The Larger, but Quieter Than Bundy, Push to Take Over Federal Land

Duane Ehmer riding his horse, Hellboy, last week at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge near Burns, Ore., where an armed group of antigovernment activists had seized control. (Rob Kerr/Agence France-Presse—Getty Images)

By JACK HEALY and KIRK JOHNSON
New York Times

DENVER — Ken Ivory, a Republican state representative from Utah, has been roaming the West with an alluring pitch to cattle ranchers, farmers and conservatives upset with how Washington controls the wide-open public spaces out here: This land is your land, he says, and not the federal government’s.

Mr. Ivory, a bespectacled business lawyer from suburban Salt Lake City, does not fit the profile of a sun-scoured sagebrush rebel. But he is part of a growing Republican-led movement pushing the federal government to hand over to the states millions of acres of Western public lands — as well as their rich stores of coal, timber and grazing grass.

“It’s like having your hands on the lever of a modern-day Louisiana Purchase,” said Mr. Ivory, who founded the American Lands Council and until recently was its president. The Utah-based group is funded mostly by donations from county governments, but has received support from Americans for Prosperity, the group backed by the billionaire Koch brothers.

The idea, which would radically reshape the West, is one that resonates with the armed group of ranchers and anti-government activists who seized control of a wildlife refuge in Oregon more than a week ago. Ammon Bundy, the crew’s leader and the scion of a Nevada ranching family steeped in disputes with the federal government, said he and his sympathizers had gone to Oregon to give the refuge back to local ranchers.

Many conservatives — Mr. Ivory among them — criticized Mr. Bundy’s gun-toting tactics, but their grievances and goals are nearly identical. And the outcry has grown amid a dust storm of rural anger at President Obama’s efforts to tighten regulations on fracking, greenhouse gases, smaller streams and other environmental issues that put struggling Western counties at odds with conservation advocates.

In the past few years, lawmakers across the West have offered up dozens of bills and resolutions seeking to take over the federal lands inside their borders or to study how to do so. Some of the legislation has been aimed at Congress, to urge it to radically revise the laws that have shaped 550,000 square miles of national forests and terrain run by the federal Bureau of Land Management, stretching from the Great Plains to the Pacific.

The effort — derided by critics as a pipe dream that would put priceless landscapes on the auction block — has achieved little so far.

Utah is the only state to pass a law demanding that Washington hand over federal land to the state. That transfer never happened, so now, Republicans on a state land commission are pressing for a $14 million lawsuit to claim 31.2 million federal acres of canyons, scrub desert and rolling mesas. The state’s attorney general, a Republican, has said he is studying the case and will make a decision about whether to move forward.

Colorado’s experience illustrates how the land-transfer discussion far exceeds any concrete results. Last year, a Republican state senator from the agricultural eastern plains sponsored a bill to create a Colorado Federal Land Management Commission, to study turning over federal lands to the state. The measure never made it out of the Republican-controlled state Senate.

In Congress, Republicans have supported moves to set up a land-transfer fund and create a “framework” to hand federal acres to the states.

Last week, Representative Greg Walden, the Republican who represents the Oregon district where the Bundy takeover is playing out, stood up in Congress to deplore the tactics of the armed protesters, but sympathized with their frustration.

“More than half of my district is under federal management, or lack thereof,” Mr. Walden said, expressing anger at the Bureau of Land Management. “They have come out with these proposals to close roads into the forests. They have ignored public input.”

In July 2014, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas proposed preventing the federal government from owning more than half of any state’s land. (Five states are more than half federal land, according to a Congressional Research Service report.) And Representative Cresent Hardy, Republican of Nevada, whose district includes a ranch run by Mr. Bundy’s father, introduced a measure that would block the government from buying any new land unless it could pass a balanced budget.

But land experts say the movement offers few details about what would happen the day after the federal government handed over all its land. How would states afford hundreds of rangers, officers and administrators to keep the land safe and comply with complicated federal laws on environmental policy and protecting endangered species? Would the land stay public, or be sold off to the highest bidder?

“They conveniently avoid all the difficult questions,” said Martin Nie, the director for the Bolle Center for People and Forests at the University of Montana.

In its mission statement, the American Lands Council says its strategy for securing local control of public land in the West involves four tenets: education, negotiation, legislation and litigation.

In practice, local land disputes — fueled by deepening antagonism toward federal land agencies — now unfold like social-media passion plays. Last summer, groups intervened at the request of mine owners to provide security at mines in Oregon and Montana amid complaints about federal land managers. And in December, Phil Lyman, a commissioner in San Juan County, Utah, received a 10-day jail sentence after he led a protest ride on all-terrain vehicles through a federal area that had been closed to motorized use.

“All I did was drive down a canyon road,” Mr. Lyman said. “It seems to be getting worse, and the federal agencies, they are expanding. Their restraints are being overstepped. It’s not the way this country was set up. It’s not the founders’ design.”

Not surprisingly, environmental activists have opposed dismantling federal lands, but so have hunters and anglers who worry their elk-hunting grounds and trout streams would be sold to private hands and developed. Unlike the federal government, many states require that their land be used as profitably as possible.

About an hour’s drive from the wildlife refuge where Mr. Bundy’s group is facing off with the government, Erin Maupin and her husband, Jeff, pay the government each summer to feed their cattle on 19,000 acres of federally owned land. She said that like many ranchers, they wanted to work with the government, but that layers of grazing restrictions and environmental rules were getting out of hand.

“We want somebody to make sure we’re doing it right,” Ms. Maupin said. “But it’s got to the point where there’s no common sense in it.”

The resentments toward federal land managers feel sharpest in economically strapped rural counties from Arizona to Montana, where up to 90 percent of the lands are federally managed. People love the beauty that surrounds them, but seethe at policies that they say have whittled away logging and mining jobs, left national forests vulnerable to wildfires and blocked access to public land.

“The land policies now are, basically, lock it up and throw away the key,” said Leland Pollock, a commissioner in Garfield County, Utah, a county roughly the size of Connecticut with pine forests and stunning red-rock spires. “It’s land with no use. The local economy’s really suffered as a result. Grazing has been reduced. We used to have a thriving timber industry — that’s all but gone.”

El Niño storms blanket High Desert with snow

Snow in Pioneertown

Joe Galli
KESQ News Channel 3, Palm Springs

PIONEERTOWN, Calif. - People in some parts of the High Desert woke up to a couple inches of snow on the ground.

The majority of the snow at lower elevations melted on away by the late afternoon, but that didn't stop some families from enjoying the fresh powder.

"I love the snow, we woke up this morning the whole place was blanketed, and it was enough snow to have my son stay home from school so we have been sledding all day," said Jon Linn.

KESQ talked with some residents who lost homes a few years back in the Sawtooth Fire. That blaze took out homes in Pioneertown and burned 70,000 acres of wilderness. These home owners told us they are always happy to see any moisture in the area to try to keep the bush from drying up during the drought.

"The snow only comes every so many years, and the Sawtooth Fire was 2007 (sic), two or three years after that we had 2 to 3 feet of snowfall, today it was like only an inch and it burned off right away, but it's still nice," said Rex Davis who rebuilt his home after the Sawtooth Fire.

If you're planning on heading up to even higher elevations to have some fun on the slopes this would be a good time to do it. Places like Big Bear got 36 inches of snow in some places.

Cook introduces bill to empower counties

Rep. Paul Cook, R-Apple Valley

Victor Valley Daily Press
Staff Reports

Rep. Paul Cook, R-Apple Valley, this week introduced HR 4313, the Historic Routes Preservation Act.

This bipartisan bill provides an administrative means for the federal government to confirm rights-of-way on public lands administered by the Departments of Interior and Agriculture. One of the only means a county has to confirm a right-of-way is to file a quiet title action in Federal District Court, an expensive and time-consuming process.

After 39 years, many county records have been lost, old maps have been thrown away and witnesses to many roads’ presence and use prior to 1976 are passing on. The Historic Routes Preservation Act solves this problem by creating an administrative process for counties to resolve these rights of way without going to court. It applies only to existing travel routes and does not create new roads on public lands.

How Ancient Native American Rock Art Is Tearing a California Town Apart

A display at the Petroglyph Festival that many Native Americans find disrespectful

By Barret Baumgart
VICE Media

I

At 1.2 million acres, Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake is the largest parcel of land owned by the US Navy. It fills an expanse of remote and rugged desert terrain bigger than Rhode Island; to the naked eye, there's not much going on inside. You might spend a whole day driving around the perimeter of the base and, notwithstanding an occasional low-flying F-16 fighter jet, never guess there was anything outside your window beyond barren volcanic tablelands, stands of brittle burrobush, and the occasional sidewinder rattlesnake.

What makes NAWS China Lake special—beyond being a secret test center for the world's most advanced weapons—is that inside a handful of its narrow lava canyons lies the largest concentration of Native American rock art in the Western Hemisphere. The images, carvings known as petroglyphs, are found throughout China Lake's Coso Range and are the oldest in the Americas. Archeologists have dated some of the images as far back as 15,000 to 19,000 years, and nobody has ever successfully counted them. A single canyon—Renegade Canyon, or as it's more commonly called, Little Petroglyph Canyon—may contain more than 1 million images of bighorn sheep, shamans, and abstract geometric symbols.

While archeologists have argued over the function of these and other figures for half a century, their original meanings largely remain a mystery. What nobody contests, however, is that the Coso Range was once one of the most spiritually important sites on the continent.

Some New Age types consider the Coso Range a "vortex"—a geographic location where harmonizing spiritual energy is supposedly highly concentrated. Examples of such places apparently include the Pyramids at Giza, Stonehenge, and the red rocks of Sedona, Arizona. Even if you don't put stock in such dubious concepts, being in the presence of such ancient and sacred symbols can be a powerful—and humbling—experience.

For decades, however, their location inside a military base dedicated to top-secret weapons testing meant that the only people who knew—or cared—about the petroglyphs were a handful of Native American tribes, professional archaeologists, and a subculture of Indian art geeks and New Age vision seekers. But Ridgecrest, California—the small desert town just outside the main gates of China Lake—is attempting to change that, and turn the petroglyphs into a full-fledged international tourist destination.

This effort has created a clash between competing economic and cultural interests. For many members of the Native American tribes throughout the region, the Coso Range and its petroglyphs are the most sacred things in the world, but some say that the sanctity and very survival of the artwork is threatened by Ridgecrest's attempt to cash in on the petroglyphs and sell itself as "California's newest cultural mecca"—the Petroglyph Capital of the World.

II

In 2014, Ridgecrest's then-mayor Dan Clark proposed an entire festival centered around the petroglyphs, describing it as a potential "economic engine" for the city of Ridgecrest. "The petroglyph festival will be our signature event," he told the LA Times. "We're going to saturate this community with representations of rock art." Denny Kline, a field officer for Mick Gleason, Kern County's District 1 Supervisor, told reporters, "It's going to be the city's 50th anniversary on steroids." Sponsors for the four-day festival included Coca-Cola, General Electric, NASA, the Ford Foundation, McDonald's, and Home Depot, among others.

A year later, the town remains committed to becoming the "American 'Machu Picchu,'" as a recent press release proclaimed. That release quoted Doug Lueck, the executive director of the Ridgecrest Area Convention and Visitor's Bureau (RACVB), as saying, "Not only is tourism up, we're also experiencing an upward trend in filming for movies and commercials as well." According to Leuck, the first annual Petroglyph Festival "had over 1,000 media impressions over television and radio" and sold out local hotels. Harris Brokke, the former director of Ridgecrest's Maturango Museum, told the local paper. "Not only is the festival successful, but when people come to the festival, they come back again and again, and that's our whole goal."

"Ridgecrest has tried to brand itself in a lot of different ways," a retired Navy veteran named Mike tells me. "There's no real tourism here. Most people either work on the base or the service industry that supports it."

We're standing in the parking lot of Ridgecrest's new $6 million tourist attraction, Petroglyph Park. House finches flit between palm trees and brown monoliths carved with depictions of bighorns, zigzags, and shamans; in the background traffic hums along China Lake Boulevard.

"The city tried the Balloon Festival two years in a row, but the winds were horrendous and just destroyed everything," Mike says. Ridgecrest also launched a spring Wildflower Festival, but given the reality of the California drought and the fact that Ridgecrest only gets a few inches of rain each year, the flowers didn't always show. "But the Petroglyph Festival is something that's uniquely Ridgecrest," Mike says.

Behind us, across the street, music booms from the stage at the center of the Balsam Street Fair, where 200 vendors have set up tents selling scented candles, foreign war memorabilia, and dreamcatchers made in China. It's the second annual Petroglyph Festival, a showcase for the best parts of the town held in November. Balsam Street functions as Ridgecrest's version of a downtown arts district. Elsewhere in the city, abandoned storefronts mingle with used furniture dealers; bail bonds shops sit in squat strip malls with asphalt that looks like it hasn't been repaved since the Vietnam War—but on Balsam Street you find a newly painted bighorn sheep or shaman on nearly every available wall. This is, without question, the Petroglyph Capital of the World.

The catch, however, is that historically it's been extremely difficult to see the actual petroglyphs of the Coso Range. According to the RACVB, 15,000 people traveled from over 50 countries for the 2014 Petroglyph Festival. But only around 40 American citizens who applied early and passed a federal background check were able to view the carvings inside the base. This year, though, an RACVB spokesperson tells me, the Navy had "agreed to forgo the vetting process" and let 500 people see the petroglyphs, including many non-Americans, who would normally be barred from entering the base at all.

Among them is a woman from Germany named Karin. She waited years for the opportunity to make a pilgrimage to the petroglyphs; during November's festival she finally did it. "Everything from the drive, the Joshua trees, the beauty of the mountains. The whole landscape was just magic. We saw wild horses," she tells me. "It's obvious why the petroglyphs are there." I ask if she learned anything. "Imagination," she replies. "Imagination is what you need."

Another woman, a Japanese citizen named Maiko, had been waiting nine years for the opportunity. "I'm actually a petroglyph freak. I go to all the sites. It's just attractive to me. I want to see the art. So I do the research on the internet. And then I go there and look for it."

Those whose love for petroglyphs burns less arduously make do with Petroglyph Park, where you can gaze at reproductions of the carvings and experience an Epcot version of the ancient etchings. City and county officials often emphasize the sacredness of the petroglyphs and the educational aspect of the attraction—"the concept of the park is to honor the Native American heritage of the Indian Wells Valley," says Denny Kline—or as Mayor Clark has said of the petroglyphs, "We can bring it to the public's attention what a national treasure they are and, hopefully, they will respect them."

But the park and the festival are unquestionably money-making affairs—the whole point is to draw in vendors and tourism dollars. And many aspects of the festival seem less interested in history and education than hustling and speculation.

I head over to the north end of Balsam Street, where Rod "The Buffalo Man" Blankenship—a Korean and Vietnam War Veteran, and "an Elder in the Cherokee Indian Nation"—is talking about the buffalo to a crowd inside the Old Town Theater. The animals were "a supermarket and hardware store," according to Blankenship, who punctuates his pronouncements with shakes of a ceremonial rattle made from dried buffalo scrotum. Toward the end of the talk, I raise my hand and ask him how important the buffalo was to the Native American tribes in the surrounding area, and he admits that the animals weren't out here in California. But maybe some of the petroglyphs depict buffalo?

"It's possible," he says. "You know what you'll see in some of those petroglyphs, though?" He pauses and seems to stare out above the audience, straight through the back of the auditorium at something unseen. "You'll see pictures of what you call,"—another pause—"aliens. They're pictures of space people. With big round heads. Oval heads."

Other lecturers in the festival's educational "Speakers' Series" include a local wilderness entrepreneur who runs private tours of petroglyph sites that aren't on Naval land—"If you're interested, we can talk prices later," he tells the audience—and an archeologist who also offers private tours. Both do so despite heavy discouragement by the federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM), which fears that if the locations of off-base petroglyph sites become widely known they'll be vandalized or stolen.

Outside the Old Town Theater, across Freedom Park, smoke billows up from the cookers stationed behind the Intertribal Powwow and Cherokee Hog Fry. The powwow has all the usual signifiers of Native American life: tepees, donkeys, women dressed in buckskin suits, men on folding chairs beating a large leather drum, vendors hawking dream catchers and geodes. The festival advertises the drummers, dancers, and vendors as members of the local Native American tribes, but the Cherokee have no ancestral ties to the land or the ancient peoples responsible for the petroglyphs.

"We didn't use tepees and we're not a powwow culture and we didn't eat pigs. They're teaching people that this is what the people looked like that were here," says Jonnie Benson, a member of the Lone Pine Paiute-Shoshone who adds that it's the "miseducation" of the community that is most upsetting. "They took a real touristy approach. Now we have all these people walking away after this weekend thinking, 'Oh, wow, I've learned all about the natives who live here,' when in fact they don't know shit. They learned the Hollywood story."

Down the street from the powwow sits another sore point for some local tribes: a plywood board painted with two shaman figures, their faces cutout to allow tourists to poke their heads through and smile for pictures.

"It's so offensive. Our ancestors put those marks on the rocks, whether people want to believe that or not. It's sacred to me, and to see it as basically a caricature, with people putting their faces in it—they don't know what those symbols mean," says Benson, who'd seen the pictures on Facebook. "I don't know how people would take it if there was a painting of Jesus up there and people were sticking their faces in it. Right? It just wouldn't be cool."

III

Though the Petroglyph Festival is based around the cheerful, corporate-ready commercialization of the Coso rock art, the petroglyphs themselves depict strange and often violent imagery. On nearly every cliff face of Renegade Canyon, you find not simply pictures of bighorn sheep, but bighorns etched in the throes of death, their bodies impaled with spears and torn by arrows.


The mood on petroglyph tours is, if not somber, generally one of quiet reverence. Tour guides do an especially good job just hanging back, allowing the art to sink into the group, and not pushing forth any interpretation. Though they do occasionally step in. I remember on my first tour of Renegade Canyon, a woman kept pointing out the strange round-headed humanoids carved in the walls, and saying, "Look, an alien wearing a space helmet," or, "Look, an alien with a cell phone."

"Archeologists call those 'patterned body anthropomorphs,'" a guide eventually told her, adding that the art was still sacred to the tribes throughout the region, and it was disrespectful to infantilize the art of their ancestors in such a way.

When the festival isn't happening, normal tours of Renegade Canyon, arranged through the Maturango Museum in Ridgecrest, take 20 people on select weekend dates determined by the military during the fall and spring months. The Navy makes you sign a form that releases them from responsibility should you break a leg or catch a stray bomb, and the background checks conducted by the military usually take two to three weeks. The tours cost $40 and nearly ever one sells out. Excluding the festival, only about 800 people make it in to see the art each year.

In many ways the tours seem like a routine trail walk. People park in a dusty lot, tightening their boots and backpacks while guides take a headcount. In the distance below, the black gash of Renegade Canyon cuts west across the wide desert terrace, its exit at the lower ridge too far off to see.

A trail winds out through the fragrant burrobush, sage, and creosote, out from the edge of the dirt lot to the rim of the canyon, where it drops down through a steep side wash. Below, bright lichens cover the brown walls of the canyon, but you can't see anything yet. Guides remind you to watch your step as gravel crunches underfoot. Sunlight burns against your back, painting your blue outlines as you file forward and the walls narrow and voices hush. A carpet of soft sand covers the canyon floor. Like children sneaking into some forbidden sanctuary, everyone keeps trading excited and worried glances, scanning for the first petroglyph—but there's only the vast silence of the canyon, impenetrable as the rock walls closing you in. You glance back. Faraway, along the eastern horizon, a pair of perfectly formed volcanic domes lay like soft breasts tanning in the morning sun.

Then, without a word, the digital camera shutters start clicking. Up ahead, a dozen people stand aiming at the rock wall, while others crouch and kneel, jostling for position. Five pale shoe-sized sheep engravings cover the dark basalt. Geometric designs wrap around the periphery. A man crawls up for a closeup and one of the guides tells him that it's close enough: "Everyone, please keep back at least two feet from the petroglyphs." People keep vying for position, standing on their toes with cameras raised, as though the tiny darting sheep were actually alive, actually running away, fleeing the hungry tourist photographs.

Just minutes later, this initial flurry of photography seems absurd. The canyon contains more petroglyphs than any camera eye or human memory can record. By the time most people reach the cliff at the end of the canyon, they've stopped taking pictures, stopped talking altogether—they just sit and stare off into the expanse below.

The cumulative effect of the canyon is hard to describe. It's not something you can get from simply looking at a few panels of petroglyphs. You have to spend the whole day walking the canyon's entire length to let the images wash over you. Not everyone who takes the tour hikes the mile and a half down to the end—some people only go halfway and then return to the shaded picnic table beside the parking lot. You cannot get this cumulative effect if you turn back. Nor can you get it from other petroglyph sites off base or the tours during the Petroglyph Festival, which only spend an hour at the canyon's entrance.

Everyone's experience differs, I'm sure. For me, an initial impression, if there ever was one, that the petroglyphs resembled something inspirational or alien faded away the further I walked down the canyon. It was replaced by a sense of awe at the sheer number of etchings, which in turn gave rise to a sensation of mild dread when I realized that they all mostly depict the same image—bighorn sheep.

And as you continue to wander down the length of the narrow lava canyon, despite the open sky, the clean desert light, and the quiet conversation of the people around you, a feeling of claustrophobia begins to assert itself. And the further you venture, the more the canyon narrows, and the more pictures you pass, the deeper this feeling extends, until you come to understand that you've entered a place that is not your home, gawked at pictures not made for your enjoyment, photographed panels of bighorn sheep never made for pleasure but rather in pain, ripped out from the walls by desperate men with bloody fingers over so many lonely millennia, and once you reach the end of the canyon and see how many times that single intentional image occurred, a final conclusion presents itself: Something went wrong here.

IV

No one knows for certain what the rocks record. But they have been perfectly preserved thanks to airtight military security. Even the tribes who revere the rock art of the Cosos have to jump through hoops to pay their respects.

"The sites still have their power but we can't use them properly; we have to be escorted and they watch us down at the hot springs and it's very irritating," says Kathy Bancroft, the Cultural Officer for the Lone Pine Paiute-Shoshone.

"At this point in the journey," says Jodie Benson, "I'm just grateful that the art is out there on Navy land, and not just anybody can go out there."

Not all the petroglyphs are on land protected by the military, however, and as the art has become more famous, Native Americans and archaeologists worry about people damaging other unprotected sites or stealing the petroglyphs right off the walls. The worst case of vandalism occurred not long before the first annual Ridgecrest Petroglyph Festival, in an area north of the Cosos. In a matter of hours, looters wielding power saws, electric generators, and ladders managed to steal a handful of petroglyphs that had survived thousands of years of natural erosion.

"Anybody could have driven out on top of them, there would have been a dust cloud," Greg Haverstock, an archaeologist at the Bureau of Land Management, tells me. "These people were extremely bold." The event was the worst case of vandalism ever seen on the nearly 1 million acres of public land managed by Haverstock's BLM office.

Though multiple people I talked to say that cases of vandalism were on the rise, there was some disagreement about the cause. Donald Storm, another BLM archaeologist, says that China Lake's severely restricted access is a problem—if people can't enter the base they might go looking for petroglyphs on unprotected land. "If they're out in the public domain, damage is more likely because these sites are hard to control," he says.

Bob Robinson, the Tribal Historic Preservation Officer of the Kern Valley Indian Council, thinks that the festival is not helping to reduce the destruction. "As it is we have enough problems with sites being vandalized without all the promotion of the festival." Robinson says that tourists need to know that the petroglyphs are not doodles on rocks, but put there for a reason, and they're part of a living ongoing culture that is here today: "People need to understand that they're sacred and they need to be treated with respect." According to Robinson, this is the "education part that I hope will be there at the festival, and not this thing of creating this whole New Age story around aliens putting them there."

But Robinson isn't very optimistic. He describes the festival as "commercial exploitation. They're turning it into a Roswell bullshit."

This, ultimately, is the dividing line between Ridgecrest and some local Native Americans, who see the festival not just as a commercialization of their culture but something that could literally fuel the destruction of their sacred symbols.

"The worst thing about it is the town of Ridgecrest," says Kathy Bancroft. "They want to be the petroglyph capital of the world. I heard that on the local radio station and I thought, Who said they should do that? " Bancroft says it's incredibly disrespectful for the festival to be promoting the petroglyphs with vandalism on the rise.

On this point, everyone agrees: Protecting the petroglyphs is the most important thing. "The only way that the petroglyphs will continue to be here for a very long time is by protecting them and respecting them," says Debbie Benson, the current director of the Maturango Museum, which organizes tours of Renegade Canyon. "Not all petroglyphs are on the base. If people are harming them and don't understand them and not respecting them, they will not last."

Some of the materials in Petroglyph Park are of dubious educational value, however. One large engraving near the entrance is entirely unlike any of the actual petroglyphs; when I asked archaeologists about it they said they had never laid eyes anything like it. "I can honestly say I've never seen an image in rock art that resembled that even closely," Greg Haverstock said. "I look at that and I think 1950s sci-fi aliens."

The particular stand of petroglyphs is labeled "Shamanic Visions or Alien Visitors." The placard in front of it pays lip service to the popular New Age concept—promoted by Erich von Däniken's 1967 bestseller Chariots of the Gods—that many rock art images throughout the world portray aliens who visited earth, planted the seeds of consciousness in primitive humanity, and made possible all the cultural achievements of ancient man. This notion has been criticized for minimizing the actual artistic achievements of indigenous people and for simply being shoddy history. "That writing as careless as von Däniken's," Carl Sagan wrote in 1976, "whose principal thesis is that our ancestors were dummies, should be so popular is a sober commentary on the credulousness and despair of our times."

V

As it stands now, the tribes have no interest in participating in the Petroglyph Festival. None of the Native Americans I spoke to had ever attended it, and some, like Bob Robinson, openly condemned it. "They're just cashing in on something sacred. They're selling it. And I don't want any part," he says. "We don't want to participate because of the money."

Kathy Bancroft says that Ridgecrest never even approached her tribe about the festival. All they did was send advertisements. "If I really felt they cared and wanted to do it right maybe I'd participate," Bancroft says. "They've taken something sacred and spiritual and created a stereotype, a team mascot for the city of Ridgecrest, and it makes me sick."

Some Native Americans I spoke with emphasize that a festival that educated the public about the petroglyphs could be beneficial, if it made people more aware of the sacred nature of the rock carvings and the history behind them. Barbara Dutton, a member of the Death Valley Timbisha-Shoshone, tells me the festival was "a good opportunity for educating the general public about how important these sites are to the native people." But Dutton did admit, "I don't know what kind of information they have out there."

Given the information I encountered there, the Petroglyph Festival appears to have little interest in educating the public about the sacred nature of the rock art or the history behind it—which is truly a shame.

The petroglyphs at China Lake can be interpreted many ways. I prefer an explanation offered by archeologist David Whitley, who thinks that the Coso Range was once the central pilgrimage point for rainmaking shaman throughout the Great Basin.

"The images should not be interpreted in a literal sense," Whitley says. The petroglyphs represent not literal hunting scenes but rather "graphic expressions of the visions of rain shamans that, themselves, were metaphors for the rain shaman's supernatural control over the weather." The images of mutilated bighorns represent prayers for rain, not bighorns, according to Whitley.

As anyone who has lived through California's ongoing drought knows, we still pray for rain, though we do it in different ways. It was in China Lake where the military crafted the rain-making technology of "cloud seeding," which was deployed during the Vietnam War in an attempt to flood the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Today the technique, which involves shooting particles into clouds to form ice crystals, is used across the American West, including California, to ward off drought. It isn't clear, however, that cloud seeding is any better at bringing rain than carving bighorns into the sides of rocks.

If you go to the Ridgecrest Petroglyph Festival, or if you visit the rock art of the Coso Range, don't approach the art lightly. Don't dismiss its creators as being primitive, or assume they needed to be influenced by UFOs in order to make their art. Think about their world, plagued with uncertainty, their struggles to scratch out lives against the harshness of the Mojave Desert. And think about the uncertainties of our own world today—the reality of global climate change and a perpetual war on terror. Remember that at China Lake, while the military continues to protect the traces of past man, in the same breath, in the same location, they continue to perfect the art of erasing him from the present.

And if you have a chance, take a look some of the most impressive petroglyphs, the rare ones depicting the skinny men riding strange animals, the white men arriving—the aliens. Ask yourself: Who will last longer—us or the petroglyphs?

How one man plans to make billions selling Mojave desert water

Scott Slater wants to pump billions of gallons to LA and other drought-hit cities - and make $2.4bn in the process

Scott Slater’s Cadiz Inc plans to tap the eastern Mojave aquifer of water he says would otherwise evaporate. (Cadiz Inc.)

Rupert Neate
The Guardian

Scott Slater has a plan. It is not a popular plan, but he wants to pump 814bn gallons of water from under the Mojave desert to Los Angeles and other drought-stricken communities in southern California, and make more than $2bn (£1.3bn) doing so.

“Yes, it’s quite a lot of money,” Slater, the 57-year-old chief executive of Cadiz Inc, says as he stands in front of a scale model of the project in the foyer of the company’s office on the 28th and top floor of a LA city center office block. “It’s worth whatever the community who wants the water is willing to pay for it to meet their demands.”

Cadiz owns water rights associated with 45,000 acres of land along Route 66, about 75 miles north-east of Palm Springs. The holdings were built up by the company’s founder, Keith Brackpool, a British horseracing impresario, who came to the US after admitting having breached financial disclosure laws in the UK in the 1980s.

The company biggest investors, some of whom have been waiting for Cadiz’s water to flow to LA for more than a decade, include the New York hedge fund Water Asset Management and Crispin Odey’s Odey Asset Management in London.

Slater has already got contracts to sell the water for $960 an acre ft (the amount of water it takes to cover an acre of land in a foot of water). That works out at $2.4bn over the 50 years of the company’s water extraction deal with San Bernardino County. His problem, however, is convincing politicians, regulators and the public that pumping water 200 miles from the desert aquifer to LA is a good idea.

Scott Slater, CEO Cadiz Inc

“People see this development as a private sector initiative and they have a very visceral, negative reaction to that,” Slater says.

The price of water in California has been steadily rising, as has demand from a growing population, while the state struggles with four years of severe drought. Slater says water is worth as much as $2,200 an acre ft in San Diego, where it is shortest supply. A decade ago the price was less than $100, he says.

Drought is good news for Slater and Cadiz. “In a condition of scarcity, all water, all water that’s reliable, becomes more valuable,” Slater says. The company’s share price spikes every time a drought emergency is declared, but the shares have still lost more than 80% of their value since 2007 because of repeated regulatory setbacks in Cadiz’s quest to tap the eastern Mojave aquifer.

In the latest setback, the US Bureau of Land Management (BLM) ruled that the company cannot lay a 43-mile pipeline alongside an existing railway line to transport water to the Colorado river aqueduct and on to the cities of the Californian coast. It means Cadiz will have to seek federal approval for the pipeline, which will trigger a long and expensive environmental impact review.

Slater, who was a water rights lawyer for 30 years before taking over as Cadiz’s CEO in 2013, is not giving up on the railway pipeline without a fight. He accuses the BLM of misinterpreting 19th century railway law, and says: “If we can’t get them to follow the law, we’ll do what we need to do, pursue administrative and judicial remedies.”

He says the logistics of the project are pretty simple, and that the company could start pumping enough water to supply 400,000 people by 2017. “I know it will work,” he says, dressed in an purple open-collar Burberry shirt and jeans.

Cadiz has plenty of enemies - environmentalists, local ranchers, protectionists and Native American tribes - but none more fierce than Senator Dianne Feinstein.

“I remain concerned the Cadiz project could damage the Mojave desert beyond repair and believe the BLM decision to deny the right of way is the right one,” said the veteran Democrat, who in 1994 help create the Mojave national preserve. She believes it could be threatened by the Cadiz project. “The bottom line is that right now we need more responsibility in how we use our water, not less.”

David Lamfrom, the director of the National Parks Conservation Association’s California desert and wildlife program, said he believed that “full examination of the Cadiz Inc proposal will once again prove that it is unsustainable and that it will harm our desert national parks, communities, businesses, and wildlife”.

Slater says his plan is environmentally “benign” and will conserve water that at present is lost from the aquifer via evaporation from dry lakes. He says the 50,000 acre ft of water a year the company would extract would “otherwise evaporate, which is far more of a waste than people drinking it”.

“None of the water we are going to take fell on the earth in the last 100 years. This is millennial water. It takes centuries from the water falling at the upper end of our watershed and then follow a migratory path to down where we are,” he says.

“Our project hypothesis is that we construct a well field here,” he says, pointing at a point on the scale model. “And intercept the water as it goes down the hill before it can become hyper-saline and evaporates. We are substituting our wells for the natural evaporation process that sends the water into the atmosphere and wastes it.”

In addition to environmental concerns, others object to a private company being able to make billions from water. Slater says they do not understand the law, which in California states no entity can own water but they can buy, sell and trade the right to use it.

“There are people that think water is a human right and confuse privatization with the right to get water under economic terms,” Slater says.

“This is the United States of America and we have private property here. This is not a communist country. We own land, and land use is an attribute of property ownership,” he says. “Food doesn’t stay on the farm it was grown on. We share our food, we share our energy, we share our oil and gas. I can sell land to anybody. Why would I treat water any differently?

“The use of water is owned. It’s not like someone is calling up God and saying ‘make it rain’. It is sold as a right, just like you sell a house.”

Old West lives on at Pioneertown

What started as an Old West movie set built in the 1940s, Pioneertown still lives on as a getaway that recalls those days. (Photo by Trevor Summons)

By Trevor Summons
Inland Valley Daily Bulletin

One of the few places that never seems to change is the small Western town of Pioneertown, or Pi’ Town as many of the locals call it.

A walk down Mane Street — only hoof and foot traffic allowed — is always interesting. If the original builders of the town were to come back they would feel right at home.

Some of these builders were the stars of the old Western movies, Roy Rogers and Gene Autry. They decided to convert the sets of their films into overnight dwellings and then they put in a small 18-room motel where they could stay after a day’s shooting out in the hot sun.

The six-lane bowling barn is still there, but it’s not functioning at the moment. It’s been up for sale a few times but it’s hard to find many takers; it’s difficult to make money from occasional bowlers.

It’s a shame as the bowling alley is an original — Roy Rogers bowled the first ball back in 1947 and it was a strike (of course!) A decade later school boys and girls were replaced with automatic pin setters, but then gradually business fell off.

At the end of Mane Street, sits Pappy and Harriet’s Pioneertown Palace, which is a thriving bar and restaurant business with regular concerts on the weekends. Its outside walls were some of the original sets used in those early films.

Today, during the daytime, you will find lots of horse trailers unloaded as today’s modern cowboys trail their mounts over the impressive terrain. It was this scenery that attracted Rogers and Autry to film so many movies and early TV series here.

Often at night they would gather in the motel, at the rear of Pappy and Harriet’s, play cards and carouse around. Room No. 9 became known as Club Nine for the fun they had there.

Last time I was there, I met up with John Jeffries who with his partner, Gary Suppes, makes saddles and other leather goods. As I walked along in the center of town he was there again. It was good to see him.

He is one of about 400 who make up the permanent population of the town. Of course that is not just Mane Street, but several blocks on either side.

“We’ve had a very good summer,” he said. “Lots of buses with foreign tourists from all over the world.”

It was a Thursday in late October when I was there, and it was pretty quiet at that time.

“At the weekend, things begin to build up,” Jeffries continued.

They do a lot of weddings, he told me.

“We offer a particular service,” he said. “For a $50 fee, we’ll try and talk ’em out of it!” he laughed into his grizzled beard. “We haven’t had any takers yet. But it might save them a lot of money later on.”

I can never quite work out exactly how many people live on the main street there, as there are a number of places with obvious signs of habitation. Perhaps there is a resident of the shop that sells Soap and Goats, but I never saw anyone about, not even a goat.

Pioneertown is a fun place to visit, and if you want to stay over like the old movie stars, then go online to the motel and see if they’ve got room. Prices vary from $110 to $210 per night. And if you’re thinking of getting hitched, then maybe a visit to the saddle maker might be an idea first.

Holes in the Desert: A Mojave Crime Compendium

The McStay family memorial site located northwest of Victorville, CA. Traffic on the I-15 can be seen in the distance. | Photo: Kim Stringfellow.

Kim Stringfellow
KCET.org

The Mojave Project is an experimental transmedia documentary by Kim Stringfellow exploring the physical, geological and cultural landscape of the Mojave Desert. The Mojave Project reconsiders and establishes multiple ways in which to interpret this unique and complex landscape, through association and connection of seemingly unrelated sites, themes, and subjects thus creating a speculative and immersive experience for its audience.

It is a moonless night and the distant sound of rattling train cars is punctuated by the high pitched grinding of metal as multiple engines begin their push up past the Kelso Depot. Centered in the vast, federally designated region known as Mojave National Preserve (MNP) bordered by the I-40, the I-15 and the Nevada state line, it was here that the familiar lore of the Wild West played out 21st century style. Nighttime train robberies occurred on a regular basis. Notably, far bleaker criminal acts have transpired along the MNP's transient periphery or within other publicly administered lands of the Mojave Desert.

I first read about the Union Pacific train robberies in the MNP through a 1998 article by Phil Garlington of Rancho Costa Nada fame. Garlington had laid out the vivid details of criminal exploits and those who attempted to thwart them, relating how mile-long, double-stacked freight cars burdened with consumer goods and merchandise would fall prey to looters within the remote center of the preserve.

The thieves -- mostly homeless, down-and-out types hired by gangs who had stowed away earlier in the day at the Yermo yards would lie in wait for hours inside car "tubs" until the train began the steep ascent up the 18-mile-long Cima Grade just east of the depot. Those able to escape detection by Union Pacific officials and the assisting MNP rangers infiltrated and "liberated" the contents of the boxcars using hacksaws, bolt cutters and other tools of the trade. The slow-moving trains with their potentially lucrative hauls provided easy pickings for the interlopers who were lucky if they did not get seriously injured in the process.

At pre-arranged geographical points, the bandits tossed out the goods where their accomplices waited in rented moving trucks ready to load up the booty -- expensive electronics, Nikes, cigarettes, booze, or, if they were particularly unlucky, a boxcar filled with teddy bears. Scattered clothing, empty packaging and other discarded debris were regularly found strewn along the rail lines. By the late 1990s the railroad had estimated that it was losing over a million dollars a month from MNP lootings.

A rather amusing related incident shared in a 2008 Los Angeles Times article noted that "75 flat-screen TVs worth more than $225,000" had been spotted during a 2005 aerial search of the area after MNP law enforcement rangers had run into two men sitting in an empty rental moving truck near a rail crossing on a desolate stretch of road. Fumbling under the influence of alcohol, the duo couldn't explain why they were there or how a bag of suspicious white powder happened to be lying within a few feet of their vehicle. The two were consequently arrested. The powder was determined to be cocaine -- possibly a down payment for the botched flat screen heist? With heightened security over the past years since this incident was reported, Union Pacific has managed to crack down and curtail these types of robberies.

Although the majority of visitors passing through the MNP do so without incident, others have sought this "nowhere between two somewheres"1 as an isolated, out-of-the-way destination to conduct a variety of illicit activities including methamphetamine production, wildlife poaching, theft, vandalism, illegal dumping, OHV trespass or the unlawful collection of animals, plants and cultural artifacts.

In years past, MNP rangers have discovered detritus and the lingering residues of a methamphetamine "cook" at abandoned ranch and mine structures within the preserve. Empty pseudoephedrine containers (over-the-counter sales of which are now controlled), lye, red phosphorus -- all highly toxic chemicals and materials associated with clandestine meth production -- have been found among contaminated meth production equipment.

Makeshift meth labs were discovered in 1998 at Rainbow Wells and in 2001 at the New Trail Mine after two rangers found new locks on formally abandoned outbuildings during a routine patrol. When the rangers returned to the mine on the following day they encountered four suspicious men driving away in a pickup. Following a search of their vehicle by the rangers, the men produced keys for the padlocks of park holdings that they had legal access to. The ensuing investigation yielded "ten gallons of pure methamphetamine oil, valued at more than $50,000," that had been waiting to be crystallized. The site cost taxpayers $20,000 to clean up.2

Compounding the ecological ramifications of introducing these toxic chemicals into a wilderness environment is the fact that illicit drug manufacturers and their associates are known to be heavily armed and more than often high on their product, making an encounter by a ranger or unsuspecting recreationist extremely dangerous. The limited number of National Park Service (NPS) law enforcement rangers known to patrol the 1.6 million acres of the preserve has made regular monitoring of these types of remote sites difficult. Fortunately, evidence of this type of methamphetamine production within the preserve has not been observed in recent years, a status largely attributed to the ability of meth cooks to make smaller, cheaper "shake and bake" batches using a two-liter plastic soda bottle rather than the complicated chemistry lab setup of the past.

Over 500,000 vehicles travel through the MNP annually. Many come here specifically to recreate, but others simply use its paved thoroughfares -- the Kelbaker and Kelso-Cima roads -- as a convenient, uncongested shortcut route to Vegas from points further north or south. Speeding over the 55 mph speed limit, which is still higher than most national parks, results in one of the more commonly cited infractions by law enforcement. Close proximity of the two major interstates and an expanse of perceived "nothingness" seems to encourage other kinds of criminal activity, including toxic waste dumping along the preserve's more accessible borders.

Over a four-month period in 1995, the LeFaves -- a father and son duo with a Las Vegas-based epoxy manufacturing business -- dumped 97 drums of hazardous waste across a variety of public and private sites near Nipton Road to avoid paying the $1,000 per barrel cost to legally dispose the toxic chemicals and adhesives. Barrels split open in washes, mortally trapping animals in a sticky residue. After 17-year-old Louis LeFave and his accomplice were caught red-handed on one of their toxic waste runs, the LeFaves were arrested and eventually sentenced, with the father, Gene, receiving four years in prison plus $40,000 in fines. This fiasco cost taxpayers $170,000 to clean up the dumpsites.3

Other criminal activities occurring here involve the unlawful collection of plants and animals -- cited in as far as cash value as the second most lucrative illegal activity occurring within public lands after illicit drug production and smuggling activities. A federal investigation called "Operation Sweet Success" led by the U.S. Department of the Interior was launched in the late 1990s in an effort to combat the illegal collection of biznaga or barrel cactus by "an organized group of Hispanic workers" who sold them to competing production facilities in Los Angeles which, in turn, produced acitrón from its pulp, a jellied confectionery popular in Mexico.4 Officials estimated that collectors removed over 15,000 mature barrel cacti during the 1990s from federally managed lands for this purpose. Other cacti, including rare species belonging to the genera Mammillaria, Echinomastus or Sclerocactus -- commonly known as the delicate Fishhook cactus -- have been so extensively pilfered as ornamental specimens in some parts of the Mojave that they have nearly disappeared from their native regions entirely.

Wildlife poachers snatch, trap or hunt a variety of mammals and reptiles throughout desert public lands, including the region's more uncommon snakes, lizards, and even the federally protected desert tortoise. The perpetrators range from over-zealous solitary hobbyists to organized commercial wholesalers that traffic specimens locally for profit or internationally to smuggler rings that trade live and dead animals parts at black markets worldwide. "Collectors can make $2,000 a night driving the desert highways, picking up reptiles lying on the pavement, then selling the animals to the illicit pet trade."5 A 1986 report from California Fish and Game stated that bighorn sheep guides leading illegal hunts were, at the time, pocketing between $15,000 to $60,000 per hunt for their services.6

These illicit enterprises are not unique to the MNP. Over a five-year period during the mid-1980s, Joshua Tree National Park officials located 21 meth labs along the park's remote eastern border, some housed in abandoned 1950s era "jackrabbit homesteads."7 In the 1990s, a lone ranger on foot discovered a large-scale outdoor meth "cook" run by camping outlaw bikers in a secluded box canyon of southern Death Valley National Park (DVNP). Although the ranger somehow escaped unharmed from his close encounter, in the aftermath, several of the rangers closely involved with the bust were transferred out of the area for protection -- one under an assumed name due to retributive threats posed by the biker gang.

Death Valley will be forever linked to the Manson Family who occupied both Barker and Myers ranches located in the Panamint Range, now part of DVNP, over a two-year period during the late 1960s. The Family first moved out to these isolated ranch properties in 1968, initially Myers and then Barker Ranch, after Catherine Gillies, one of the Manson "girls" and also a granddaughter of Myers, suggested it as a secluded and fairly inaccessible place for the group to hide out. It has been proposed by various authors that Arlene Barker agreed to let them stay at Barker Ranch after Manson gave her a Beach Boys gold record supposedly stolen from Dennis Wilson's home.

During 1968 and 1969, The Family intermittently occupied the properties -- fleeing here after the Tate-LaBianca murders took place in August 1969 -- until their tenure was ended during a routine two-day police raid in October 1969 for suspected auto theft and arson after a NPS bulldozer was found torched in nearby Racetrack Valley. Consequently, local law enforcement targeted the ragtag group as possible suspects. At the very end of the raid, the 5 feet 2 inches Manson was found stuffed and cowering in a bathroom cabinet. Although arrested that same day, Manson's captors were unaware that they had an infamous psychopathic cult leader in their custody -- who had recently persuaded his followers to commit multiple murders on his behalf. Thirty years later detectives would return to Barker Ranch in 2008 to investigate a tip implying that several undiscovered bodies had been buried there. The consequent investigation yielded no human remains. Barker Ranch fell victim to arson in May 2009 and only the structure's stonewalls and one outbuilding remain standing.

In March of 2000, Death Valley was the scene of a two-day hunt for a heavily armed threesome including a middle-aged man, his girlfriend and the man's son who had robbed a Nevada bank and had holed up in a ravine not too far from the Furnace Creek airport. Eventually the suspects surrendered but not after having shot and forced a CHP helicopter to crash land during the first day of the ordeal.

Illegal marijuana growing operations sited on publicly managed desert lands comprise much of the most recent illegal drug production related offenses. Pot growers prefer to use government land not only for its perceived isolation, but "because... asset-forfeiture laws which allow the seizure of private property associated with the growing operations"8 are avoided by siting them within public land or park boundaries and living elsewhere.

Recent multi-agency busts such as "Operation Mountain Sweep" targeted and successfully destroyed a number of illegal grows in public lands across seven western states in 2012, including one located in DVNP. The toll on the environment resulting from these operations is costly -- both financially and impactfully -- to flora and fauna, especially in lieu of the current drought since marijuana cultivation requires profuse amounts of water, pesticides and fertilizers to thrive and produce. Growers additionally "contaminate and alter watersheds, clear-cut native vegetation, discard garbage and non-biodegradable materials at deserted sites, create wildfire hazards, and divert natural water courses."9 The cost to police, clean up and remediate these sites end up costing taxpayers of millions of dollars annually.

Of course, Bureau of Land Management (BLM) law enforcement deal with their share of crime in areas they oversee including but not limited to "mineral resource theft; wilderness area violations; hazardous materials dumping; archaeological and paleontological resource theft and vandalism; cultivation, manufacture, smuggling, and use of illegal drugs; timber, forest product, and native plant theft; off-highway vehicle use; alcohol related crimes; and wildland arson." Like their NPS counterparts, BLM's Barstow officials agree that the more elaborate meth lab setups utilizing abandoned structures are less of a threat due to the more portable production techniques used today. BLM rangers patrolling the higher elevations of the Mojave Desert are more likely to stumble upon an illegal marijuana cultivation operation, like one recently discovered in a mountainous desert canyon off California State Routes 14 and 178 east of Ridgecrest where 1,000 pot plants were confiscated and destroyed.10

One of the more mundane but increasingly costly issues facing the BLM is the identification and clean-up of those who illegally dump hazardous or nonhazardous wastes including spent motor oil, paint, unidentified toxic chemicals, tires, dead animals, abandoned vehicles, household trash and other refuse into the open desert. So far in 2015, the BLM's California Desert District's Hazardous Materials Program has removed over 55 tons of trash throughout the Mojave Desert costing around $100,000 annually. Defunct mining operations and other abandoned industrial enterprises continue to litter and pollute the surrounding desert with toxic tailings that can potentially seep and contaminate groundwater resources. Discarded heavy equipment that is "scrapped" illegally often releases fuel, toxic chemicals and leaves the site in a dangerous condition after the pilferers take what they are after and leave unwanted refuse exposed. But dumping in the desert truly takes on a far more sinister twist when it comes to getting rid of human remains.

Countless cinematic and literary depictions echo Joe Pesci's infamous "Casino" voiceover to suggest that casual acts of violence are taking place at any given time in the fictionalized backdrop of the Mojave Desert. Reflecting on this sentiment, I decided to see whether or not this imagined culture of violence actually exists here in the desert. I began by contacting Sergeant Don Lupear, a homicide detective for San Bernardino County whose jurisdiction covers the largest part of the Mojave Desert policed by any law enforcement agency within its boundaries.

During a phone conversation, I asked Lupear how many homicide victims are actually found in the Mojave. Somewhat surprisingly, he replied, "On average we only find one or two per year," commenting further that recreationists are most likely to find a murder victim in the open desert. He additionally mentioned that victims and their perpetrators are, in most cases, tied somehow to the location were the body is found. Hikers stumble upon the deceased occasionally, but more often than not bodies are discovered by off-highway vehicle (OHV) enthusiasts near a road of some kind. Consider that much of the Mojave Desert is within three miles of some type of thoroughfare, it is easy to imagine how one could go about such a repugnant task if deemed necessary.11 The reason is obvious -- the deceased are dead weight so the quickest to dispose of a "package" is to transport the body to a somewhat secluded spot via a vehicle. On occasion, evidence suggests that the deceased are "dispatched" where originally found. In most cases, however, investigators determine that the unfortunate victim was slain elsewhere and transported to the spot with the body dumped, bagged, buried, burned or disposed of in some combination thereof.

On November 13, 2013, partially unearthed human remains were discovered by a recreating dirtbike rider just off Quarry Road in an OHV recreation area just northeast of Victorville, CA. This grim discovery, a mere stone's throw from the heavily traveled Interstate-15, was later confirmed to be the missing McStay family of four. The couple along with their two young sons had mysteriously vanished without of a trace on February 4, 2010 from their home in Fallbrook, California some 100 miles south of where the slain family had been hastily buried. It seems that Chase Merritt, the former business partner of Joseph McStay who is accused and currently awaiting trial for this heinous and callous murder, has ties with the town of Apple Valley, the next town over from the crime scene. This case, along with others confirm that the Mojave Desert's high-speed vehicular corridors bordering the MNP and other publicly managed areas have indeed served as a convenient, out-of-the-way place to get rid of an unwanted body.

Over the past 15 years, several grisly discoveries have been found along or near the I-15 or the I-40 between Barstow and the Nevada state line including 19-year-old Jodi Brewer, a sex worker who had disappeared from Las Vegas in August 2003. Brewer's torso -- found along the preserve's Cima Road off-ramp entry point a few weeks after she first disappeared -- was identified by her tattoos, a hummingbird above her left breast and an "M" with a star on her lower back. No other body parts were recovered. Her murder has since been connected to suspected serial killer Neal Falls who was shot and killed in July 2015 by another potential victim in West Virginia.

A wayward beagle from Newberry Springs rummaging along the I-40 returned to its owner with a severed human foot with a stub of a leg in September 2012. The sheriff's search of the highway revealed additional human remains, triggering a murder investigation. The burnt skeletal remains of an unidentified female victim were found in 2010 off Zzyzx Road, west of the I-15 near Baker, CA. That same year the severed head of an unknown Hispanic teenage girl thought to be between 14 and 19 years old was found concealed in a backpack left on Lenwood Road, west of the I-15 in Barstow, CA.

Another unidentified female referred to as the "Nipton Jane Doe" was found on May 30, 1976 in an abandoned mine on Clark Mountain near Nipton, CA, located at the northeastern edge of the preserve near the Nevada border. The cause of death was a shotgun blast to the back of the victim's head. Her body had been discarded like a worn ragdoll in a dank mineshaft and the time of her death was estimated to have been four to six days earlier. The National Unidentified Persons Data System (NamUs) case file number 47426 noted that she had "reddish-brown hair [and] was found clad only in a blue and white bathing suit."

Studying the full-color digital reconstruction of her and other unfortunate victims like her, I was struck by how the images borrow the compositional conventions of a Renaissance portrait -- in that the murder victim is pictured with a symbolic landscape behind them like so many portraits of noblemen and woman of this period. In the Nipton representation, an endless expanse of creosote reaching into the far distance is the imagined place where this "Jane Doe" purportedly met her fate. What resounds most is that loved ones or even acquaintances have not bothered to identify this Jane Doe, or others like her, a sad fact that left me in a state of despondency and emptiness.

Not all unidentified victims have met violent ends. Human remains in various stages of decomposition have been found over the years in other out-of-the-way locations and are not necessarily the result of foul play. Ancient sun-bleached bones of long-deceased Native Americans turn up quite often, as do those of unwary recreationists or a down-on-their-luck undocumented transnational that has succumbed to either daytime's relentless heat or the near-freezing chill of the nighttime desert. It should be noted that of the four unidentified human remains discovered in San Bernardino County in 2010 all were found in outlying areas of the Mojave Desert.

Still, without a doubt the Mojave has witnessed some truly bizarre and senseless acts over the years. Consider the 2012 kidnapping, torture and attempted extortion of a successful Orange County marijuana dispensary owner and his female housemate, left tied up together at a secluded desert location off California State Route 14. A Kern County deputy found the woman wandering the desert after she managed to escape. The four suspects charged and currently awaiting trial for the crime allegedly beat, burned and doused the man with bleach in an effort to cover DNA evidence before severing his penis. Somehow, the poor fellow managed to survive his ordeal. Officials stated that the group's motive revolved around their obsessed notion that the targeted gentleman had been "burying piles of cash in the desert," which they had planned to retrieve -- a tired cinematic cliché reworked in many B-rated films, television shows, video games and other paltry fictions.

"Senseless violence, the world calls it, but the Mojave knows otherwise. The Mojave knows, has always known, that the violence is not senseless, the disturbing acts that unfold on its sandy stage in fact make perfect sense. For that is the very nature of the place, to convey meaning, to show events in living color on a giant screen in bas-relief, to make it seem as if everything is happening for the first time, even if for some, it is the last, or simply the latest in an endless spiral of repetitive, nowhere acts."
-- Deanne Stillman, "Twentynine Palms" (2008)

Los Angeles-based author Deanne Stillman has received numerous accolades and awards for her meticulous location-based nonfiction exposés detailing true crime in the Mojave and the Great Basin deserts. The extreme arid geographies of the American Southwest take on starring roles with each prominently featured in her three most recent books including "Desert Reckoning: A Town Sheriff, a Mojave Hermit, and the Biggest Manhunt in Modern California History" (2012), "Mustang: The Saga of the Wild Horse in the American West" (2009) and "Twentynine Palms: A True Story of Murder, Marines, and the Mojave" (2001).

Stillman explores and exposes her characters' vexing and troubled relationships against the High Desert as a backdrop. More often than not it is revealed through her careful research that these individuals have been thrust into bleak existential situations through despair, life circumstance, economic downturn or just plain bad luck. Her protagonists are as vivid as those of a Tom Waits' song in her precise crafting of their persona and personal histories. In one of her books she enumerates, "It's a terrain of savage dignity, a vast amphitheater of startling wonders that put on a show as the megalopolis burrows northward into the region's last frontier. Ranchers, cowboys, dreamers, dropouts, bikers, hikers, and felons have settled here -- those who have chosen solitude over the trappings of contemporary life or simply have nowhere else to go."

Donald Kueck, the ticking-time-bomb but resourceful hermit documented in Stillman's third book "Desert Reckoning" is one such character. Kueck, known by local law enforcement as a solitary meth addict who squatted in a ramshackle trailer on the edge of Llano, CA, was depicted by Stillman as someone both sensitive of the desert animals that visited him daily, who enjoyed building and launching rockets but was equally highly capable of murder -- confirmed when he shot down well-liked and respected Los Angeles County Deputy Sheriff Steve Sorensen multiple times with a .223 caliber assault rifle on August 2, 2003. Reports stated that Sorensen drew his weapon only after Kueck had shot him. Ominously, the two had a run-in nine years earlier after Sorensen had pulled Kueck over during a routine traffic stop.

Authorities located Kueck nearly a week later hiding out in nearby Lake Los Angeles. Remarkably he had managed to elude and remain under their radar due to his formidable survivalist skills plus multiple secret caches of food, water and ammunition hidden across the desert. Although he had admitted to the murder via cell phone, Kueck adamantly refused to surrender, subsequently dying during a violent standoff after the shed he was holed up in burst into flames. The explosion resulted when a road flare ignited a tear gas canister that had been tossed into Kueck's holdout by law enforcement -- a controversial extraction tactic later criticized in the media. Sorenson's widow who was staying with family and friends nearby was said to have commented afterwards, "I wanted to see [Kueck] burn in hell, but I guess Lake Los Angeles will have to do."12 A statement I could somehow imagine mumbled in one of Waits' song verses.

Stillman's second book, "Twentynine Palms," which took her 10 years to research and write outlines in painstaking detail the vicious rape and murder of Rosalie Ortega, a 20-year-old single mother, along with her friend and 15-year-old baby sitter, Mandi Scott plus the ensuing aftermath of this grisly event. Coincidentally, the crime took place on the same day that Sorenson was shot down by Kueck -- August 2, but in 1991 in Twentynine Palms, California home to the largest Marine base in the world. The convicted murderer, 29-year-old Valentine Underwood, a Marine lance corporal who had recently returned from the Gulf War, had brutally raped the both women and stabbed them each 33 times "because it was the killer's favorite number."13

Stillman's impassioned on-site research aided by her close relationship with the victim's families -- especially Mandy's mother, Debie McMaster, who worked as a bartender in a popular Twentynine Palms bar frequented by local marines -- ultimately resulted in a portrait of those who dwell in America's margins. Following their inevitable arrival in the Mojave Desert, Stillman recounts the girls' collision with Valentine Underwood, a Marine with a history of sexual assaults on women before he joined the Corps and while in it, including the rape of a sergeant major's daughter six weeks before the rape and murder of Mandi and Rosie. The prior assaults were overlooked because he was a star on the Marine basketball team. But, as Stillman notes, it was a Marine investigator who helped break the case, along with San Bernardino County sheriff's deputies and other witnesses. After a prolonged six-year trial, Underwood was finally convicted with "DNA evidence, bloody handprints, and a serious and fresh cut on his hand" that a trial witness had observed the day after the murders occurred.

Stillman's notorious characterization of Twentynine Palms divided the town in half, with some locals concerned that the portrayal would have a negative impact, driving business away from a region, which depends on the Marine Corps and tourism for its primary sources of income. While Stillman was working on her book, she was the subject of public attacks via Amazon book reviews, newspaper editorials and articles. 14 Among other locals however, Stillman's book was celebrated and widely circulated. Many felt that someone was finally bearing witness to their stories, and understood that Stillman was writing about a side of the desert that generally goes unnoticed.

Today, the town continues its holding pattern, appearing much as it did before the murders transpired -- neither better nor worse. To the extent that Stillman's "Twentynine Palms" had an impact on the town's economic growth has yet to be proven. And more importantly, crimes committed against women by former or active duty Marines stationed here have not ended with the Scott/Ortega murders.

Former Marine Christopher Brandon Lee, 24, was arrested on August 18, 2014 for allegedly murdering Erin Corwin, 19, his next door neighbor and wife of a fellow Marine. Lee and Corwin began an affair while the two were living at an apartment building on base at the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center north of downtown Twentynine Palms. Two days prior to Lee's arrest and nearly eight weeks after she had initially disappeared, Corwin's badly decomposed body was found at the bottom of the 140-foot "Rose of Peru" mine at the eastern edge of Joshua Tree National Park. Several weeks before her body was discovered law enforcement began a search of over 100 abandoned mineshafts in the area. News reports stated that Corwin might have been several months pregnant at the time of her death.

Corwin's text messages to a friend on the last day she was known to be alive suggested that she expected a marriage proposal from Lee (who was himself married) during a planned "hunting trip" with him that same day. Her portentous text read: "He said he's honestly not sure how I'm going to react... Seriously, I don't know why he would drag me to a very special place... for a big dumb surprise." Various news outlets commented that Lee had previously bragged to his neighbors on several occasions "he knew where to hide a body." It appears that he did just that.

Notes:

1 Nystrom, Eric Charles. "Chapter 7: Visitor Services." "Administrative History of Mojave National Preserve," United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service, Mojave National Preserve, Mar. 2003. Web.

2 Ibid.

3 Ibid.

4 It is now illegal to harvest biznaga in Mexico because the several of the species of cacti used for this purpose are now threatened.

5 Hansen, Kevin. "Crimes Against the Wild: Poaching in California." Mountain Lion Foundation, Jul. 1994. 8.

6 Ibid. 8.

7 Darlington, David. "The Mojave." 121.

8 Patrovsky, Edward. "Tales From a Ranger: Death Valley Manhunt." The Desert Report, 18 Sept. 2014.

9 U.S. Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control, "Exploring the Problem of Domestic Marijuana Cultivation," Statement for the Record of Kim Thorsen Deputy Assistant Secretary, Law Enforcement, Security and Emergency Management Department of the Interior. Web.

10 BLM law enforcement official. Personal interview. 21 Sept. 2015.

11 Darlington. 35.

12 Burdick, Dan. "SCANNER AUDIO -- LASD -- Barricaded Suspect Shootout (8:05)." Online video clip. "YouTube." YouTube, 8 Aug. 2003. Web.

13 Gorman, Tom. "Ruffled Palms." Los Angeles Times, 21 Dec. 1997.

14Timberg, Scott, "Seeing the Light, Remembering the Dark," Los Angeles Times, 4 Feb 4 2007.

Dianne Feinstein’s Million-Acre Land Grab Falters

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) (J. Scott Applewhite, AP)

by Chriss W. Street
Breitbart News Network

Three months after Breitbart News and others outed Sen. Dianne Feinstein's (D-CA) backdoor effort to freeze development on over one million acres of California dessert by having President Obama declare the area subject to the Antiquities Act of 1906, her efforts are going down in flames as Congressional Republicans are moving to ban the Antiquities designation.

Feinstein’s seven-year quest to convince Congress to sequester over 1,560 square miles of the Mojave Desert into three new national monuments under her proposed "Desert Conservation and Recreation Act” has gone nowhere. Feinstein has argued that the area she wants designated as ‘Mojave Trails, Sand to Snow and Castle Mountains’ is home to mountain lions, the California desert tortoise and bighorn sheep. But the real effort is to ban off-roaders, hunters and miners.

The Senator had faced opposition from an unusual coalition of sustainable energy developers, wilderness advocates, off-road vehicle users, military bases, energy companies and American Indian tribes. By trying to circumvent Congress through artificially tying up the property with a phony search for non-existent artifacts, she has incensed Republicans and upset many Democrats, who worry about future Presidential actions.

U.S. Rep. Paul Cook (R-CA), whose district covers the area Feinstein wants restricted, complained at a Congressional hearing in September that the Antiquities Act “sets in motion a Washington-based management plan that can sharply curtail recreational and economic activities. I’m deeply concerned that outreach efforts to the public have been hasty and inadequate.”

Cook, a retired U.S. Marine Colonel who won a Bronze Star and has two Purple Hearts from combat duty in the Vietnam War, has said that when he heard about Feinstein’s backdoor efforts, his number one goal was to stop Presidential action.

Cook is a staunch military supporter and sits on the powerful Armed Services, Veterans,’ and Foreign Services Committees. The military is a substantial user of the terrain that Feinstein wants walled off. Because the area contains the remnants of General George Patton’s World War II training camps, national security interests have been lobbying Cook to lead the opposition against Feinstein’s Congressional end run.

The California Chamber of Commerce and the California Taxpayers Association both oppose the Antiquities designation and have given Cook perfect 100 percent ratings for each year since he was first elected in 2007. They have lobbied the congressman to oppose any executive order by President Barack Obama regarding the area.

On October 1, 2015, Congressman Cook introduced HR 3668, the California Minerals, Off-Road Recreation, and Conservation Act (CMORCA). He described the bill as “a balanced approach to protecting, managing, and using our desert and forest areas in San Bernardino and Inyo Counties.” But the bill also bans designating the area under the Antiquities Act.

Cook’s bill creates would create a National Monument, but also opens 100,000 acres to mining, and designates Johnson Valley and five more off-highway vehicle areas as “National OHV recreation areas.”

The new designation would ban commercial development in those areas if the Secretary of the Interior determines the development is incompatible with the purpose of the bill. But the bill sets up the opportunity for development to be approved in a future Republican administration.

Although Senator Feinstein has continually claimed that desert residents are “overwhelmingly in favor” of the three monument designations she is pushing for, the City of Twentynine Palms, the City of Banning, and the San Gorgonio Pass Regional Water Alliance quickly signed on as supporters of Rep. Cook’s CMORCA.

Environmentalists have been shocked by the rising support for the CMORCA bill, which they call part of a a “radical anti-public-lands agenda” by House Natural Resources Committee Republicans, representing a “neo-sagebrush rebellion that appears to be emerging in certain Western states.”

The Rep. Cook’s California Minerals, Off-Road Recreation, and Conservation Act is expected to have its first House Natural Resources Committee hearing as early as December 9.

Water Agency's Land Purchase Rattles California Farmers

Bart Fisher, farmer and president of the Palo Verde Irrigation District, looks at the Colorado River. The third-generation farmer who was born in Blythe, left 29 percent of his farmland fallow this year. The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, the nation’s largest distributor of treated drinking water, became the largest landowner in the region including Blythe for good reason: The alfalfa-growing area sits at the top of the legal pecking order to Colorado River water, a lifeline for seven Western states and northern Mexico.(AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

By Elliot Spagat and Jae Hong
Associated Press

BLYTHE, Calif. (AP) -- The nation's largest distributor of treated drinking water became the largest landowner in a remote California farming region for good reason: The alfalfa-growing area is first in line to get Colorado River water.

Metropolitan Water District of Southern California's play in Palo Verde Valley, along the Arizona line, tapped a deep distrust between farm and city that pervades the West over a river that's a lifeline for seven states and northern Mexico.

Farmers recall how Los Angeles' modern founders built an aqueduct a century ago to bring water hundreds of miles from rural Owens Valley, a story that was fictionally portrayed in Roman Polanski's 1974 film, "Chinatown."

"Are we going to dry up our rural, agricultural communities just to keep Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Diego growing? I think it would be a sad state of affairs," said Bart Fisher, a melon and broccoli farmer who is board president of the Palo Verde Irrigation District.

Metropolitan tried to calm nerves by sending its chairman in September to a public forum in Blythe, 225 miles east of its Los Angeles headquarters. It pledged to honor a 2004 agreement that caps the amount of land it pays farmers to idle at 28 percent of the valley.

That agreement, which expires in 2040, is hailed as a model for farms and cities to cooperate. Metropolitan pays farmers about as much as they would profit to harvest - $771 an acre this year - to bring foregone Colorado River water on its 242-mile aqueduct to 19 million people in the coastal megalopolis it serves.

Palo Verde enjoys California's highest rights to the river, making their immune to drought.

The dynamic changed when Metropolitan paid $256 million in July to nearly double its Palo Verde holdings to 29,000 acres, or about 30 percent of the valley. The agency denied its purchase from Verbena LLC, a company that bought the land several years earlier from the Mormon church, was part of an orchestrated plan.

"It's made the farmers out there nervous that we are the largest owner but there was a strategic opportunity that came up," Metropolitan's general manager Jeffrey Kightlinger said.

Metropolitan stirred similar angst this month in Northern California when its board expressed interest in buying farms on several islands in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. Its staff said the land could provide water storage and wildlife habitat.

Blythe, a riverside town of about 13,000 people in the Mojave Desert with two state prisons, is an oasis of gas stations, motels and fast-food restaurants on Interstate 10 between Los Angeles and Phoenix. Thomas Blythe staked claim to the river in 1877, beating Southern California cities under a Gold Rush-era doctrine called 'first in time, first in right.'

Los Angeles and its suburbs founded Metropolitan in 1928 to build the remarkably durable Colorado River Aqueduct. Parker Dam and the reservoir it created in Lake Havasu empties into a gray Art Deco-style building with nine pumps that quietly pipe water 300 feet up a steep slope. Teal metal cases that cover the pumps vibrate so little that a nickel placed on top stands on its side.

The water goes uphill through four more pump stations and through tunnels, canals and pipelines before reaching Southern California's coastal plain two days later.

The Colorado's huge man-made reservoirs have made the river an unheralded savior in California's four-year drought. Last year, the river supplied two-thirds of the 1.7 billion gallons of drinking water that Metropolitan delivers daily, up from a third three years earlier.

The river sustains 40 million people and farms 5½ million acres, but white "bathtub rings" lining walls of the nation's largest reservoir in Lake Mead, near Las Vegas, are evidence of shrinking supplies. California took more than it was entitled to until Sunbelt cities like Phoenix and Las Vegas clamored for their share and forced the nation's most populous state to go on a diet in 2003.

"It's really the only supply of water to this otherwise bone-dry region," said Bill Hasencamp, Metropolitan's manager of Colorado River resources.

Metropolitan has diverted up to 118,000 acre feet of water a year from Palo Verde since 2005, enough for about 250,000 households. It paid $3,170 an acre to farmers who committed for 35 years, plus an annual fee for fallowed land. It idles 7 percent to 28 percent of the valley each year, depending on its needs.

Jack Seiler, a grower who volunteered 900 acres, calls the agreement a "poster child" for farms and cities to cooperate but Metropolitan's July purchase of nearly 13,000 acres unsettled him. It gave Metropolitan the largest voting bloc on Palo Verde's water board.

Metropolitan says it won't have to pay someone else to idle the land it now owns and will lease it to farmers, cutting its net cost to about $50 million. It voted for incumbents in a September election to Palo Verde's seven-member board, which includes Seiler.

"I obviously don't know why they bought all this land," Seiler said. "It puts us a little bit at odds."

Arkansas phone booth is first of its kind to make National Register of Historic Places

Phone booth historic, hello? Prairie Grove 1959 site put on national list

Prairie Grove teenagers Mason McCourt (left) and Blake Williams use the telephone booth on U.S. 62 in Prairie Grove in April, when the booth was first nominated to the National Register of Historic Places. (NWA Democrat-Gazette file photo)

By Bill Bowden
Arkansas Online

A telephone booth in Prairie Grove has become the first structure of its kind to be listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The 56-year-old Airlight outdoor booth was selected for nomination in April by the state review board of the Arkansas Historic Preservation Program.

But there was a hang-up.

The National Park Service had reservations about putting a phone booth on the list, said Ralph Wilcox, the National Register/survey coordinator for the state's Historic Preservation Program. It had never been done before.

The "listing blurs the line between a 'place' and an artifact, and it begs the questions about where the line between significance and nostalgia is drawn," according to the response that the National Register sent to Wilcox in July.

Wilcox had to convince the decision-makers that the phone booth is "truly significant."

He resubmitted the nomination, emphasizing that the Airlight "represented a new and advanced design for the telephone booth."

For one thing, it was intended to be outdoors.

Before the Airlight was developed in 1954, telephone booths were made of wood and were inside buildings, Wilcox wrote.

The Airlight's metal-and-glass construction could hold up to the elements, he said. And this booth was strategically placed to serve the motoring public -- on U.S. 62 in front of the Colonial Motel and across from the entrance of Prairie Grove Battlefield State Park.

With that ringing recommendation, the phone booth was officially listed on the National Register on Nov. 9.

"It is my understanding that this is the first and only telephone booth listed on the National Register," Wilcox said Thursday.

Airlight phone booths were once common along highways across America.

According to the nomination form, there were 2.6 million pay phones in the United States by 1996.

But, while pay phones still exist, phone booths have become harder to find since cellular phones took over the market.

The Prairie Grove phone booth is rare in Arkansas because it has a working telephone, Wilcox said. The only other one in the state that he knows of is in Bluffton in Yell County, where there's no cellphone service.

David Parks, president of Prairie Grove Telephone Co., said he's not sure when the company put the phone booth in, but he believes it was around 1959.

Parks said Wilcox notified him Thursday about the National Register listing.

"I'm happy," Parks said. "It's just a little hard to believe. I mean, who would have thought? I'm tickled. I really am."

Parks said there are no plans for a plaque outside the phone booth.

Parks said he thought about removing the phone booth years ago but decided to leave it up for nostalgia's sake. He said it yields $3 to $4 in change per year.

Patrick Andrus, a historian who has been with the National Register for 35 years, told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in April that the Prairie Grove submission was the first nomination that he knew of for a telephone booth.

Andrus said the National Register lists five types of properties: buildings, districts, sites, structures and large objects, such as outdoor fountains.

Generally, properties must be at least 50 years old to be listed on the National Register, which is administered by the National Park Service.

Telephone booths were part of American culture throughout the 20th century. Countless villains and heroes ducked into phone booths as movie plots unfolded.

A mild-mannered reporter could enter a phone booth and emerge as Superman. A telephone booth even saved Tippi Hedren from avian attackers in Alfred Hitchcock's 1963 movie The Birds.

Whether the Prairie Grove phone booth has ever served such a purpose isn't known, but it is an "excellent example" of the aluminum-and-glass phone booths that were developed for Bell Telephone System in 1954, according to the National Register nomination form.

It was also nominated for its "importance in the communications history of Prairie Grove."

Airlight phone booths were used for decades. Each booth had a red panel at the top of all four sides, with the word "TELEPHONE" in white letters.

The telephone is in one corner, and the booth has a "bifold door."

"Its aluminum and glass construction was durable enough to stand up to the elements and the amount of glass along with the louvers on the sides allowed its namesake elements -- air and light -- to flood the booth," according to the nomination form. The Airlight booths also had fluorescent overhead lights.

The phone booth is a tourist attraction on U.S. 62 across from Prairie Grove Battlefield State Park.

People often stop at the booth to take pictures.

In June 2014, a motorist driving a 2003 Chevrolet Tahoe dozed off and ran into the Prairie Grove booth, knocking it from its concrete foundation in front of the Colonial Motel.

A public outcry on the city's Facebook page led Parks to fix it. The phone booth was repaired and reinstalled that August.