Death Valley to Yosemite: Frontier Mining Camps & Ghost Towns--The Men, The Women, Their Mines and Stories

by L. Burr Belden, Mary Dedecker, Wynne Benti

A collection of historical anecdotes (many passed down orally) of colorful places and residents of the Old West. A variety of characters appear in the pages in an effort to "show the human side of this ever optimistic brand of rainbow seekers." Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

192 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1998

About the author

Belden was a native of Unadilla, New York, Lawrence Burr Belden (1898-1977). He was a colorful part of the San Bernardino Sun newspaper staff for nearly 48 years as a reporter, editor and columnist. But it was while serving as the newspaper’s official historian that he made a lasting impression that helped pave the way for all local history researchers to this day.

From 1951 through 1964, he wrote a weekly column exploring the county’s past. During those years, Belden wrote well over 600 articles in 13 historical series between 1951 and 1964.

Reviews

[Jenn "JR" · Rating 3 out of 5]

Two days in the desert

I originally bought this book hoping to find some information about all the familiar place names of long defunct mines and towns, and some sense of new places to explore and their history

The first 100 pages of this book are written by L Burr Belden (1898-1977) who was a reporter and who personally knew or interviewed plenty of characters as basis for interesting oral histories. Unfortunately - whatever notes he left behind used as a basis for the first part of the book are about as interesting as Alameda County Property Records.

The writing sucks the LIFE out of what could be some interesting stories -- a group of 400 travelers with 50 wagons who all get so insecure, jealous and suspicious that they all split up and create team names for themselves becomes some kind of boring horse race announcing. Some of the chapters have a horrible chronology -- mentioning something that might be a good introduction as the 2nd to last paragraph. It really made me want to take up editing!

Women play a very minor role despite placement in the sub-title of the book. After a promising start describing a woman miner in the first chapter -- very short chapters -- that first chapter fizzled out into a real boring and hasty wrap up.

The mention of "Diamond Tooth Lil" is minor - and more time is spent on the editor of a newspaper who took creative license in satirizing the locals -- and absconded town with Diamond Lil (despite a later story about a newspaperman named Lying Jim whose antic publications amused people greatly).

Once Mary DeDecker's part of the book got going, the stories became more interesting with greater breadth of context and more chronology (and fewer $25 words thrown in).

Some of my key takeaways from this book include:

Roads. Men love to build roads. They will just chip away at rocks to build roads in the middle of nowhere.

Deforestation. I had not realized that the key ingredients to successful mining ventures, aside from the obvious existence of rich metal deposits, include water and fuel in the form of trees. Plus roads.

You can have the biggest deposit, the most advanced technology to crank out 4 tons of ore into lead-silver bullion but if you don't have decent transportation, you'll end up with millions of dollars of bullion sitting around your wee town being used for sofas and tables.

That's where the guys who like building roads come in - but if you build roads before you prove there is profit, then you end up spending $400K in development on a mine that makes $200K (Hello, Mammoth Mining Company!).

Back to trees - they hella deforested the Eastern Sierras and Inyo Mountains, yo!

Location. Avalanches - one good one and you wipe out the whole town.

The last chapter in the book was the most comprehensive general chapter -- starting with "leave no trace" but not nearly enough on "don't vandalize Native American sites."

It would be great to have some kind of charts or graphs to show the dates and rise/fall of the different towns - maybe a better map representation (the same map is featured at least 3 dozen times in this book with a giant black arrow pointing to the town being described in the short "chapter").

It's also interesting that Bodie isn't really discussed in this book - I know it's probably covered in a ton of other books, but that town did have the first long distance electricity transmission in 1893 (12 miles or something radical in a time when they thought electricity would jump out of the wires).

Not much discussion of the social history and development of culture. There are just a few mentions of Chinese immigrants but not as major players or characters of interest.

And - for a botanist - Mary DeDecker's stories are surprisingly short of flora and fauna. Plenty of other books that rely on primary source material can be found - even for free. Check out the NPS website:

Death Valley History & Culture
https://www.nps.gov/deva/learn/histor...

Death Valley National Monument Historic Resource Study
A History of Mining
https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/onlin...

[Erica · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 stars. The first half was written by one author - that half was written terribly. The second half by a different author - much better writing. But overall, this book was just not deep enough and not well laid out. Each chapter (only a couple of pages) covers an old mining site - but the details that you might expect to get are just not there. Most of the stories feel very incomplete and even the layout of having the same map on just about every chapter (in the first half of the book) was annoying. Of course, it does leave me hankering to go to the Sierra - but it doesn't take much at beyond the mention of the mighty name to get me daydreaming. It seems that most of the these early Sierra mining ventures were really small and short lived. At the very least- next trip to Bishop I am going to take the Benton exit off of Hwy 6 and take the loop around to see some of the sites. Not worth reading, though it is a very fast book that could be skimmed through in two hours or less.

[Maura · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting collection of short pieces about various bits of Death Valley history. I wish I'd read it before I went there; I would have been looking at the land with more informed eyes. But I'm also glad to have read it after visiting the area, because then I could picture the places under discussion, at least as they appear today. Some of these were articles for local history publications, some were oral history-type projects, so the quality of the writing varies.

The stories of the early prospectors and settlers amaze me in what they endured as a matter of course. Indians of the region knew every inch of these harsh landscapes, where to find water, food, and ways to cross the area safely. The saddest thing to me was the description of the beautiful hot springs and waterfalls that were closed off to all when the US took over the area to create China Lake Naval Weapons Testing areas. The Indians had been visiting the hot springs for hundreds of years, therapeutically soaking in the mineral waters. Now it was lost to all - such a shame.

[David Grissom · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although the author has done a great deal of work I feel like I have read many of the stories in other Death Valley books. What I like about this book is the maps which allow you the reader to see the approximate location of each story. I have been on many of the roads but have not been to many of the mines. The last chapter gives the best advice should you desire to go looking for gold. Have fun reading these stories of riches won & riches lost.

[Javier Vazquez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent coverage of an area that is very interesting and often overlooked.