Death Valley Scotty Told Me

by Eleanor Jordan Houston

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

129 pages

First published January 1, 1954

Reviews

[Jeffrey Williams · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Death Valley Scotty" (aka Walter Scott) was a real life person who lived in Death Valley, California around the turn of the 20th century until his death in the early 1950s. Considered by many to be a con artist, he resided for many years in Scotty's Castle, which is still a renowned Death Valley landmark.

The book is a collection of stories of Scott's life as told to Eleanor Jordan Houston, the wife of a National Park Service ranger who was working at Death Valley at the time.

Unfortunately, the book was not well organized. The stories ramble and have little cohesion. Some of the stories have factual errors in them. I understand that she pretty much took Scott at his word, recorded what he said, embellishments and all, and published what reads like conversations around a campfire or after dinner storytime at a lodge.

Due to limitations at that time, unlike living in the current information age, some of these errors could not be corrected. For instance, on page 77, she relates the story of Scott getting a betting tip while hanging around Madison Square Garden from a "Mr. John" to bet on a horse named Sysonby, who was running at Sheepshead Bay. It was then revealed that the tipster was John R. Keene, Sysonby's owner. Furthermore, Scott implied that this occurred while he was still employed with William Cody's Wild West Show. However, upon verification of the facts, a few things come to light - Sysonby's owner was James R. Keene, not John R. Keene. If Scott left Cody's show in 1902, as claimed, then either this episode didn't happen, or Scott was still with the show much later than he claimed. Sysonby was racing at Sheepshead in 1905.

I don't bring this up to necessarily claim Scott or Houston to be involved in intentional deception, but to use this as a cautionary example to trust, but verify, any claim made in this book. As some of this is pure embellishment of Scott's part, and pure forgetfulness due to the long passage of time between when events happened and when they were recorded, everything considered of a historical nature should be viewed as an independent data point in need of additional verification.

For the non-historian who is just looking for some cute stories and possibly some funny anecdotes, you might find them in here. though a lot of the material is linguistically dated. Not a bad read otherwise.

[Arthur Salyer · Rating 2 out of 5]

A old book written by the wife of a Death Valley ranger in the 50's Collection of tall tales from Death Valley Scotty. Hard to tell which stories are real and not.

[Zyzyxx · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good collection of tales about an interesting figure

[Krista · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a first-hand account of many stories from Death Valley Scotty, written by a park ranger's wife in the 50's. The manuscript was apparently lost and not published until the 80's. The stories, as individual snippets are good, but mashed together in this one book (each chapter had a number of stories in it) they loose their impact. I guess this is how Scotty talked, just story after story. It made my head spin. But there are a few goodies that stand out (my favorite being about Irene Watkins, the tomcat that was entered into a NY cat show and won).