Boy, 11, dies while stranded in Death Valley

Mother, dog survive ordeal in ‘remote and isolated’ area of national park

The Associated Press

LAS VEGAS - An 11-year-old boy died in the intense heat of Death Valley National Park after he and his mother became stranded in one of the world's most inhospitable areas and survived for several days on bottled water, Pop-Tarts and cheese sandwiches, authorities said Friday.

Alicia Sanchez, 28, was found severely dehydrated and remained hospitalized in Las Vegas a day after being found with her dog, her dead son and a Jeep Cherokee buried up to its axles in sand.

She told rescuers in California's San Bernardino County that her son Carlos died Wednesday, days after she fixed a flat tire and continued into Death Valley, relying on directions from a GPS device in the vehicle.

"It's in about as remote and isolated an area as you can find," Death Valley National Park Chief Ranger Brent Pennington told The Associated Press. "How she got to that point, I don't know."

Tire tracks

Pennington said Sanchez was found by a ranger who followed tire tracks off a dirt road into the Owlshead Mountains near the China Lake Naval Air Station, just inside the southwest corner of the vast national park near the California-Nevada state line. The park covers an area nearly the size of Connecticut.

Summer temperatures commonly run above 120 degrees in Death Valley, with the average daytime August temperature about 113. The high temperature Tuesday and Wednesday was 111, with a low of 96 early Tuesday.

An autopsy on the boy is scheduled for next week, but foul play was not suspected in his death, San Bernardino County sheriff's spokeswoman Cindy Beavers said.

The family's pet dachshund survived the ordeal and was being cared for by San Bernardino County sheriff's deputies, said Sgt. Tim Lotspeich, a deputy who assisted in the rescue about 20 miles east of the remote town of Trona, Calif. Trona is about 140 miles northeast of Los Angeles.

Officials said Sanchez and her son set out last Saturday with a case of 24, 16-ounce bottles of water and food on what was to be an overnight camping trip.

There were conflicting reports about when they became stranded. The San Bernardino County coroner's office said it was Monday; Pennington and San Bernardino County sheriff's officials said it was last Saturday.

Text message

By all accounts, no one reported them missing until Wednesday.

"We got multiple calls about 5 p.m. on Wednesday from family members concerned that they hadn't heard from her," Pennington said. "They said they received a text message Aug. 1 that said she was out in the desert changing a flat tire."

Las Vegas Police Officer Bill Cassell, a department spokesman, would not release a missing persons report. He said investigators checked the woman's apartment in Las Vegas and began coordinating a search with San Bernardino County sheriff's officials.

Pennington said an air and ground search was launched at dawn Thursday, and the woman and her son's body were found about 11 a.m.

He said a park ranger followed tire tracks on a dirt road into the desert, and at one point passed an abandoned tire and rim and water bottle.

The ranger found Sanchez waving for help outside the vehicle, which Pennington said apparently hit an underground animal den and became badly stuck in the sand. The boy's body was inside the Jeep.

Sanchez was taken to Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center in Las Vegas, about 130 miles east of Trona. Hospital spokeswoman Ashlee Seymour said the woman was in fair condition but could not be interviewed.

Sanchez told authorities she couldn't get a cell phone signal, and even hiked to the top of a peak to try. Authorities said the pair had no maps and quickly consumed the food and water they brought.

Pennington said cellular service is spotty and global positioning satellite directions can be unreliable on unmaintained roads and open desert in and around Death Valley.

"A GPS does not replace a map, a compass, checking in at the visitor center and letting people know where you're going to be," Pennington said.

He said searchers mistakenly looked late Wednesday for Sanchez in campgrounds in the Panamint Mountains, based on family members' reports that she planned to camp in free sites and visit the Scotty's Castle attraction in the far northeast corner of the vast national park.

The chief ranger said family members in the Midwest described Alicia Sanchez as a nurse who recently moved to Las Vegas and was working at a Las Vegas hospital. He said she had been due to work Wednesday evening.

Improvements Coming to Outlying Desert Fire Stations

Press Release

Brad Mitzelfelt
Supervisor, First District San Bernardino County

SAN BERNARDINO – The San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors today authorized improvements at County fire stations in the communities of Hinkley and Trona. Supervisors approved plans to replace the Trona Fire Station parking lot and to purchase a vacant lot next to the Hinkley station to accommodate future expansions.

“Ensuring adequate fire facilities in our communities is vital to preserving public safety,” said First District Supervisor Brad Mitzelfelt, who represents the areas. “But it’s especially important in our outlying areas.”

Supervisors approved a project to replace the existing asphalt driveway and parking areas with a concrete driveway and parking areas at the Trona Fire Station, located at 83732 Trona Road. The asphalt pavement at the station is more than 30 years old and has severely deteriorated. The project will replace the driveway and parking area in the front and rear of the station. The project will also include an Americans with Disabilities Act accessible ramp to the front entrance and ADA accessible parking stalls. The project is expected to cost $150,000.

Supervisors also approved the purchase of a nearly half-acre parcel of land adjacent to the Hinkley fire station on the southwest corner of Acacia Street and Flower Avenue. The land was purchased for $8,000 and will be used by the department for future facility expansions on the site.

The improvements are the most recent in a series of improvements to fire safety in outlying areas. A much-needed fire station in the Goffs area to provide coverage on Interstate 40 and the remote eastern Mojave Desert took its first step toward becoming a reality in August when the Board of Supervisors approved the sale of surplus land to the San Bernardino County Fire Protection District. Goffs is situated 30 miles west of Needles and 50 miles east of Amboy.

Supervisor Mitzelfelt also continues to work toward planning a fire station to serve Interstate 40 in the area between Ludlow and Amboy. On June 24, Supervisor Mitzelfelt secured Board of Supervisors approval for $300,000 to go toward design work for the station.

The proposed station in Goffs would augment fire protection and rescue services to the eastern Mojave Desert and the transportation corridors of I-40, Highway 95 and Route 66 (National Trails Highway). That would also provide the communities of Baker, Needles, Havasu Lake and Kelso with an additional resource for rescue.

New wilderness proposals for Inyo

By Mike Gervais
Inyo Register

Senator Barbara Boxer and Congressman Buck McKeon, co-sponsors of the Wild Heritage Act, aren’t the only legislators who see the potential for additional wilderness in Inyo County, despite promises that the controversial wilderness designation would be the last requested within Inyo County.

Senator Dianne Feinstein is looking at several new wilderness designations in Southern Inyo that top officials are saying would hinder potential revenue sources, job opportunities and recreation in the area.

Feinstein’s office received a request by the California Wilderness Coalition seeking several new wilderness designations in Southern California, five of which are proposed for Inyo County’s Fifth District, including areas of Death Valley.

Feinstein’s staffers brought the proposals before Fifth District Supervisor Richard Cervantes, earlier this month.

The five new wilderness proposals include the Great Falls Basin Wilderness located near Trona on the southeast side of China Lake Naval Weapons Station, the Malpais Mesa proposed wilderness addition on the west side of Death Valley National Park, the Slate Range proposed wilderness just west of the Great Falls Basin proposal, and two wilderness additions within Death Valley National Park, one of which includes the area around the Ubehebe Crater, but does not include the crater itself.

The board decided Tuesday to review the wilderness proposals and draft a response to Feinstein. First District Supervisor Linda Arcularius said she was grateful that Feinstein’s staffers discussed the proposals with the board before drafting legislation.

“She has only been requested to do this, and she has not agreed to carry any legislation,” which gives the county the opportunity to work with the legislators to be sure the county’s needs are met before legislation is drafted.

Arcularius mentioned that the board did not have that opportunity with the Wild Heritage Act which aims to create the Eastern Sierra/ Northern San Gabriel Wilderness.

The board agreed to review the wilderness proposals and outline its concerns and send a response to Feinstein.

“Our first concern is that these proposals don’t fit the definition of wilderness” as defined in the 1964 Wilderness Act, said Fourth District Supervisor Jim Bilyeu. “The second is mining,” he said, adding that the areas described for the proposed wilderness are rich in mineral resources, have current mining claims on them and/or companies researching the possibility of opening mining claims.

Supervisor Cervantes brought up several concerns about mining in Inyo County and the negative effects the proposed wilderness could have on the industry. “This is about economic opportunities for Inyo County being locked up,” he said.

The proposed Malpais Mesa wilderness area includes an area where Timberline Resources is conducting an exploratory survey in hopes of opening a mine in the area “which would open up the potential for income for the county,” the Fifth District Supervisor said Tuesday.

There is also a study group conducting research in that same area in hopes of finding a location for a geothermal plant, Cervantes added.

If the wilderness designation is pushed through, the area would be off-limits to mining and industry of any kind, including a geothermal plant.

Cervantes called the latest onslaught of wilderness proposals a “nefarious plot” by environmentalists to outlaw mining in Inyo County’s mineral-rich areas.

Cervantes also mentioned that the Slate Range Wilderness Range near Panamint Valley is the site of the Briggs Mine and the Ratcliff mine.

He also said the Briggs Mine, which supports 120 jobs when it is operating, is completely out of sight of the public, and does not spoil the scenic desert views of Southern Inyo.

Cervantes said the same of the Great Basin proposed wilderness. “That particular area is a high mining area,” said Cervantes. He added that Feinstein’s staffers are also saying that the Great Falls Basin proposed wilderness area “would provide a buffer zone for the (China Lake) naval base. But everybody who’s been out there knows that you can’t wander onto the base without knowing about it, there are signs everywhere.”

“That buffer thing doesn’t hold water,” he added, and the other supervisors agreed.

Second District Supervisor Susan Cash noted that wilderness designations, according to the 1964 Wilderness Act, are not designed to provide “buffer” zones for military instillations, but to protect “unchanged and unspoiled” areas. She also said many of the areas don’t fit the description of “unchanged and unspoiled.”

“This has nothing to do with protection, it has everything to do with numbers,” said Third District Supervisor Beverly Brown, noting that the Ubehebe Crater is an area she could see being protected as wilderness, but not the surrounding desert area that is being considered for the protection.

“My position is that I don’t support any additional wilderness designation unless it fits the 1960s definition,” which says the designated land must be “unspoiled,” Bilyeu said.

Phone calls to Senator Feinstein’s office seeking comments on the proposed wilderness designations were not returned.

Stark Beauty, Solitude, Squalor and Sulfur -- Trona Has It All

Once a prosperous and tidy company town with desert vistas, Trona is in decline, cherishing its memories but living with crime and blight.

David Kelly
Los Angeles Times

TRONA, Calif. — Fed up with the crime, congestion and cost of Orange County, Fred Hermon went looking for a place where he could be alone, a place so remote, so unappealing that few would ever want to live there.

His strategy was simple: Locate the popular, pricey towns on a map and move steadily outward. That's where he found Trona.

When he searched the Internet for information, the word "hell" kept popping up — 'Is Trona Anywhere Near Hell?," "Where the Hell Is Trona?," "Long, Lonely Ride Through Hell."

Hermon didn't actually expect to find perdition as he descended through Poison Canyon into Trona three years ago, but the smell of sulfur, the blast-furnace heat and barren landscape made it feel uncomfortably close.

A real estate agent showed him a neighborhood with block after block of burned-out homes.

"I said, 'Oh my God, no,' " he recalled. "Another area looked like Los Angeles after the riots. I love the desert, but this was pushing it."

Nevertheless, he found a house for $24,000, installed an enormous swamp cooler and now spends his days digging for old artifacts while caring for nine cats, an inquisitive packrat and two desert tortoises, Speedy and Kid.

Hermon, 60, has already spent $2,600 on a chain-link fence and rarely leaves home for fear of being burglarized. On his first night in town, someone swiped his $15 garden hose. He stays for the solitude but wonders how Trona came to this.

"Something must have been going on for a long time to bring the town to this level of devastation," he said.

Over the years, Trona, once a thriving community of 6,000 on the ragged edge of Death Valley, has shriveled to just 1,800. Drug dealers looking for cheap housing have moved in. Parolees abound. Arsonists have torched dozens of vacant homes, leaving charred skeletons behind. Business owners, unable to make a profit, have simply locked up and walked away.

The result is blight on an industrial scale. San Bernardino County has torn down a handful of houses, but officials say it's too costly to demolish entire blocks of dilapidated, asbestos-riddled buildings.

Meanwhile, many Tronans are fleeing to Ridgecrest, 25 miles away, leaving mostly senior citizens and a smattering of young professionals behind.

Whether Trona can survive as the population dwindles is an open question.

Most workers at Searles Valley Minerals, the major employer, now live elsewhere. The high school has just 160 students with a graduating class last year of 15. The football team, unable to field 11 players, now plays with eight.

"A lot of people are leaving town," said Ruth Soto, the high school guidance counselor. "Closing the school has been talked about."

Many who stay love Trona for the friendships they've made, memories of better times and the desert's stark beauty. Others are simply stuck, unable to afford a house elsewhere.

Homes here are among the cheapest in California, with a median price of $40,000, according to DataQuick, which tracks real estate sales.

Even die-hard Trona boosters agree that it has seen better days. They concede that streets lined with torched houses, combined with the pungent odor from the chemical plant, add up to a poor first impression.

Pastor Larry Cox of the First Baptist Church said his first words on entering Trona were "People live here?"

The San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department has offered deputies willing to work in Trona free housing and less jail duty. Most prefer jail.

Hollywood comes calling when scouting places resembling alien planets or how they imagine the end of the world might look.

Parts of "Planet of the Apes" and "Star Trek V: The Final Frontier" were filmed at the Trona Pinnacles, towering mineral formations near town. Conspiracy buffs have long held that Trona was the site of NASA's "moon landings."

An old highway sign put it this way: "End of the World 10, Trona 15."

Yet this extreme environment has bred people as tough as the rock and desert around them. They endure months of 120-degree temperatures and winds that fling boulders down mountainsides.

Seniors hit the links at the bare bones Trona Golf Club, batting balls on a mostly sand and dirt course while skirting the occasional rattlesnake.

"The sand leaves the clubs a little dog-eared," noted 82-year-old Barbara Crowther.

The Trona Tornadoes, named after dust devils spinning off dry Searles Lake, may be the only high school football team outside Alaska to have an all-dirt field. Astroturf would blow away, they say.

The white lines contain eye-stinging sodium sulfate to better stick to the field.

"It gives us a psychological edge in home games," said Coach John Foster.

The town was a stopover for the homicidal Manson family, who loaded up on water before heading to Barker Ranch about 20 miles east, where they were eventually arrested in 1969.

"I got my picture taken with Manson — with the girls too," said Robert "Ballarat Bob" Dunlap, an 83-year-old gold miner living in a desert shack.

Dunlap is one of the last in a long line of miners who burrowed and dynamited their way through here hoping to find a fortune.

In 1862, John W. Searles came looking for gold and found borax instead. His mining business would lay the foundation for a new town.

Named after a kind of sodium carbonate, Trona was established in 1914 by American Trona Corp., which owned the community outright. It built the schools, homes and dance halls and issued its own money to be used in town. Even when the business changed hands, residents were well cared for.

Teachers earned among the highest salaries in the state, often $96,000 a year in pay and benefits, thanks to royalties the company paid in exchange for mining on federal land. Sometimes local schools got $5 million or $6 million a year.

Lately, that number has dropped to about $1.6 million, school officials said. "I came here from Cleveland in 1945," said Kathe Barry, 75. "I loved it here because so much was going on at the time. We had a dance every Saturday night. There wasn't an empty house in Trona. It was just wonderful."

Ralph Garner, 94, stumbled on Trona during the Depression.

"They told me it was darn hot but I said I could take it," he said. "I was a mechanic and earned about 49 cents an hour. I had a good life here."

But times changed. In 1954, the company, then American Potash & Chemical, sold its homes to employees.

Workers were no longer required to live in Trona. In 1982, more than 400 chemists and engineers were relocated to Oklahoma.

For many, this was the beginning of the end. Layoffs and bitter strikes followed. The workforce shrank. Houses that couldn't be sold were abandoned.

Touring Trona with Russell Rector, 75, is a jarring journey from what was to what is, a landscape of memories rudely interrupted by jagged reality.

He nosed his red pickup toward the empty tennis courts.

"Everyone used to play out here," he said. "We would have beer parties in the desert and everyone would come. It's not the same place anymore."

He passed the old dance hall, once alive with laughter, now closed. The bookie's house stands empty. Trona had 13 saloons; now there are two.

Down at the First Baptist Church, Pastor Cox typed a sermon in his small air-conditioned office. He came from Simi Valley three years ago and feels like a missionary in a remote land.

"You step into Trona and you are stepping into a Third World country," Cox said. "This is a place where a lot of people have been forgotten. When a house burns down, it stands for 10 or 15 years. I tell people if they are looking for the middle of nowhere, we are in the middle of that."

The pride of Trona is the Old Guest House Museum, a shrine to the town and the minerals that made it. There are old photos of John W. Searles. His violin sits behind glass. Small bottles of potash, borax and fly ash are displayed, along with maps, history books and assorted mining and railroad paraphernalia.

Margaret Brush, 79, is curator and the town's most energetic promoter. She recently won funding for a kiosk along the road to Death Valley offering information about Trona.

"We needed something to attract people to Trona and to our museum," she said.

The heart of the town is Searles Valley Minerals, a vast, twisting array of pipes snaking above mountains of chemicals.

Arzell Hale, 69, has lived in the community for 28 years and handles public relations for the company.

"I'm going to die here, no question," he said cheerfully.

Yet he concedes that Trona suffers an image problem. The mere sight of it, he said, can scare off potential hires.

"When I first came here it was 10 at night, so it wasn't as bad as the daytime," Hale said.

That was in 1978 when the company had 1,450 employees. Now it has 650.

Hale drove around Searles Lake, a 42-square-mile expanse of mud and brine producing a million tons of soda ash a year and nearly a million tons of boron. The former is used to make glass, the latter soap and detergent. So far only 10% of its reserves have been used, Hale said.

"People drive out here and say, 'I wouldn't live in that godforsaken place for anything,' " he said, scanning a landscape more lunar than earthly. "But you don't know a place until you know the people, and the quality of people here is unreal."

True, but some are higher quality than others.

On a recent afternoon San Bernardino County Sheriff's Cpl. Tim Lotspeich drove into the hardscrabble Argus neighborhood and quickly found trouble brewing.

A shirtless man apparently high on methamphetamine was screaming abuse at another man down the street.

Lotspeich warned him to calm down and not do anything he would regret later.

Eric Cartmell, 37, watched from behind his chain-link fence.

"Look around you," he said, pointing to the trashed houses along the road, "and see what meth can do to a town. The drug addicts have stripped these houses of toilets and whatever they can sell for drugs. If they cleaned this place up, there would be no better town."

Lotspeich, who has patrolled Trona for three years, must carefully decide when to make an arrest.

The nearest county jail is 100 miles away in Barstow, and he has only two other deputies.

"I could spend all day out here doing under-the-influence arrests, but by the time I drive them to Barstow that's half my day, and sometimes they are back before I am," he said.

Minutes later he rounded a corner and spotted a man wanted for a parole violation and arrested him.

He arrested another parolee shortly after. With two men handcuffed in his SUV, he stopped a teenager riding a motorbike on the street.

"Take it out to the desert," he said.

A woman flagged him down to point out a homeless man wandering her neighborhood.

The corporal had been on patrol just 20 minutes.

Methamphetamine abuse is a scourge in Trona, leading to other crimes, such as burglary. Arsonists also have helped destroy much of the town.

"That was the mentality — you had a problem with someone, you set their houses on fire or you set their car on fire," Lotspeich said. "That was just what you did up here. Once we made an arrest and they saw they would actually do time, it stopped. We haven't had arson in a year."

He credits aggressive policing for an upsurge in arrests. Trona went from 12 felony arrests in 2002 to 56 in 2005, according to sheriff's records.

"The good outweighs the bad here, but there is a lot of bad," the officer said.

Not far away, the Trona Tornados took to their dirt field for practice. "It's 115 degrees but it feels like 105 with the breeze," said Coach Foster, 41.

The team has won its league three times and has a reputation for hitting hard.

"No one else plays on dirt," said running back Emilio Horta, 16. "They all cry about it."

Asked if he will stay in Trona after graduation, he shook his head. "It's not where I want to be," Horta said. "I want a more civilized place."

A hot wind blew, carrying a bracing whiff of rotten egg.

Foster smiled.

"I said I wanted to leave as a kid," he said. "I went to the Navy for four years, then I came back. I like the small-town atmosphere and I love knowing where my kids are at night. I have no plans on going anywhere."

'Desert Padre' Author Putnam Dies at Trona

January 6, 1950

The Ridgecrest Herald
Ridgecrest CA

Amelia Earhart and George Putnam made an unusual husband-and-wife team.





Major George Palmer Putnam, author, lecturer, explorer and a veteran of World Wars I and II, died at Trona hospital Wednesday at 6:05 a.m.

A resident of Lone Pine since 1939, Major Putnam had been owner and operator of Stove Pipe Well hotel in Death Valley.

He was 63 years of age.

Although direct cause of death was not revealed, it is known that Major Putnam had been suffering internal hemorrhages since Sunday, Nov. 27, when he was taken to the hospital at Trona. Late last week uremic poinsoning set in, it was reported Tuesday, after announcement had been made Monday evening that it was doubtful he would survive the night.

He had been in a coma since before noon on Monday.

His widow, Mrs. Margaret Haviland Putnam, told a Chalfant Press representative Tuesday that just last week Major Putnam had dressed himself and had gone for a short automobile ride. The relapse occurred this Monday.

Two sons, David Binney Putnam and George Palmer Putnam, III, residents of Fort Pierce, Fla., had been advised Monday of the turn for the worse, but failed to arrive before their father’s death. They were due at Metropolitan airport in Los Angeles Wednesday evening.

As a former member of the New York publishing house, George Palmer Putnam and Sons, Major Putnam negotiated with Charles A. Lindberg for publishing rights to the famous aviator’s book “We.” Above his desk at Stove Pipe Wells hotel is displayed a cancelled check to Lindberg in the
amount of $100,000 for the book.

A colorful figure, with a career of exploring and backing history-making aviation events, especially those of his wife, the celebrated Amelia Earhart–Putnam was born in Rye, N. Y. and educated at private schools in New York state, at Harvard and the University of California.

He married Miss Earhart, his second wife, in February, 1931 – backed her many flying accomplishments and guided her to world fame that reached a tragic climax when she was lost in 1937 in a flight from Lae, New Guinea to Howland Island.

For many years Putnam held faith that his wife would be found alive, but she was declared legally dead in January, 1939.

As an explorer, Putnam had several notable Arctic expeditions to his credit and was associated with such exploits as Adm. Byrd’s North and South Pole expeditions, Sir Hubert Wilkins flights and the exploration and publishing activities of Roy Chapman Andrews, William Beebe, Rockwell
Kent, etc.

He was born into the century-old publishing house of G. P. Putnam’s Sons and once headed the concern, giving up its direction in 1931.

In 1939 he was kidnapped from his North Hollywood home and found bound and gagged some hours later in an uncompleted Bakersfield home.

He told police two men had tried to make him disclose the author of a book, “The Man Who Killed Hitler,” which he was publishing at the time. He was unhurt.

A prolific writer, as well as a publisher, he was the author of “Smiting the Rock,” “In the Oregon Country,” “The Southland of North America,” “Andree, the Record on a Tragic Adventure,” “Soaring Wings, the Biography of Amelia Earhart,” “Wide Margins,” and autobiography, “Duration,” a World
War II book of life in Washington; “Death Valley and its Country,: and numerous other volumes. His latest book, “Hickory Shirt” was a novel of Death Valley in 1849.

Putnam served in both wars, as a lieutenant of field artillery in World War I and as a major of intelligence with a Superfortress outfit in World War II. He saw considerable service in the China theatre.

After coming to the Owens Valley he purchased the stone cabin at the Whitney Portal owned by the late Father John Crowley, beloved padre of the desert. For years he wrote a column of observations for Chalfant Press newspapers entitle “Shangri-Putnam by GPP.”

He had several other books ready for publication, one of which deals with Owens Valley and its struggle for water.

His first wife was Dorothy Binney Putnam. They were married in 1911 and divorced in 1928. Both his sons were born of this union. Putnam was married twice after Miss Earhart was declared dead. In 1939 he married Jean-Marie Consigny, author of “Gardening for Fun,” “Who’s Who in the
Garden,” and other books.