Bagdad Fades Into the Desert--in California

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

By CHARLES HILLINGER
Los Angeles Times

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

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

Burris tells them Bagdad is but a memory these days.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hoist a Root Beer for Family of Yucca Cutters

Milton Blair uses a chainsaw to cut a yucca tree on Mojave Desert leased land. Watching are two of his daughters, five sons. (Ben Olender / Los Angeles Times)

By CHARLES HILLINGER
Los Angeles Times

HACKBERRY MOUNTAIN, Calif. -- Next time you have a root beer, think of Milton Blair and 10 of his 14 kids.

The Blairs harvest 14 tons of yucca trees each week on land leased from the Southern Pacific Railroad on the Mojave Desert in eastern San Bernardino County. Root beer foam comes from the sap of the thorny desert tree.

"Harvesting Spanish daggers (yucca trees) is dirty, hard, nasty work," said Blair, 50, as he revved up a chain saw to cut a yucca.
Blair is blind in his left eye. Four years ago a yucca spine punctured his eye.

Blair and his oldest son, Milton Jr., 26, cut the trees and strip the trunks of the dangerous spikes. The rest of the family hoists the heavy yucca sections into a truck.

"This is the best time of the year to cut daggers," said Melissa Blair, 17, her mouth bulging with a plug of chewing tobacco.

Occupational Nuisances

"In summer we're wringing wet with sweat from sunup to sundown. Ants crawl up our bodies and bite. We get stuck with daggers and cactus. We gulp gallons of ice water," she said.

The Blairs sell the yucca to Ritter International, a Los Angeles firm, where it is processed for scores of uses including foam for root beer, an additive to carbonated beverages, shampoos, cosmetics and industrial deodorants. Yucca foam has been used for snow scenes in television and motion pictures. It was used by the Navy during World War II to smother fires.

Don Emery, botanist for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, noted: "The yucca is a renewable resource just as a tree in a forest, providing it is properly harvested as the Blairs are doing." Even though the Blairs are harvesting the desert trees on private railroad land they are still required to have government permits and must cut the yucca in a prescribed manner.

The family divides its time harvesting yucca and running 200 head of cattle on their Lazy Daisy Ranch 450,000 acres of dry desert terrain leased from the railroad, the federal and state governments.

They live 14 miles by miserable dirt road from their nearest neighbor in a home without electricity, phone, or television. Kerosene lamps furnish their light.

"My wife is secretary and bookkeeper of the outfit. I ain't worth a damn at that," Blair said.

There are 10 boys and 4 girls in the family: Milton Jr., 26. Joe, 24, Mary, 22, Susie, 21. Eddie, 19, Melissa, 17. Luke, 16, Dan, 14, Annie, 12, Austin, 9, Mark, 8, Johnny, 6, Mike 4, and Matt, 2. The Blairs have a three-bedroom home and bunkhouse. They use the work stove for cooking and warmth.

"The real chore is keeping track of our cows. They're scattered all over hell and gone," said Joe Blair. "We lost 25 head last year to spot-lighters." Members of "varmint clubs" drive out to the desert in pickup trucks and armed with high-powered rifles. "They use spotlights on their pickups to look for coyotes, bobcat and fox. They see an eye and WHAM! They shoot. Twenty-five pairs of those eyes last year belonged to our cows," Joe Blair said.

The biggest excitement of the week for the Blairs is the 40-mile drive into town (Needles) every Saturday. "My wife and two of the girls spend a couple hours at the Seventh-Day Adventist Church and a couple hours shopping. The rest of us wait for them at the Hungry Bear Cafe," Blair said. "We sit and drink coffee waiting for the women. Then we hop back into the pickup and head for the ranch."

'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.