2020-10-09, 05:58 PM
(2020-10-04, 11:53 PM)GowerGulch42 Wrote: The old USGS maps were the first place I looked, and they didn't include a number of the routes I know to have been in use so I turned my gaze elsewhere...
Then these routes you know of must be very obscure!
I'm looking at the 1908 Ballarat 1:250K map. The western half of this map is blank and labelled "unsurveyed."
On Mesquite Flat, the map shows the old route running from Surveyor's Well southwest to the mouth of Marble/Cottonwood Canyon. I was out at Surveyor's Well in 2014, and at that time you could see it used to be a crossroads.
The map also shows the old road junction at Stovepipe Wells (not the later settlement, but the well itself). From there, it shows a road leading west-southwest along the north edge of Mesquite Dunes. I've hiked out there and found traces of that road. From the same road junction, the original road alignment leads up the valley; it was sited lower than the current road. The old road went right past Triangle Well and Surveyors Well, continuing up to "Lost Wagons" BM and on to Mesquite Spring.
The 1951 Panamint Butte 1:62500K map shows the route you mentioned going up north Lemoigne Canyon. But it's a dashed line, suggesting a trail and not a road. Not that any "road" going up there would have been much more than a trail!
If you dig deeper into the USGS map finder, perhaps you will find some of what you're looking for? If it's not there, I hope you find it somewhere and share it with us!!