNS, Death Valley. '49ers Keepsake #12, 1972
DEATH VALLEY & THE AMARGOSA, R. E. Lingenfelter, 1986