Reaching Way Out

By JOHN M. GLIONNA, TIMES STAFF WRITER
Los Angeles Times

Lonesome Phone

In the middle of the desert stands a phone waiting for a caller, any caller. Someone might answer. More often, no one will. But interest in the solitary booth has spread worldwide via the Internet, where several Web sites pay tribute to the lonely phone.

MOJAVE NATIONAL PRESERVE — With only the lazy Joshua trees and hovering buzzards out here to bear witness, this isolated expanse of high-desert plain could well be among the quietest places on the planet.

By day, the summer heat hammers hard and the dull whistle of the wind is the only discernible noise. Come nightfall, the eerie silence is often pierced by the woeful bleat of a wandering burro.

But wait. There's another sound.

Along a line of wooden power poles running to the horizon in both directions, 14 miles from the nearest paved road, a solitary pay phone beckons with the shrill sound of impatient civilization.

Then it rings again. And again. And yet again, often dozens of times a day.

The callers? A bored housewife from New Zealand. A German high school student. An on-the-job Seattle stockbroker. A long-distance trucker who dials in from the road. There's a proud skunk owner from Atlanta, a pizza deliveryman from San Bernardino and a bill collector from Denver given a bum steer while tracing a debt.

Receivers in hand, they're reaching out--at all hours of the day and night, from nearly every continent on the globe--to make contact with this forlorn desert outpost.

They're calling the Mojave Phone Booth.

Here comes a curious caller now:

"Hello? Hello? Is this the Mojave Phone Booth?" asks Pher Reinman, an unemployed South Carolina computer worker.

Told by a reporter answering the line that he has indeed reached what cult followers call the loneliest phone booth on Earth, he exclaims: "Oh my God, I can't believe it! Somebody answered! There's actually somebody out there!"

Calling to See What Happens

Like Reinman, callers everywhere are connecting with the innocuous little booth located not far from the California-Nevada border, along a winding and treacherous dirt road accessible only by four-wheel-drive vehicle.

Out here, where summer temperatures soar to 115 degrees and cattle often wander by en route to a nearby watering hole, there's rarely anyone on hand to answer the calls, but persistent phoners don't seem to care. If someone does pick up, of course, so much the better.

Some of those who do answer are previous callers who, for unknowable reasons that make sense only to them, also feel compelled to visit the booth.

"For us," wrote screenwriter Chuck Atkins of his recent trek to the booth, "it was about driving into nowhere for no good reason, meeting fellow netizens who shared our sense of childish glee at the coolness of a phone booth in the middle of nowhere."

Indeed, this public phone, first installed in the 1960s and operated with a hand crank by nearby volcanic cinder miners and other desert denizens, has been popularized by the globe's most advanced communications system: the Internet.

The craze began two years ago after a high-desert wanderer noticed a telephone icon on a Mojave road map. Curious, he drove out from Los Angeles to investigate and wrote a letter to a counterculture magazine describing his exploits and including the phone number. After spotting the letter, computer entrepreneur Godfrey Daniels became so captivated by the idea he created the first of several Web sites dedicated solely to the battered booth.

Since then, word of the phone has been beamed to computers virtually everywhere.

It has evolved into a worldwide listening post straight from the mind of a Rod Serling or a David Lynch, captivating countless callers.

There's Preston Lunn of San Bernardino, whose wife reluctantly let him take a long-distance shot at reaching someone at the phone, a call he made "just for the hell of it, just to see what happens."

There's Debbie, the 20-year-old baby-sitter from Boston whose older sister, "the one who goes to college," told her about the phone. Bored, with her infant wards asleep, Debbie decided to take a chance and telephone the desert.

"So, what's out there?" she asked tentatively. "Just, like, cactuses and a dirt road and stuff?"

And there's Atlantan Jim Shanton, who heard about the phone "from one of the ladies on our pet skunk e-mail list." Added Shanton: "And I was just crazy enough to call. For me, this is like calling Mars. It's that far away from everything I know."

'If You Call It, They Will Come'

What callers reach is just a shell of a phone booth, actually--its windows long ago blasted out by desert gunslingers desperate for something to shoot at, its coin box deactivated so that only incoming calls and outgoing credit card calls are possible.

But fans have taken the neglected old booth under their wing. Outside, they've posted a sign that reads "Mojave Phone Booth--you could shoot it, but why would you want to?" Next to that is another placard reading: "If you call it, they will come."

On top of the pay phone perches a nude Barbie doll. Scratched into the booth's metal frame are its longitude and latitude coordinates. Inside, along with plastic-coated children's magnets spelling out "Mojave Phone Booth," are mementos such as candles and license plates. Visitors have covered the booth's bullet holes with Band-Aids.

Nearby, fist-sized stones form the phone's number along with a huge arrow pointing to the booth. The message can be seen from the air so, as one Mojave phone fan put it, "even aliens can find it."

The booth-oriented Web sites multiplied when their creators saw the phone on other sites and--after calling numerous times--decided to document their own pilgrimages to the desert phone.

There's the lighting designer from New York who was so thrilled to finally reach the Mojave phone that she stripped naked "and ran around like a giddy little girl."

And two L.A. writers, who later chronicled their trek to the Mojave, headed out just to return the receiver to its cradle after learning the phone was off the hook. They arrived to find the phone temporarily out of order.

Rick Karr, a 51-year-old spiritual wanderer, has no Web site, but says he was instructed by the Holy Spirit to travel to the desert and answer the phone. The Texas native recently spent 32 days camping out at the booth, fielding more than 500 calls from people like Bubba in Phoenix and Ian in Newfoundland and repeated contacts from a caller who identified himself as "Sgt. Zeno from the Pentagon."

"This phone," he said with a weary sigh, "never stops ringing."

While she would not provide statistics, a Pacific Bell spokeswoman said the phone experienced "very low outgoing usage."

Still, the booth is sometimes used by locals to conduct business or check messages.

"I've passed that old phone booth just about every day for more than 20 years now and I've never given it as much as a second thought," said Charlie Wilcox, a sun-wrinkled 63-year-old tow-truck driver who has become the booth's unofficial tour guide. "And I'll be damned. Now it's a celebrity."

Phone booth callers, Web site creators and Internet intellectuals alike are trying to figure out just why this far-flung phone has gripped the imagination of those who come across it.

Some say calls to the booth are an attempt to create community in a disconnected world. Others view the calls as pure phone fetish, a sort of long-distance voyeurism.

The Attraction of Exotic Isolation

"It's the kick of reaching out and touching a perfect stranger in a completely anonymous and indiscriminate way," said Mark Thomas, a New York City concert pianist who created a Web site listing the numbers of thousands of public pay phones worldwide, including the Mojave Desert phone.

Many of the phones on his list are located in urban areas--such as the one at the top observation deck of the Eiffel Tower--and Thomas said the Mojave Phone Booth may attract so many callers because of its exotic isolation.

"You could make a chance contact at any pay phone, but the odds of reaching someone out in the desert are incredibly remote," he said. "That's why people call."

Others say calls to the phone are made out of sheer boredom.

"It's the get-a-life factor," said UCLA sociologist Warren TenHouten. "Some people just have nothing to do, so they pursue shreds of information that have no value. It amuses me, but there's something pitiful about it too. I mean, what's the most interesting thing that could happen by being so mischievous as to call a public pay phone?

"Someone answers, a person you have absolutely no connection with. You exchange names and talk about the weather. What a thrill."

One of the 60 callers greeted by a reporter on a recent visit acknowledged that he was shocked anyone was there to answer.

"I thought I'd just call and wake up the coyotes," said a purchasing agent from San Bernardino County, who buzzed the phone from work. "Modern times are passing us by and it's just sort of romantic--just the idea that it's out there."

Daniels, a Tempe, Ariz., resident, is considered the father of the phone booth. He was hooked in the spring of 1997, after reading of the Mojave phone in the cryptic letter to the magazine "Wig Out."

The 36-year-old, who once ran for the Arizona Legislature and tried to start a country called Oceania, had discovered a new adventure: He began calling the booth every day. And he forced friends to call whenever they visited him.

After weeks of long-distance dialing, someone picked up.

"I was probably more surprised than he was that we were having a conversation on that phone," said Lorene Caffee, a local miner who answered the Mojave line in 1997.

Daniels transcribed the conversation on his new Web site. Later, after making several trips to the phone, he included such features as a 360-degree view of the surrounding desert from atop the phone and pictures of a bust of composer Richard Wagner--which he carries with him on his travels--inside the booth.

Soon came the call blitz. On one two-day trip to the booth, Daniels answered 200 of them, including a confused connection from Albania during the war in Kosovo.

Daniels plans to return on New Year's Eve to take Y2K reports from around the globe.

"I like the fact that you can have people who have never met or never will meet and they have this little intersection," he said. "Two people who have no business talking to one another."

Surprised to Get an Answer

Since most callers don't expect an answer, they gasp when a visitor actually picks up, many quickly hanging up like teenage telephone pranksters.

One call answered by a reporter came from 17-year-old Jan Spuehamer of Hamburg, Germany. "This is costing me a lot of money, but I think it is very funny," Spuehamer said. "One magazine article said you have to be very lucky to have someone pick up this line. Because this is the loneliest phone in the world, no?"

And so people keep calling the Mojave Phone Booth. And visiting.

On a drive home from Las Vegas, Wade Burrows and Brian Burkland impulsively decided to visit the booth. They walked around for 10 minutes scratching their heads, finally leaving behind their own memento: a car license plate they both autographed.

Said the 21-year-old Burkland: "Dude, this is, like, so cool!"

Then Burrows, a San Bernardino pizza deliveryman, placed a call from his favorite desert phone booth.

"Hey, Mom," he said, holding a cigarette burned down to the filter. "You'll never guess where I'm calling from--a phone booth in the middle of nowhere."

He paused, listening.

"Why am I out here? Well, Mom, that's a long story."

Don't fence him in

Dennis Casebier preserves the human resources of the East Mojave

Stuart Kellogg, Staff Writer
Victor Valley Daily Press

Yes, it was rude, but I had to ask: What’s it like to live 30 miles from nowhere?

“We are here,” replied Dennis Casebier, founder of the Goffs Historic Cultural Center six miles north of Interstate 40 and half an hour west of Needles.

“You are the one who lives far away.”

So it came as no surprise when, two seconds later, he admitted a fondness for “desert rats,” heirs to the original mountain men.

“Desert rats aren’t exactly rebellious,” said Casebier, 65. “It’s just that they won’t be told what to do.

“People who live in the back country unconsciously erect barriers to confound city folk. That barrier — whether 30 dogs or junk in the yard — serves as a filter.

“The average flatlander is intimidated. But once you pass the desert rat’s test, you can’t get away.”

Lamenting that the classic desert rats have all gone, Casebier blamed the Bureau of Land Management (“Once the BLM got interested in resource management, the desert rats were doomed”) but also the fact that “today it’s an unlucky combination to be both self-reliant and intolerant of regulations.”

This from a 30-year Navy man.

Goffs was established in 1883 as a siding for the Southern Pacific Railway. It increased in importance when, in 1907, a short-line railroad connected it to the rich mines at Searchlight, Nevada.

By 1911 there were enough children living in Goffs (sons and daughters of railway employees) to require a school. Classes began in a rented, frame structure.

Three years later, a handsome mission-style schoolhouse was built. It served a total of 412 students before closing down in 1937, supplanted by a new school in Essex.

Searchlight had fizzled by 1923. Route 66, which once brought traffic through town, was redirected six miles south in 1931.

By 1937, Goffs had gone bust.

But 20 years later, a kid from Topeka, Kan., was assigned to the Marine Training Center in Twentynine Palms.

“Kansas isn’t the desert,” Casebier conceded, “but it, too, is big and empty. And it, too, had been homesteaded — Twentynine Palms was settled by World War I veterans gassed by the Germans.

“Back then, you could still drive all over Joshua Tree National Monument, so a friend and I explored the old mines. We’d sleep out at night and, in the morning, dump scorpions out of our boots.”

No wonder Casebier fell in love with the desert.

In 1960 he returned to California to work as a physicist on the Navy’s guided missile systems. By then, however, Joshua Tree was choked with tourists and government regulations. So Casebier looked around and discovered the East Mojave.

“It reminded me of the desert I used to know,” he said. “But more desert, and more Joshua trees.”

His work for the Navy meant Casebier spent a third of his time in Washington, D.C. While there, he researched the East Mojave in the National Archives, combing through pension files and muster rolls:

“The Army’s muster rolls detail everyone who ever served here — what he looked like and what he’d been doing just before he enlisted.”

Casebier’s research focused on the 1850s through the 1880s, and especially the Old Mojave Road, an ancestor of Route 66 that runs 15 miles north of Goffs.

“Until 1883,” he said, “the Old Mojave Road was the major route through this latitude for people traveling between Prescott, Arizona, and the Port of Los Angeles.”

Over the course of 25 years, Casebier filled 50 reels of microfilm with records from the National Archives and the Library of Congress.

In 1981, while still living in Corona, he founded the Friends of the Mojave Road with fellow devotees of that road and other back-country trails.

Today the Friends boast 850 members, chiefly in California, Nevada and Arizona. “But the other day,” Casebier said, “someone wrote from Switzerland requesting a (newsletter) subscription.”

Why do people join the Friends?

“Because they think it matters to create something bigger than yourself.”

This “thing that matters” is the cultural center, built around the old Goffs schoolhouse on 113 acres bought by Casebier and his wife, Jo Ann, in 1989.

In 1993 the Friends gained nonprofit status as the Mojave Desert Heritage & Cultural Association.

Working from old photos and interviews with more than 40 former students — and funded by $133, 850, all from private donors — MDHCA volunteers restored the schoolhouse to its original, 1914 splendor.

That schoolhouse may be the centerpiece, but the cultural center boasts other gems as well: for example, the tiny Danby courthouse, which once stood next to Judge Johnny Neilson’s service station; a building from the Golden Queen Mine near Mojave; an Atlantic & Pacific boxcar, 100 years old, now used as a cookhouse; and a complete 10-stamp ore mill from Rosamond.

Casebier explained that gold miners used stamp mills to pulverize rock: “Stamp mills won the West, but they contained so much metal, most got scrapped out. Today hardly any are left.”

Another building at the site, now used as a library, has had a most adventurous life.

Built in the ’20s as a maintenance station for the California Division of Highways, it was moved 18 miles to Essex after the realignment of Route 66.

In 1992 the Friends moved it back to Goffs.

“In fact, there are two of these houses,” Casebier said. “The other, built under the same contract, is still in Newberry Springs.”

The library is home to MDHCA’s 6,000 volumes of desert lore, 35,000 historical photographs and 600 oral histories.

Of those oral histories, half were done by Casebier, and half by Harold and Lucile Weight of the late, great “Desert Magazine.”

“The Weights were doing oral histories a generation before I started,” Casebier said. He also acknowledged the work of volunteers who transcribe recorded interviews.

The center’s purview stretches from Barstow to Las Vegas, Arizona and Twentynine Palms. “Vegas is just at the edge of our turf,” Casebier said, “though if I heard of a 97-year-old with a clear mind who lived in Vegas in the ’30s, I’d certainly interview them.”

He’s even interviewed people younger than himself, “if they were significantly involved in a core business or in the highway itself.”

Any tips on collecting an oral history?

“During the interview itself,” Casebier said, “I talk as little as possible.

“We start with vital statistics, such as the person’s full name. If that name is unusual, I’ll ask about it. Then we go on to where and when the person was born, their parents’ names, etc.”

When he interviews an elderly woman, her grown daughter — worried about having a strange man in the house — may sit in the same room. “Then,” Casebier said, “the daughter may finish her mother’s sentences instead of giving her time to collect her memories. That’s hard.”

At other times, two may be better than one:

“I interviewed a man and a woman who’d gone to school together in 1914 — in Lanfair Valley, an elevated, better-watered valley north of here that enjoyed a homestead boom starting in 1910.

“By interviewing them separately, and then together, I got much more than I could’ve out of either one alone.”

Should scholars approach him, asking to read a transcript, Casebier first tries to discover their intentions. “Especially until someone passes on,” he said, “I feel responsible for what they have told me.”

Sometimes friends or family suggest a really good interviewee. Then Casebier sends the prospect an MDHCA newsletter, “to let them see what we’re up to.”

At other times subjects show up on his doorstep:

“During World War II, 16,000 troops were stationed at Goffs. Every once in a while, a guy will come by looking for his roots.

“We’ll sit on the porch and I’ll ask him, ‘Could you see the water tanks? How far were you from the railroad? How would you get into Needles?’

“From this I can figure where his particular camp was.

“You can still see rock streets those boys built during the war.”

PRESERVING AMERICA'S LANDS LEGACY (CA)

Press Release on the Environment (California Exerpt)
THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For Immediate Release August 21, 1999
PRESIDENT CLINTON AND VICE PRESIDENT GORE:
PRESERVING AMERICA'S LANDS LEGACY

August 21, 1999

Today, in his weekly radio address, President Clinton announced new protections for critical lands and highlighted other recent acquisitions. And he called on Congress to approve his Lands Legacy initiative -- $1 billion in FY2000 to protect natural treasures and local green spaces, and permanent funding of at least $1 billion a year to continue these efforts in the 21st century.

A Conservation Commitment for the 21st Century. In his balanced budget for FY2000, the President proposed a record $1 billion Lands Legacy initiative to protect more natural treasures, and to provide new resources to states and communities to preserve farms, urban parks, coastlands, wetlands, and working forests. Proposed acquisitions would protect 110 natural and historic sites in 40 states and territories.

So far, however, Congress has cut the President's request by nearly two-thirds. In addition, the President is proposing permanent funding of at least $1 billion a year beginning in FY2001 to continue these efforts throughout the coming century. About half the funding would be reserved for states and local communities. Today, the President called on Congress to approve full funding for next year and to join him in creating a permanent fund to preserve America's lands legacy.

PRESERVING AMERICA'S LANDS LEGACY:
NATURAL AND HISTORIC SITES PROTECTED IN 1999
August 21, 1999

In his radio address today, President Clinton announced other natural or historic sites acquired this year by federal agencies:

FY 2000 LAND AND WATER CONSERVATION FUND LAND ACQUISITION REQUESTS

U. S. Departments of the Interior and Agriculture

Funding Requested Agency

CALIFORNIA
California Wilderness $1,000,000 USFS
California Desert (Catellus property) $28,900,000 BLM
Mojave National Preserve (Catellus property) $7,100,000 NPS
San Bernardino Ecosystem, San Bernardino NF $2,500,000 USFS
San Diego NWR $3,100,000 FWS
Santa Rosa Mountains NSA $500,000 BLM

AGENCIES
BLM Bureau of Land Management, U. S. Department of the Interior
FWS Fish and Wildlife Service, U. S. Department of the Interior
NPS National Park Service, U. S. Department of the Interior
USFS U. S. Forest Service, U. S. Department of Agriculture

LEGEND
NF National Forest
NSA National Scenic Area
NWR National Wildlife Refuge

Greens not welcome in Escalante

by Brent Israelsen
High Country News

ESCALANTE, Utah - Heavy machinery rolled into town the week of April 12. Construction was imminent on the $7.5 million New Wide Hollow Reservoir that would provide water for a couple dozen ranchers in this rural southern Utah town.

Then, on April 15, under pressure from environmentalists who say the reservoir would harm the Escalante River, the Bureau of Land Management put the project on hold. That night, someone re-arranged an irrigation pipe on the property of Patrick Diehl and Tori Woodward, recent arrivals from California who have opposed the reservoir. A valve was opened and 32,000 gallons of water gushed into a hole the couple had recently dug for a shop and studio.

The couple reported the incident to the police but have received little sympathy from locals. Instead, a week later, the New Escalante Irrigation Company sent Diehl and Woodward a notice that the "open pipe" that flooded their excavation was a violation of company rules, and they would have to pay a $1,150 fine.

The sabotage is just one sign that tensions are rising in this ranching town, pop. 1,200, which is struggling to adjust to life with a national monument in its back yard, and conservationists pushing to set aside more of the landscape as wilderness.

"They need a better grip on Escalante’s background, customs and culture," Escalante Mayor Lenza Wilson says of green-leaning newcomers. "The jury (of local opinion) has returned a very strong verdict, and they are not welcome here."

An unenviable position

The New Escalante Irrigation Co. currently draws water from the Wide Hollow Reservoir, which has filled with so much silt in the past few years that it can hold just 1,000 acre-feet of water. An acre-foot is 325,851 gallons. It takes about 5 acre-feet of water to grow a season’s worth of alfalfa on an acre of land in Escalante. By July or August, the irrigation company is usually out of water.

The proposed New Wide Hollow Reservoir would provide an additional 6,100 acre-feet of water, which the irrigation company says would be used to grow alfalfa. "That reservoir is our lifeline," said irrigation company water master Pat Coughlin. "Our livelihood depends on our water storage."

But wilderness advocates argue that the new reservoir would dry up a creek and disrupt the flow of the Escalante River. On April 11, Patrick Diehl criticized the dam in the Salt Lake Tribune for its potential to harm the river ecosystem downstream. He also suggested that that the irrigation company wanted the extra water not for agriculture but for more lucrative residential development.

To Escalante residents, it was the final insult. "I’m a man of few words, and when I speak, they are real harsh," said Barry Barnson, a 31-year Escalante resident and member of the irrigation company’s board. "The thing that got Patrick Diehl in trouble is he took the route that we’re a bunch of idiots."

Barnson and other irrigation company board members have implied that Diehl and Woodward are responsible for the errant water, either through negligence or as a publicity stunt. They insist that fines like the one levied against the pair are common.

But Diehl insists that he and Woodward are the victims of vandalism, which will cost them $500 to repair. Garfield County Deputy Sheriff Monte Luker sides with the couple, saying, "I feel it was a vandalism and do not think (Diehl and Woodward) were involved."

Diehl plans to appeal the fine, but he will be in the unenviable position of pleading his case before a board composed of people who would have benefited from the reservoir he opposed. Outraged at how Diehl and Woodward have been treated, the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance has agreed to provide an attorney.

Tensions rise over wilderness

Wilderness advocates, too, have been feeling unwelcome in Escalante lately. On April 23, the Bureau of Land Management held a public open house at the local high school to discuss the agency’s plan to add federal lands to the inventory of wilderness study areas (HCN, 8/3/98).

Representing the Utah Wilderness Coalition at the meeting was Bob Walton of Salt Lake City. Walton displayed stacks of wilderness literature and bumper stickers in the lobby.

A man wearing a large hat grabbed the stickers, cut them in half with a big hunting knife and threw them in a garbage can. The man said something to the effect of, "This is garbage. We won’t have any of this here," says Walton.

A short time later, Walton put out more literature and bumper stickers. The man returned and destroyed them in the same manner.

"Soon after that, a rather large group of folks began to gather around me, verbally harassing and threatening me," Walton wrote in a report to the Escalante police. "One person said, "We ought to kill you." "

Walton retreated into the meeting and asked agency officials for an escort to his car. "It’s a real shame. I feel like I have to watch my back in Escalante. That’s disheartening because it’s a place I love," said Walton, a sixth-generation Utahn.

Another Garfield County environmental activist is searching for middle ground between old-timers and newcomers. Mark Austin, who owns the Boulder Mountain Lodge in Boulder, is working with farmers and wilderness advocates to come up with an environmentally sensitive design for the New Wide Hollow Reservoir.

The Wilderness Society and the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance are willing to consider a compromise if it includes enough environmental safeguards. And irrigation company officials say they are willing to talk, but they suspect that environmentalists will ask for too many concessions. "The scuttlebutt is what they want to do is trade the reservoir for us backing off our opposition to additional wilderness," Wide Hollow Water Conservancy District member Dal Liston told the Salt Lake Tribune, "which is definitely not something we would do."

Land deal links desert parks

by Juniper Davis
High Country News

A California-based land trust has arranged to put almost 500,000 acres of mountaintop forests, sand dunes and volcanic cinder cones into public hands.

The $61.5 million deal now awaits a decision by Congress to release $36 million from the Land and Water Conservation Fund. The Wildlands Conservancy, based in Yucaipa, Calif., will pay the remainder.

"If we don't buy now, the parcels will ultimately be sold off, and we may end up with as many as 700 landholders," says Shelton Douthit of the conservancy.

The group has already bought threatened lands in and between Joshua Tree National Park and the Mojave National Preserve and preserved them for the public, but this is their largest acquisition yet.

The lands, owned by Catellus Development Corp., are important habitat for the desert tortoise as well as valuable for access to the parks. Catellus has agreed to sell the lands for $126 an acre; the lands will then be split between the National Park Service and Bureau of Land Management.

Letter of Intent Signed to Sell Up to 437,000 Acres of California Desert Land to the Federal Government

Press Release

Business Wire

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE) Catellus Development Corp. (NYSE:CDX), The Wildlands Conservancy and the U.S. Department of the Interior's Bureau of Land Management (BLM) announced today that a non-binding letter of intent has been signed among the three entities to sell and donate to the federal government up to 437,000 acres of California desert land currently owned by Catellus.

The Catellus-owned acreage includes land within the Mojave National Preserve and BLM-administered wilderness areas created by the California Desert Protection Act of 1994. It also includes other sensitive ecological and cultural lands, critical habitat for the endangered desert tortoise, and certain off-road vehicle areas. It is the intent of the three parties to finalize a formal agreement during the first quarter of this year.

In this preliminary agreement, Catellus has agreed to sell 437,000 acres to the federal government for a total cash consideration of $54.625 million, of which The Wildlands Conservancy, an Oak Glen, Calif.-based conservation group, will donate $18.625 million in private funds. The parties have agreed to confirm the total cash consideration for the lands with an appraisal to occur later this year. The value in excess of the cash consideration will be donated to The Wildlands Conservancy or the federal government as a charitable contribution from Catellus.

The Wildlands Conservancy is seeking congressional approval for a $36.0 million allocation of federal funds for this effort from the Land and Water Conservation Fund. The request for these funds is expected to be submitted to Congress in February of this year as part of the Fiscal Year 2000 Budget Request from the Clinton Administration.

Following appropriation of the necessary federal funds and the raising of the necessary private funds, transfer of the 437,000 acres is anticipated to occur by January, 2000. The Wildlands Conservancy has agreed to place into escrow a $5.0 million deposit towards the purchase of the land.

The Wildlands Conservancy will also donate 26,360 acres previously purchased to BLM and the National Park Service and will donate an additional $2.0 million in cash for acquisition of up to 20,000 acres of private inholdings in Joshua Tree National Park. The total transaction will bring up to 483,360 acres into federal ownership and will consolidate public ownership in Joshua Tree National Park, Mojave National Preserve, and numerous BLM wilderness areas.

In addition, it will transfer to public ownership significant critical habitat for the endangered desert tortoise, enhance recreational opportunities in off-highway vehicle areas, and create a wildlife corridor between Joshua Tree National Park and Mojave National Preserve.

The letter of intent also contains a related agreement between Catellus and BLM that calls for the exchange of up to an additional 65,000 acres of California desert land currently owned by Catellus for land managed by BLM. The specific acreage to be exchanged will be determined based on an appraisal to occur later this year and the exchange will be made on an equal value basis.

Through this transaction, Catellus is seeking to both consolidate its desert holdings, much of which is checker-boarded across the desert, and to exchange certain acres of land with critical resource values to BLM for land that would be suitable for development or other purposes, or that is located near existing development in Barstow, Mojave and Needles.

"We are pleased that we have been able to reach these agreements with The Wildlands Conservancy and BLM," said Nelson C. Rising, president and chief executive officer of Catellus Development Corp. "These transactions benefit our shareholders in allowing us to monetize a portion of our non-strategic holdings that can be reinvested into our core businesses and to exchange another portion of these holdings into locations closer to population centers and transportation corridors."

"Following these transactions, we will have reduced and consolidated our desert portfolio to just over 300,000 acres of land," Rising continued. "In addition, we will be able to make a charitable contribution of critical preserve lands and become part of an historic transaction facilitated by The Wildlands Conservancy that will benefit not only BLM but also the National Park Service and the American public."

"This letter of intent is the culmination of four years of work and determination on the part of our organization," said David Myers, executive director of The Wildlands Conservancy. "This transaction will preserve the biological and aesthetic integrity and recreational access to over 4.0 million acres of public land in Southern California. We are pleased that we could work successfully with Catellus and BLM in the largest conservation acquisition and donation in California history."

"The historic agreement reached today could not only bring half a million acres of private inholdings into public ownership, but also ensure the permanent integrity of much of the wilderness, parks, critical wildlife habitat, and recreation areas of the California Desert. This unprecedented Federal/private partnership will give the California Desert the national attention this region deserves," declared Ed Hastey, BLM's California State Director.

Catellus Development Corp. is one of the nation's premier diversified real estate operating companies with one of the largest portfolios of developable land in the western United States. The company develops, manages and owns a broad range of product types including commercial, residential, office, retail and major mixed-use projects. At Sept. 30, 1998, Catellus' strategic land portfolio had a development potential of over 54.7 million square feet of new commercial space, exclusive of 4.9 million square feet of commercial space under construction and an estimated 21,000 residential units.

The company's income-producing portfolio included 18.9 million square feet of income-producing buildings, 12,250 acres of income-producing land leases, interests in a variety of joint ventures and approximately 782,000 acres of desert and agricultural land. For more information on Catellus Development Corp., please visit its corporate web site at http://www.catellus.com.

The Wildlands Conservancy, a California non-profit corporation formed in 1995, is dedicated to preserving Southern California's outstanding landscapes for public enjoyment. The Conservancy places special emphasis on enriching the lives of urban youth by funding field trips to its preserves in Kern, San Bernardino and Riverside Counties and other natural areas. The Conservancy is redirecting funding for this effort from other important projects and welcomes support to carry on its important mission.

THE WAYWARD WEST

By Dustin Solberg
High Country News, Paonia, CO

Vast tracts of inholdings in the Mojave National Preserve in California are for sale - and its National Park Service caretakers can only watch the new neighbors move in (HCN, 4/14/97). Newcomers could mean 100 houses and a golf course. Just across the state line in Nevada, a county wants to build a major airport. Because the legislation that created the preserve four years ago ruled out restricting private-land owners within the park, the 2,200 people who own 12 percent of the park can sell to anyone they please.

The Mojave National Preserve: 1.4 million acres of contradictions

Postmistress and shopkeeper Irene Ausmus in front of the Cima store.
by Elizabeth Manning
High Country News

CIMA, Calif. - Like most of her neighbors, Irene Ausmus never wanted the East Mojave Desert to become a national preserve, let alone the national park that environmentalists first wanted. "We live out here because we don't want people bothering us," says the 64-year-old Cima postmistress and owner of a sparsely stocked general store where you can buy chocolate syrup, Spam or a radiator hose.

But after living inside the Mojave National Preserve for the past two-and-a-half years, Ausmus says she doesn't mind the Park Service being here anymore. "Time will tell," she says, but for now she likes the new rangers and no longer worries that the federal government will confiscate her property. The only drawback has proved to be the tourists who get angry at her for not providing public restrooms.

"They're all looking for bathrooms and there are no facilities," she says. "I have my own bathroom and that's all I want to keep clean."

It's funny Ausmus should mention bathrooms. The lack of facilities, including restrooms, was one of the first things I noticed during a trip to the Mojave National Preserve last December.

Other than two campgrounds built by the Bureau of Land Management, which used to oversee the area, the only amenity for tourists is a half-doughnut-shaped visitors' center off Interstate 15, at the base of the world's tallest thermometer in Baker - a 130-foot-tall tower to match the area's highest recorded temperature. There are no entrance booths to the preserve, no new hotels and no shops hawking rubber tomahawks. So far, the Mojave National Preserve seems completely unlike most national parks.

One reason for this is politics. During its first two years in existence, enemies of the preserve hacked at it through its budget. It received only $600,000 in 1995 and managed to beg, borrow and steal $800,000 from other parks the following year, after California Republican Rep. Jerry Lewis nearly succeeded in allocating the preserve just $1. Only in fiscal year 1997 did the preserve get adequate funding of $1.9 million. Mojave National Preserve Superintendent Mary Martin says she now has 17 people on staff and more arriving, up from a low of six employees in early 1996.

"In some ways, we're a couple of years behind where we should be," says Elden Hughes of the Sierra Club, an environmentalist who has fought steadily for a park in the East Mojave. "People are coming and the place isn't ready."

But even when the East Mojave is ready, Dennis Schramm, Park Service lead planner for the preserve, says it likely won't look much different. He calls the Mojave "a park for the 21st century," a primitive area with little development inside the preserve's borders. The Park Service would like to renovate the historic Kelso Train Depot inside the preserve as a visitors' center, he says, but mostly it will rely on border towns along Interstates 15 and 40 - the two highways that define this lonesome triangle on the north and south - to provide food, gas and shelter for travelers.

But the main reason the East Mojave doesn't seem like a park is that it isn't a park. It's a preserve, and it's making itself up as it goes along. Right now, Park Service officials are in the midst of crafting its general management plan, due out in December 1998. Schramm says his planning team has three guides: the preserve's enabling legislation, the Park Service's purpose and mandate and other laws pertaining to national park units.

The result is 1.4 million acres of contradictions: Inside the preserve, rangers lead nature walks, off-road enthusiasts drive on hundreds of miles of dirt roads, and hunters shoot coyotes and rabbits. Ranchers run cattle and miners extract rocks from the earth while trains whistle through here as they have for nearly a century. Dozens of people still live year-round on private land inside the preserve, yet nearly half of this park unit is wilderness.

That's the way Congress declared it. The preserve was created as part of the California Desert Protection Act of 1994, which also upgraded and expanded Death Valley and Joshua Tree to national parks and created 69 new wilderness areas on Bureau of Land Management land.

When President Bill Clinton signed the act into law, environmentalists applauded it as the single largest wilderness designation in the continental United States and the only environmental legislation to survive Congress that year. But those who conceived and promoted the preserve saw some painful concessions. Due to lobbying from local landowners, bighorn sheep hunters, the mining industry and ranchers, the act allows hunting, grazing and mining to continue inside the preserve.

"We wanted a 1.5 million-acre national park without hunting, grazing and mining," says Peter Burk, a high school librarian who first conceived the idea of a national park in the East Mojave 20 years ago during America's bicentennial. "What we got was a 1.4 million-acre preserve. I just hate the C-word: C-O-M-P-R-O-M-I-S-E."

In recent months, Burk, also president of the Citizens for Mojave National Park, has become critical of the Park Service. He says the agency could be doing more within the existing laws to curtail ranching in desert habitat, to rid the area of non-native burros and to halt mining. Instead, Burk feels that Park Service officials are bending over backward to mollify preserve critics. "The Park Service is giving the cowboys everything they want," he says.

In particular, Burk is worried about the make-up of the 15-member planning advisory committee appointed by Secretary of Interior Bruce Babbitt. Burk says Babbitt loaded the committee with "wise users." Some of the tougher issues the committee must tackle include how much grazing and four-wheeling will be allowed in threatened desert tortoise habitat, what to do about the burro population that exploded under the BLM's management and whether to open Zzyzx Mineral Springs to the public. Zzyzx, now a research station for California State University, was once a health spa owned and operated by "radio minister" Doc Springer.

Like many environmentalists, Burk would like to see a new desert economy based on tourism, not resource extraction. Most environmentalists hope the Mojave will someday become a full-fledged park. Burk just wants it to happen sooner than later.

"Let's face it, the Mojave is an urban desert," says Burk. "No one wants the ORVers, scam mining artists, the cowboys or the ranchers tearing the desert up. My wife, Joyce, and I adhere to the myth of the Garden of Eden, the idea that pristine landscapes are more attractive to people than spoiled ones. It's stronger than the myth of the frontier. We love our national parks to death."

Other environmentalists are more patient. "I'd much prefer it to be a park than a preserve, but I'm not in a hurry," says Hughes of the Sierra Club. "I don't know if it will happen in my lifetime."

A lovely, bitter pill

Ecologically, the East Mojave marks the convergence of three deserts - the Mojave with its Joshua trees, the Sonoran with its teddy bear cholla cactus and the Great Basin with its sagebrush. Within the preserve are alkaline lake beds, jagged mountain ranges, the world's largest Joshua tree forest and the Kelso sand dunes that boom when you walk on them. Some 800 plant species and 300 animal species are here, including at least two threatened species - the Mojave tui chub, a native fish that ekes out a living in brackish desert springs, and the desert tortoise, indicator species for the Mojave desert.

The history of this land ranges from early Indian habitation to the region's present-day ranches, mines and occasional methamphetamine labs. Once described as the empty space that keeps Las Vegas and Los Angeles from becoming one giant metropolis, the Mojave has always been used and occupied more intensively than one might think. Farmers homesteaded in Lanfair Valley during a wet period between 1910 and 1920, and many moved to the desert during the Great Depression, "figuring it was better to eat jackrabbits and beans and scratch at the rocks than starve in the cities," according to desert historian Dennis Casebier.

Independence and a frontier spirit still exist among today's East Mojave residents. It helps explain why the preserve was such a bitter pill.

But things are better now and the rumors are less outrageous. (At first, residents heard that the Park Service was going to fence the entire preserve and charge private landowners $200 to get to their property.) It may have helped that the Park Service went through such a difficult time itself a year ago. Kirsten Talken, the preserve's chief interpretative ranger, says Baker residents called her during the three-week federal furlough to see if park employees had enough food to eat. "When push comes to shove, people come together," she says.

Some former opponents have even become Park Service allies. Rob Blair, a fourth-generation rancher who runs cattle on 163,000 acres of public land inside the preserve, says the Park Service has been an easier landlord than the BLM. Blair says the Park Service approved a permit to reconstruct a water line in three weeks; the same permit had been delayed for six years under the BLM.

Another ally is Jerry Freeman, a former mining prospector who now owns the town of Nipton, along with its historic adobe hotel where silent-film star Clara Bow used to stay. Freeman is glad the desert's old industries and the "salt-of-the-earth" people who depend on them are protected under the California Desert Protection Act, but he's also happy that they'll be held to tougher rules under the Park Service.

"Some degree of regulation has to happen," says Freeman. "This isn't the Wild West anymore. It's the 20th century, and the Mojave could be permanently ruined very quickly."

Still, there are a number of residents here who will probably never accept the preserve. Casebier, the desert historian who has renovated a historic schoolhouse in Goffs and has written four-wheel guide books for the region, is one. He is particularly angry about the roads closed by wilderness designations and sees park tourism as even more destructive than the old resource economies.

"You're going to get a different type of person coming out here, and more of them," says Casebier. "You're going to get the type of person that uses parks. I see wilderness areas in the desert as death traps. Something will happen and they will tighten restrictions. Then the people who used to come here will be driven away or they'll leave."

Even though park officials say tour buses are unlikely to stop here anytime soon, Casebier is sure that will change: "The Park Service is at the base of the world's largest thermometer off one of the nation's busiest freeways. It's too easy for them to scoop people off I-15."

Camping statistics for March are already proving Casebier right: Dave Paulissen of the Park Service says some 1,400 people camped in the preserve's two campgrounds over the previous three weeks, most of those during spring break.

"I don't see the gain by creating the preserve," adds Casebier. "There was nothing being lost anyway."

Burk disagrees: "Without the California Desert Protection Act, we wouldn't have had a revolution in consciousness in the Mojave Desert." From his suburban home in Barstow, Burk sweeps his hand to the east. "Those mountains would have been leveled to make latex paint."

Driving away from the desert, with the lights of Los Angeles approaching, I thought about something Jerry Freeman said: "The desert is a fragile place. The ecosystems are delicate but so are its culture and people. It's something that has to be approached gently."

Out of choice and necessity, the National Park Service seems to be following Freeman's advice.

Beauty and the Beast

The president’s new monument forces southern Utah to face its tourism future


Enraged, county commissioners sent bulldozers into the new monument.
Richard Menzies

by Paul Larmer
High Country News

KANAB, Utah - Outside the Kane County administration building, a warm autumn sun sets the red cliffs ablaze. Inside, seated in front of an American flag, Kane County’s own firebrand, Joe Judd, 67, tells how he came to this small town in southernmost Utah.

"I retired 17 years ago as parks manager for the city of L.A.," he says. "I was responsible for 200 parks, 14 golf courses, and a staff of 2,200 that was 80 percent black."

Judd says the job was rewarding, but ate him alive. "You don’t get to be a nice guy when you have your life threatened," he says, shaking his head. "So when I was 50, I said, "I don’t need this." " He moved to Kanab.

Instead of hobby ranching, Judd became active in the Mormon Church, serving as a bishop and helping overhaul a soup kitchen for the needy. He also served on the board of the local power company. Then, two years ago he won a seat on the Kane County Commission.

"Now I’m working on zoning ordinances and septic regulations," he says. "I’m trying to pull people here into the 20th century."

This Joe Judd seems far different from the one I talked to two months ago, the day after President Bill Clinton created the 1.7 million-acre Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. The monument, more than half of which lies in Kane County, killed a proposed coal mine on the Kaiparowits Plateau that supporters say would have brought millions of dollars into Kanab and other towns in the area (HCN, 9/30/96).

On the phone, Judd cursed the Clinton administration for running roughshod over local people and for destroying the last hope for good wages in his county, which is 95 percent public land and home to just 10,000 people. Soon after, Judd and his fellow commissioners sent county bulldozers into the new monument, some to areas environmentalists want protected as roadless wilderness.

Judd still curses the president and is unapologetic about the "freshened up" roads. But he quickly accepted $100,000 from the Clinton administration to do planning in conjunction with the new monument, and then asked for and received $100,000 that neighboring Garfield County had rejected as "blood money." His county then signed an "assistance agreement" with the Bureau of Land Management that spells out how the two will cooperate during the planning process for the monument.

"It was arrogant as hell for the president to use the law to his advantage as he did," the commissioner says. "But we’re not going to sit around with our heads in our hands."

Before visiting southern Utah, I couldn’t have guessed that Kane County might embrace the new monument. But Judd and others like him recognize that the monument solidifies two facts of life: Southern Utah’s mining, logging and ranching are in decline; and the region is already a public-lands playground for the world.

Even the angry leaders in Garfield County, which is home to the monument’s northern half, recognize that the game has evolved from fighting off outsiders to adapting to a tourism boom that could turn their quiet towns into a theme park.

As I drove for hours around the edges of this immense monument and visited its widely scattered communities, I wondered how the land and the people would change over the coming years. Would the anger and resentment fade? Would the Bureau of Land Management be able to run a monument that will attract millions of visitors each year? And would the towns end up looking and feeling like every other strip-developed community near a national treasure?

Kane County: Prosperity’s thin veneer

Kanab, pop. 4,500, boasts a golf course on the edge of town that bustles on a weekday in mid-November, and newish hotels, gift stores and restaurants line the clean, wide streets. It seems downright prosperous for a town that has just seen its hopes for a major industrial project - the Andalex coal mine - dashed.

A mild climate and proximity to some of the southwest’s finest scenery have made tourism the town’s main economic force for years. Bryce Canyon, Zion, Grand Canyon and Capitol Reef national parks are all closer than a day’s drive, as is Lake Powell. The Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument is just the latest and nearest attraction.

But not long ago, tourism was balanced by a substantial natural-resource-based economy. The scales tipped during the early 1990s, when Kanab lost more than 500 timber and uranium mining jobs. Families that had a primary breadwinner earning $20 to $30 an hour suddenly had to move or change occupations. Those who wanted to stay had to send Dad to work as a trucker or laborer in a distant city and add Mom, grandma and the kids to the work force, most often cleaning hotel rooms and flipping hamburgers for tourists at $5 an hour.

In 1990, 1.5 people per Kane County household were in the work force and the average income was $25,000, according to a recent economic report prepared for the county. Today, 2.6 people work per household and the average income has eroded to $18,000.

"When the high-paying jobs dried up, more people had to work just to meet the bills," says Gil Miller, a Logan, Utah-based economist who drafted Kane County’s latest economic development plan. "The only jobs available were in the tourism industry."

Kanab councilman Roger Holland says seven families in his Mormon Church ward lost their jobs with the closure of the Kaibab mill. "Some have gone on unemployment, then welfare," Holland says. "None of these families have come back to the point economically that they were before."

Tourism has continued to grow, but workers not only earn low wages, they frequently get laid off during the cold winter months. Roger Carter, manager of the Red Hills Best Western in Kanab, says he pares his summer staff of 35 to a baker’s dozen during November, December and January.

"We love our tourists, especially now that they’re all we have," says Carter, who moved his family to Kanab seven years ago from Flagstaff, Ariz. "But it’s a boom-and-bust economy, too."

To this hard-hit community, the Andalex coal mine project looked like a savior. No wonder everyone was hopping mad when the President took that hope away.

Practical to the CORE

Later that evening, I meet with three men who have moved past anger to focus on Kane County’s future. They lead a community organization called CORE - Coalition of Resources and Economies.

On my left is hotel manager, Roger Carter, who serves as CORE’s president; on my right, Richard Negus, a 67-year-old London-born transplant who has been an animal-rights activist, journalist, and cat-show announcer at New York’s Madison Square Garden. Dead ahead of me is the imposing figure of Jim Matson, the former manager of Kaibab Industries’ logging mill in Fredonia, Ariz., 9 miles south of Kanab.

The mill closed two years ago, a victim of changing economic conditions and, according to Matson, appeals of federal timber sales on the Kaibab National Forest north of the Grand Canyon brought by environmentalists.

"Do you have any environmentalists in your group?" I ask.

"All 12 of us," quips Matson.

A forester by training, Matson, 52, has been reborn as a super-consultant on natural-resource conflicts and economic development. Kane County recently hired his firm to spend $200,000 in monument planning monies.

"We’re a poor county, behind the times in land-use planning and economic development," he says. "The coal mine and the $1.5 million a year it would have provided - now that’s gone and we have to quickly shift our priorities."

Matson says the monument catalyzed a countywide economic plan that he had been working on for months. The plan focuses on bringing small and medium-sized firms to the county - companies like Stamp "Em Up, a business started in Las Vegas by two Kanab women who recently moved the operation back to their hometown. The company manufactures rubber impressions for a variety of crafts, and at 200 employees, it’s Kane County’s biggest employer.

But Matson knows Kanab is a rookie in the recruitment game. Last year, he says, the owners of a tent and outdoor-gear manufacturing company scouted Kanab as a possible location for their business. They left quickly when town officials couldn’t promise that the company’s sewer, water, power and telecommunications needs would be met.

"We didn’t even speak the same language," Matson recalls.

The new plan, which calls for zoning and upgrades in Kanab’s infrastructure, should give the county the credibility it needs to start recruiting businesses from places like Southern California. It might be a tough sell.

Kanab’s work force lacks the skills and expertise to attract the high-tech industries that are flocking to Utah’s Wasatch Front, says economist Gil Miller. The nearest four-year college is several hours away, in Cedar City. And Kanab sits almost a hundred miles from an interstate and lacks commercial air service.

Kanab can’t even attract the BLM. The agency recently decided to locate its temporary monument planning office in Cedar City, which is several hours away from the new monument and outside both Kane and Garfield counties. BLM monument supervisor Jerry Meredith says the agency didn’t want to locate in any community near the monument for fear it would give the town an edge in the competition for permanent monument facilities. But there were logistical concerns as well, he admits.

Cedar City has an interstate, an airport, conference facilities and Southern Utah University, Meredith says. And, it has real estate.

"We needed 6,000 square feet of space and 18 houses for employees right away," says Meredith. Even Kanab would have been marginal, he says.

To Matson, the BLM’s decision was "a slap in the face. It said that they didn’t want to live with us."

It also said Kane County would, for the next three years, lose out on 18 high-paying government jobs.

If you designate it, will they come?

Driving the 60 miles east from Kanab to Big Water, pop. 350, which lies within a few miles of Lake Powell, I am struck by the immensity of the new monument. Its southern edge along the highway is a series of rugged, sparsely vegetated cliffs that extend as far as the eye can see.

The last protrusion is the Kaiparowits Plateau, which looms like the prow of a giant ship behind the town of Big Water. It is also the place where Andalex had planned to mine coal.

Big Water, with its dirt roads and boat-storage yards facing the highway, missed out on the mining boom, but its mayor, Gerry Rankin, says she is eager to capitalize on the new monument.
It isn’t a Grand Canyon or a Lake Powell, she says, "but it’s got a rough, difficult beauty, you might call it."

For Big Water to attract tourists, though, Rankin says it needs the BLM to develop some roads into the monument so that people can sightsee. The town also needs a sewer system, she says. Without one, it has been unable to attract hotels or other large commercial enterprises. The carloads of tourists now passing Big Water on their way to Lake Powell have little reason to stop.

Joe Judd says he doubts the monument will give Big Water much of a boost. The southern portion of the monument, he says, is "like your big toe; there’s nothing sexy about it. You won’t see anything that you can’t find in two-thirds of the rest of the state."

There are few roads into the monument from the south, Judd notes, and most are nearly impassable for all but skilled four-wheel drivers. The people who come and want to see the new monument will have to stay around the outskirts or risk getting stuck or lost. Either way, they are a liability, in his view.

Judd recently jetted to Washington, D.C., with Garfield County Commissioner Louise Liston to ask Congress for $575,000 to help his county cope with everything from a stretched police force to growing numbers of lost and injured hikers, and overflowing garbage bins. Liston asked for $900,000 and an extra $2 million for road maintenance and improvement in the monument.

By asking for so much money, Judd seems to contradict his prediction that the monument will generate little interest. But early readings indicate that tourists are chomping at the bit. The BLM offices in Kanab, Escalante and Salt Lake City say they are swamped with thousands of requests for monument information and maps. A Web site put on the internet by the town of Escalante’s Chamber of Commerce received 2,000 hits during February alone.

"We want all the tourism we can get," admits Matson, "but we don’t want a Moab (Utah)-type situation," where hordes of visitors have failed to lift family income and strained public services to the breaking point.

Kane County’s eager-but-cautious attitude toward tourism is based on experience. Even without the monument, towns like Kanab have begun to see the negative side of a minimum-wage economy and the outsiders it attracts. The newcomers may also have a tough time fitting in with the locals. The communities in Kane and Garfield counties share two characteristics: The citizens are predominately white and Mormon.

"The people that come down to fill these jobs have different values," says Tom Hatch, a sixth generation rancher who represents both Kane and Garfield counties in the state Legislature. "They work a season and then they go on welfare or unemployment. It’s changed our schools and our kids. We have drugs and violence and some kids want to become gang members."

Steering the ship

Matson says the county will keep tourism’s downside uppermost in its mind during the BLM’s planning process. "We want to steer the ship rather than have someone steer it for us," he says.

Steering the ship means local control. The county wants monument visitor centers and staff offices located within communities such as Kanab and Escalante, not inside the monument. Environmentalists say they like that idea.

"There’s no reason to put a Marriott in the middle of the Kaiparowits Plateau," says Scott Groene, an attorney with the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance. "This is actually a place where we all agree."

Jerry Meredith says his agency will consider placing several visitor centers in the communities around the monument. "This monument is so spread out that it doesn’t lend itself to having one central headquarters," says Meredith, who previously oversaw the monument area, as the BLM’s Cedar City district manager.

Kane County also wants to hire county employees to man new monument campgrounds and facilities. The idea of having local people filling these slots - instead of senior citizen volunteers or federal employees from afar - is novel.

"If we could get 150 jobs paying $8, $9 or $10 an hour with benefits, that would be a whole lot more than we have now," says Richard Negus, CORE’s public affairs director.

Meredith says the BLM will consider contracting out services to the counties, though it is too early to commit.

Garfield County: Holding to the past

Garfield County is Kane County’s colder, rougher brother. It has some of the most scenic - and already well-visited - portions of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. (BLM officials say that more than 500,000 visited the monument area last year and this year the number is likely to boom.) But the county’s cool and wet winter climate, compared to Kane County, also means a shorter tourism season. Its towns are smaller and scattered across a landscape that is more than 98 percent federally owned. All 4,000 county residents could fit into the town of Kanab.

It’s snowing and raw as I drive through Panguitch, the county seat. And quiet. Only a handful of cars and trucks cluster around the open businesses - a grocery store and a gas station. Panguitch is the county’s biggest town with a population of 1,400, but it looks like a carnival that has closed for the season. The museums, gift stores and hotels are here, but no customers. The town lost a timber mill and nearly 100 jobs two years ago.

Twenty-five miles and maybe six cars later, a lone coyote scampers across the road as I turn in to Bryce Canyon National Park. Ruby’s Inn stands guard just outside the park entrance; compared with Panguitch, it bustles. A busload of foreign tourists load up in front of the lodge, which is run by a local family; inside, several dozen tourists dine at the cafe and browse in a souvenir shop the size of a department store.

At 80 years old, Ruby’s Inn is the economic heavy of Garfield County, employing nearly 500 people during the summer months. But the minimum-wage-plus-tips pay can’t compare to wages provided by a coal mine or a timber mill.

The next lonely hour down the road runs right through portions of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. This northwestern side of the monument, with its hayfields surrounded by towering cliffs dotted with juniper and pine, seems a world away from the harsh desert I encountered near Big Water. And it is; it has taken me a whole day to travel around just the western half of the monument.

I finally reach Escalante, another Mormon-settled community where locals recently hung effigies of President Clinton and Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt. There’s a room at the Prospector’s Inn, but only after I track down one of the owners washing her truck out back.

She asks me if I’m here to see the monument. "Well, take a look out the window," she says when I say yes. "Everything you see is the monument except for this little town."

The woman says she doubts the monument will lead to a boom in Escalante. But later, as she serves dinner at the restaurant behind the hotel, she says hers is one of three new hotels to open in town within the last three years. And someone recently bought one of the original old, brick, two-story, Mormon settlers’ houses which abound in this town, intending to run a bed and breakfast.

Even here, in a settlement that looks much as it did a century ago, change is in the air.

Las Vegas mulch

The next day, sitting in a cramped trailer office at the Utah Forest Products mill south of Escalante, manager Stephen Steed asks a question.

"How many people stayed at your hotel last night?"

Just me and one other, I say.

"Yeah, that was probably our state forester who’s down from Salt Lake for the week," Steed says. "That means a traveling newspaperman and the state forestry guy took care of the tourist industry in Escalante last night. Try feeding that to your family."

Though Steed doesn’t have much use for tourism, he’s not mired in the past. The fourth-generation logger and his father ran the mill until it shut down here in 1993, and he learned from that experience. The new mill is financed by outside money and is a different animal. It is smaller, employing just 65, and it is more efficient, producing a variety of goods, including milled lumber and chips.

"There’s no waste," says Steed. "We even ship the chips to Las Vegas. They mix them with fertilizer to make a landscaping mulch for all those subdivisions in the desert."

This value-added stuff is what Garfield County commissioners have started to look for. They recently hired a Salt Lake City-based consulting firm to help its ranchers market "riparian-free, monument beef," says consultant David Nimkin of Confluence Associates. Riparian-free, he says, means cows stay out of streams.

He also sees local logging companies producing finished products, such as furniture or floor boards. "There’s a big market for softwood floors in the Salt Lake City area, but most of the wood comes from the southeastern United States," says Nimkin. "Why couldn’t Utah fir and pine fill that need?"

The concept extends to the monument: Keep its 1.7 million acres rugged and relatively roadless, and instead of fast-food jobs you’d need guides and outfitters to lead dudes into the trackless interior, says the planning consultant. The guides could even educate visitors about the history and culture of the area.

"These towns are never going to be gateway communities like Springdale (outside Zion National Park)," says Nimkin. "But they could market the monument as one of the last great, wild places, a place where you need a local guide to show you the deep dark secrets."

Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt is paying attention. He has promised to help Garfield and Kane counties plan for the changes that lie ahead. Leavitt’s planning director, Brad Barber, says the state is setting up an economic development team that will help these communities find money for new business ventures and the roads and services they need.

"Where do we put the lodges? Do we have building codes? What do we want our town to look like? Do we want any old, ugly Motel 6 in town?," asks Barber. "These are the questions these communities need to face now."

The pioneer spirit

Before leaving Escalante, I stop at the ranch of Garfield County commissioner Louise Liston. The scrappy and articulate Escalante native is known as a staunch defender of rural values. Yet she and her fifth-generation cattle-rancher husband, Robert, have adapted to a new West: They’ve given up on cattle and now raise ostriches.

The Listons trace their roots back to the Mormon pioneers who found a way across the tortuous terrain from Escalante southeast across the Colorado River. You can still travel The Hole-in-the-Rock route, which lies in the new monument, on a teeth-rattling dirt road.

"When you know of the sacrifices our pioneer ancestors made, you feel that it demands the same type of sacrifice from you," Liston says.

She says her son-in-law next door worked at the old sawmill which closed in 1993. He has yet to find a permanent job and that’s been tough on Liston’s daughter and their six children.

"My daughter started working at the Dairy Queen in Panguitch," she says. "Now she’s driving 50 miles to work at Ruby’s Inn. They sacrifice to stay in the valley. You don’t do that unless you love it."

More tourism in Escalante could mean that Liston’s daughter could work closer to home, but that doesn’t sit well, either. "It worries me that we’ll turn into Moab and have resorts," says Liston. "We’d love to keep our farming community and our cowboy flavor. I believe that’s what draws the tourists."

Louise Liston is a study in contradictions: As a county leader, she has refused to take monument planning money from a despised federal government, yet she recently asked Congress for $2.9 million to help the county cope with the monument. She would like the prosperity tourism could bring, but despises tourism because she fears it will change her quiet community forever.

The contrast between Liston and Kane County Commissioner Joe Judd appears stark. Faced with rapid change, one holds to the past while the other reaches for the future. But as I head out Liston’s door, she says, "You know, the monument is here, and we need to make the best of it."

Can the communities surrounding the monument grab hold of their destinies before they get overrun? Scott Groene, who witnessed Moab’s unchecked boom in the early 1990s, says wryly, "Everyone says they don’t want to be Moab, and yet they end up doing everything they can to ensure that they will. Once the people show up who only want to make money, it’s all over."

But Brad Barber is optimistic; he sees "an opportunity to create something great for southern Utah."

Pulling off Highway 12, I look out a seemingly endless expanse of domed, knobbed and sculpted rock. Like a dark and gleaming serpent, a narrow ribbon of road winds miraculously through this desert. Beyond, the dark rising of the Henry Mountains.

A canyon wall seems close enough to touch. I pick up a stone and give it a good heave. It looks good for awhile, riding high and strong, but then it slows and drops straight down, like Wile E. Coyote, into the abyss.

In this country, getting from here to there has never been easy.

New Life for the Lonesome Desert

The East Mojave Was Recently Designated A National Preserve, But Even So, Few People Have Discovered Its Subtle, Silent Pleasures

Kelso Dunes, Mojave National Preserve.

John McKinney
Los Angeles Times

NIPTON, Calif. — "Boom, boom!" shouts Sophia, my 3-year-old daughter, as she slides down the steep southeast face of the Kelso Dunes. "I have never seen more sand in the whole world!"

As we near the top of the dunes, our footsteps cause mini-avalanches and the dunes sha-boom sha-boom for us. Geologists speculate that the extreme dryness of the East Mojave Desert, combined with the wind-polished, well-rounded grains of sand, has something to do with their musical ability. Sometimes the low rumbling sound reminds me of a Tibetan gong, but on this particular day the sound is like a '50s doo-wop group.

Except for the musical dunes, it's absolutely quiet here. We have a 45-square-mile formation of magnificently sculpted sand, the most extensive dune field in the West, all to ourselves.

We're surprised at such solitude, even in the spring, prime time for visiting Southern California's newest desert preserve.

Two decades of park politicking finally ended in October, 1994, when Congress passed the controversial California Desert Protection Act, the Sen. Dianne Feinstein-sponsored bill that transferred the East Mojave National Scenic Area, administered by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, to the National Park Service. The act created two new national parks, Death Valley and Joshua Tree, and established the new Mojave National Preserve.

My wife, Cheri, and I, longtime desert lovers, figured (with more than a little apprehension) that the Mojave's elevated national profile would attract hordes of sightseers.

Wrong! During a visit here last week, there was only one other family making their way toward the dunes and fewer than a half-dozen campers in each of the campgrounds on a Monday. To many Southern Californians, the East Mojave is that bleak, interminable stretch of desert to be crossed as quickly as possible while driving Interstate 15 from Barstow to Las Vegas. Few realize that I-15 is the northern boundary of what desert rats have long considered the crown jewel of the California deserts.

About 17 million people live less than four hours from here, but not many city dwellers can locate the East Mojave on a map. They may be surprised to discover that the new preserve is quite accessible; on the south, it's bordered by another major interstate, I-40, and on the east by U.S. 95 (and the Nevada border). Just south of I-40 is one of the longest remaining stretches of old Route 66. Still, the area bounded by these three highways has long been known as "The Lonesome Triangle," and will probably keep this nickname for many years to come.

With few campgrounds and fewer motels--without even a visitors center--this land is a hard one to get to know. But it's an easy one to get to like. Its 1.4 million acres include the world's largest Joshua tree forest, wild burros and grazing cattle, spectacular canyons and volcanic formations, stalactites and stalagmites in vast underground caverns, back roads and footpaths to historic mining sites, tabletop mesas and a dozen mountain ranges.

This diversity--everything that makes a desert a desert--is appealing, but its silence is what draws us. It's a call of the wild that can't be heard, only felt. And in spring (the other prime time to go is autumn) temperatures are mild, the Joshua trees are in bloom and the lower Kelso Dunes are bedecked with yellow and white desert primrose, pink sand and verbena.

So where is everybody?

My family and I have an intense history with this part of the Southern California desert. The quietude of the dunes this time was in complete contrast to my first visit here eight years ago. On Thanksgiving weekend in 1987, I toured the East Mojave on a press trip with then-Sen. Alan Cranston, who had just introduced his California Desert Protection bill in Congress.

One of the bill's provisions would transfer administration of the East Mojave Desert National Scenic Area, as it was then called, from the bureau to the national parks. The measure was controversial, to say the least. Outspoken park supporters and equally outspoken park opposers badgered Cranston and anyone who would listen. By the time I started hiking up Kelso Dunes, I had thrust upon me a day pack full of position papers, from the Sierra Club to the mining industry, from the Wilderness Society to off-road vehicle boosters.

A similarly besieged magazine editor with a name tag that read Cheri Rae joined me to escape the political din. "All that arguing about a land nobody's seen," she commented. "I'll bet if more people experienced the magic of this place, the East Mojave would become a national park."

I agreed. While the East Mojave often made the news on environmental issues, these headlines offered few clues as to its beauty and recreational possibilities. That day Cheri and I began a relationship with the East Mojave that continues to this day. We explored the desert from Aiken Wash to Zzyzx, and fell in love.

McKinney writes the weekly hiking column for this section. He is the co-author, with Cheri Rae, of "Walking the East Mojave: A Visitors Guide to Mojave National Preserve."

The Lion of the Desert

Peter Burk's 18-Year Crusade Has Made California's Mojave National Park a Hot Topic

By Susan Reed
People Magazine - Vol. 41, No. 23

TO THE AVERAGE TOURIST, HIGHWAY 15 from Barstow, Calif., to the Nevada border is a bleak two-hour drive through the heart of the Mojave Desert, a barren expanse of sand and scrub where summer temperatures sometimes hit 130°. But take the same trip with Peter Burk, 48, a gangly 6'6" librarian and amateur naturalist from Barstow, and the landscape becomes a trove of ecological and historic treasures: more than 700 kinds of plants, among them the world's largest forest of Joshua trees—whose spiky limbs somehow reminded Mormon travelers of the biblical prophet—plus 300 species of wildlife, including mountain lions, bighorn sheep and golden eagles, as well as 2,000-year-old Native American petroglyphs.

Rattling along in his yellow pickup truck, Burk points excitedly to a moonscape of volcanic cones and 600-foot-high sand dunes. "People think of the Mojave as a wasteland, a dump, something to zip through on their way somewhere else," he says. "Very few people understand the tremendous wealth of life here."

Thanks to Burk's 18-year crusade on behalf of the Mojave, they will soon learn differently. In April, the U.S. Senate passed the California Desert Protection Act, landmark legislation that will create three new national parks, Mojave, Death Valley and Joshua Tree, as well as 74 separate wilderness areas. The bill, which the House is expected to approve this summer, encompasses 6.3 million acres—affecting more public lands in the lower 48 states than any legislation in history. "This desert is a masterpiece," says Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, the bill's lead sponsor. "If it weren't for the Peter Burks of the world, these things wouldn't happen."

Burk's Mojave crusade began in 1976, during a daily hike with his wife, Joyce, also a librarian. Burk was complaining about the Barstow to Las Vegas off-road race, an annual event in which hundreds of motorcyclists, zooming across the Mojave, tear into the fragile desert floor. "But then I decided that instead of fighting against something like the race, we should fight/or something," says Burk.

In a model of grassroots organizing, the Burks began holding spaghetti dinners and selling T-shirts and booklets promoting desert protection. They won the endorsement of two Sierra Club chapters and began publishing a quarterly newsletter. In 1978, Burk persuaded Rep. George Brown (D-Calif.) to introduce a bill protecting the East Mojave.

Burk learned to love the desert while growing up in Redlands, Calif., near the Mojave. The son of Peter W. Burk, a civil engineer, and Betty, an English teacher, young Peter was a rock hound who ventured off to the wilderness on weekends to add to his collection. Intent on becoming a teacher himself, he enrolled at the University of California at Riverside, where he earned a master's degree in history and met Joyce Brady, whom he married in 1968.

But a stint in the Air Force—Burk was drafted in 1969 and discharged honorably a year later—changed his outlook. "There were a lot of things wrong in the world," he says. "Seeing what was happening in the [Vietnam] war changed me."

The Burks moved to Barstow, where Peter worked with foster families and abused children. Eventually, depressed by the suffering he saw, he left social work after nine years for a job as a librarian at Silver Valley High School in nearby Yermo. It was in 1973 when he joined the Sierra Club and embarked on the desert campaign that he found his true vocation. "In a way, we raised the park like we would have raised a child," says Joyce.

Not everyone shared the Burks' enthusiasm. In deference to a coalition of hunters, cattlemen and all-terrain-vehicle owners, California's Republican senators, Pete Wilson and John Seymour, blocked the Mojave Park bill. It was only revived when Feinstein and fellow Democrat Barbara Boxer were elected to the Senate in 1992. Now, on the cusp of the House vote, one final threat remains: The NRA is working furiously to downgrade the park to a preserve where hunting will be allowed. Still, Burk is cautiously optimistic. "We've come a long way," he says, "but it's not over until the fat lady sings."

Burk heard the first notes of that song April 13 when the Senate voted 69-29 in his favor. That day, he and Joyce taped the Senate debate on C-Span before sitting down that night to watch. "Imagine how it felt for a guy in a Podunk town watching Senator Feinstein stand in front of the Senate speaking almost verbatim from the booklets we put together," he says. "It made me feel like we do have a future, that little guys like me can make a difference."

Most Powerful Quake in 40 Years Hits California

Robert Reinhold
New York Times



Fault trace from the 1992 Landers earthquake is revealed in damaged roadway.


The most powerful earthquake to hit California in 40 years rumbled out of the high desert east of Los Angeles early this this morning, a jolt so powerful that it sloshed swimming pools as far north as Idaho and rocked houseboats on Lake Union in Seattle.

The quake, which measured 7.4 on the Richter Scale of ground movement and killed one person, was followed three hours and seven minutes later by another strong quake 19 miles away. The second quake cut off roads to the mountain resort of Big Bear Lake and touched off huge landslides that sent dramatic plumes of dust rising over the San Bernardino Mountains.

The jolts shattered windows, emptied store shelves, set fires, opened huge fissures in mountain roads and knocked down houses and shops here in the Yucca Valley about 125 miles east of Los Angeles. The Hi Desert Hospital in Joshua Tree reported treating 70 people for injuries that included cuts, fractures and suspected heart attacks, admitting 10. There was one fatality, Joseph R. Bishop, a 3 1/2-year-old child who was crushed by a falling chimney as he slept in Yucca Valley.

Power Impresses Californians

Residents all over Southern California said the first jolt, a prolonged rumbling that shook houses violently at 4:58 A.M., was the most powerful and frightening temblor they had ever experienced.

"It was something that I never felt in my life before," said Iona Bong, 61 years old, whose house is near the epicenter in the town of Landers, about 10 miles north of here. "It was a sinking that would not quit. Everything I own is on the floor."

Terrifying aftershocks continued to rock the area all day. The Governor's Office of Emergency Services declared a state earthquake alert after scientists at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena warned that there was a chance of better than 50 percent of aftershocks measuring 6.0 or greater within 24 hours.

The state urged people to stay indoors and curtail normal activities, including travel on freeways. But the Dodger baseball game in Los Angeles and other events took place anyway. At 5 P.M. the authorities rescinded the warning and said it was safe to travel to work on Monday, although they continued to urge residents to remain alert to the possibility of more aftershocks.

The damage and injuries would certainly have been far greater had the quake hit during daylight hours or closer to the densely populated Los Angeles Basin than this dusty windy desert valley north of Palm Springs.

Late in the afternoon, Kerry Sieh, a seismologist from Cal Tech, who was inspecting the area from a helicopter, found that the ground had moved 18 feet in one place on the fault 43 miles north of Landers. Experts say that if such movement occurred in a city, damage would be extensive.

"Beyond Landers all hell breaks loose," Dr. Sieh said. He added that numerous faults come close to the surface in the area and several had broken it.

The United States Geological Survey's Earthquake Information Office in Golden, Colo., classified today's 7.4 quake as a "major" event, the largest in California since July 20, 1952, when a 7.7 magnitude jolt rocked the Tehachapi-Bakersfield area in Central California, killing 12 people, injuring 18 and causing $60 million in property damage. By comparison the first quake today was nearly three times as powerful as the Loma Prieta earthquake measuring 7.1 that hit the San Francisco area in October 1989, killing 63 people.

Hotel Tower Evacuated

The Geological Survey put today's second jolt, which occurred at 8:05 A.M., at a magnitude of 6.5. It was along an entirely different fault, with an epicenter six miles southeast of Big Bear Lake. The extent of damage and injuries in that area could not be determined by this afternoon, because telephone and road links were cut.

The authorities were particularly concerned about this earthquake because it was very close to the San Andreas fault running most of the length of California, which many experts believe could be the source of a very powerful earthquake. Such concern led President Bush to cancel a golf match and return to the White House from Camp David, Md., for a briefing on the quake. Mr. Bush also called Gov. Pete Wilson of California and said he told Mr. Wilson "the Federal Government would do whatever we possibly can do."

The first earthquake today was felt as far east as Colorado and woke up residents all over the Los Angeles area. In one home in Hollywood, beds started to shake vigorously and the residents, heeding warnings, jumped up and stood under doorframes. The house creaked loudly for about 30 seconds and chandeliers swung. In other parts of the region people ran out of their homes and stood in the open to avoid falling objects. One tower of the the Disneyland Hotel in Anaheim was evacuated. But there was little damage in Los Angeles itself.

The same cannot be said for the Yucca Valley, a string of dusty towns along a mountainous road just north of the Joshua Tree National Monument in San Bernardino County.

Shops all along Route 62, the main route that bisects the valley, had their windows broken and merchandise tossed around violently. The worst-hit business was the New Yucca Bowl, a 16-lane bowling alley where the entire east wall fell away, leaving a gaping hole through which girders and air-conditioning ducts could be seen hanging over the littered lanes. In another few hours, the alley would have been crowded with Sunday bowlers.

"I would have been buried by now," said Larry Rochester, who worked at the control desk, standing in windy 106-degree heat outside the wrecked bowling alley. Like most residents, he was at home sleeping at the time. "This is my fifth quake over 6.0, but this is the first one I was really scared," he said. "The longevity was unbelievable." He said he grabbed his wife and daughter and rushed outside into the darkness.

The owner of the alley, an Egyptian immigrant who would identify himself only as Nick, put the damage to the 27-year-old, 20,000-square-foot building at about $1.5 million. He said he did not have earthquake insurance.

Shane R. Cashman, a 24-year-old construction worker in Yucca Valley, was among the injured. "I was in bed and this just amazing shaking started," he said. "At first, I thought I'd just ride it out. But it went on forever, so I just had to run. I couldn't help myself. I ran down the concrete stairs at our apartment building, but the stairs were shaking so hard I couldn't keep my balance." He said he fell down the stairs and suffered leg injuries for which he was treated at Hi Desert Hospital.

'I Was Pinned There'

"It dumped me out of bed and dumped a bureau on top of me," said Emma Drages, a 68-year-old woman who lives in Landers, the town closest to the epicenter. "I was pinned there for a while. I walked into my house and I saw the dishes that belonged to my grandmother that I was saving for my children and they were all gone."

The early quake caused heavy damage to Old Woman Springs Road, a major route north of Yucca Valley to Landers. At one point the road broke, rising three feet on one side. In Landers, a 500,000-gallon water tank burst, leaving most of the 10,000 residents without water for at least three days, and four homes burned to the ground.

Mrs. Bong's brown stucco home shuddered violently, and she said she started to fly off her bed. Her husband, Leonard, a retired ceramic tile maker, grabbed her arm. When the shaking stopped, the Bongs's bedroom was filled with smashed belongings. They carted out a huge garbage can of broken glass from the kitchen. Mrs. Bong said she lost two figurines she had had since she was 16 years old.

The highway patrol sealed off Landers to all but residents, and even they could not get through without four-wheel drive vehicles.

At the San Bernardino County Firehouse in Yucca Valley, Doug Anderson, a firefighter, was recalling his wakeup call. "It seemed like it would never end," he said. "The intensity was incredible."

The authorities said about 100 people sought emergency shelter. Considering the power of the quake and the huge population of Southern California, it could have been a lot worse, and someday almost certainly will be.

Bagdad Fades Into the Desert--in California

Postcard image of Bagdad on Route 66 in 1939 (Burton Frasher)

By CHARLES HILLINGER
Los Angeles Times

BAGDAD, Calif. — Ever since Iraq invaded Kuwait, curious motorists passing through the Mojave Desert have stopped to ask the way to Bagdad, the California ghost town named in the 1800s for the Middle Eastern capital.

"Every day they come into our gas station or restaurant and ask, 'Where's Bagdad? We can't find it,' " said Buster Burris, 81, owner of the town of Amboy, population 27, eight miles east of where maps indicate Bagdad is located.

Burris tells them Bagdad is but a memory these days.

Situated in the middle of the desert, Bagdad is 75 miles southeast of Barstow on old Route 66 in a long valley between the Bristol and Bullion mountains.

Today, its only inhabitants are snakes, lizards, scorpions, pack rats and an assortment of other wildlife. There's a lone palm tree, half a dozen scraggly salt cedars and a scattering of sagebrush growing in the desert sand.

Bagdad has always been one of the driest places in the United States. It recorded the longest period of drought anywhere in the history of the country from July, 1912, to November, 1914: 767 consecutive days without precipitation.

There is an eerie quiet here that is broken from time to time by the 30 to 40 trains that rumble through Bagdad each day.

In 1883, railroad officials who dubbed two nearby settlements Siberia and Klondike named this desert town after the Iraqi capital, omitting the "h" in a divergent spelling for the city on the Tigris. As many as 50 Chinese railroad workers died while laying tracks, falling victim to a cholera epidemic. An unmarked burial ground is believed to be somewhere nearby.

A "Bagdad" sign, along the mainline Santa Fe tracks marks the site of the town that boomed from the late 1800s through the early 1900s, finally gasping its last breath in the late 1960s.

Bagdad was an important railhead, a watering place for railroad engines during steam days and a center for nearby gold, silver, copper and lava mining camps--for mines such as the Orange Blossom, War Eagle and Lady Lou.

There were homes, hotels, saloons and stores here, a post office from 1889 to 1923, a school, a passenger railway station and a Harvey House restaurant. By the 1940s, however, all that remained was the depot, a few homes, the Bagdad Cafe, a gas station and cabins for overnight stays on U.S. 66.

Its population dwindled from a few hundred during its heyday to fewer than 20 in the mid-1940s, when Paul Limon worked here pumping gas at 23 cents a gallon. Limon, now 63, lives in Cadiz, 20 miles east of Bagdad. He recalled the town as he knew it during the 1940s and 1950s:

"Bagdad was a lively little place. People from all over the desert would come here because of the Bagdad Cafe, owned and operated by a woman named Alice Lawrence. The Bagdad Cafe was the only place for miles around with a dance floor and juke box.

"The Bagdad Cafe was a happy-go-lucky, popular spot. When I hear or read about the war in the Persian Gulf and Baghdad is mentioned, I think about Bagdad, Calif., and all the good times I had in this town," Limon said during a sentimental visit here. Many who drove U.S. 66, America's main street from the Midwest to California, will remember Bagdad, allowed Limon.

"Overheated cars from every state would stop to get water. Cars in those days were always boiling over. And a lot of those people ate in the Bagdad Cafe."

In fact, the town served as the original inspiration for the 1988 movie and subsequent television program, "Bagdad Cafe"--which was actually filmed at the Sidewinder Cafe in Newberry Springs, 40 miles to the northwest.

Percy Adlon, 55, a German film producer and founder of the Pelemele Film Corp., said he and his wife were driving in the desert in 1985 and, noticing Bagdad on the map, went off in search of the town.

They never did find it, but the name intrigued Adlon so much that he produced a film about "a Bavarian lady stranded in the desert in a cafe next to a dusty hotel," he said Wednesday in an interview. A CBS series that spun off the film starred Whoopie Goldberg and Jean Stapleton and ran 19 episodes before it was canceled in November.

Bagdad was bypassed in 1972 when Interstate 40 opened 20 miles to the north and the two-lane stretch of Route 66 through here became a deserted, seldom-used road.

But Bagdad had died years before the freeway opened. And the cafe, depot and what few structures remained were destroyed by vandals.

A network of dirt streets outline the town that was. Two speed-limits signs--15 m.p.h.--still stand. Concrete building foundations, rusted automotive parts, mining equipment and pipes, shattered glass and dinnerware, old pots and pans and other debris litter the area.

"This is where the Bagdad Cafe and gas station were," said Limon, standing on what is left of the eatery--the front steps.

He drove over the dirt streets to the old Bagdad Cemetery, a handful of graves marked with weathered crosses with names no longer legible. Signs were evident that grave robbers had recently desecrated the final resting place of Bagdad residents who died here in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

"This really sickens me," sighed Limon, as he looked down at holes dug at two of the grave sites.