Steve Hall Site Take Down Plan Officially Announced

[DeathValleyDazed]

Here is Steve's response just posted to his blog. The link to the blog is at the bottom of this post. He asked me top pass this along to all parties concerned and to this forum as of 2/27/2021

Hello everyone,

As I have received 5 different e-mails over the past week in regards to the future of this site, I thought I would make a post and address the issue.  The e-mails all mentioned that someone had offered to take over hosting of this site and keep it online indefinitely.  As I mentioned in passing about one month ago, my plans are to remove the site from the internet sometime between 2021-2023.  And that is still the plan.  I don’t exactly when I will do so, but at some point I will give one week’s notice and take down the site for good.  Before I do so, I will go through and convert all of my site pages and hiking reports to PDF form for safekeeping to preserve everything I have done.  This will allow me to share what I have written with my son as he gets older and also to provide a copy to the NPS for their records and future use.  The last three years have been the most difficult of my life personally as I have dealt with quite a few challenging issues including battling two different forms of cancer.  As of my latest scans and x-rays, my body is currently all clear and there is NED (no evidence of disease).  But at some point over these past few years, I totally lost interest in writing up new hiking reports and maintaining this site.  It became burdensome to me, rather than the joy that it once was.  And the site does need regular updates in order to work properly on the latest phones and tablets, and also to keep the slideshow software current.  But I cannot let someone else take over hosting and preserve my site online.  For one thing, I have a lot of personal photos of my family, friends, and NPS staff members within my hiking reports.  I wouldn’t feel comfortable leaving those up somewhere else on the internet.  And I don’t have permission from others to allow their photos to be posted somewhere else either.  Thank you all for viewing my Death Valley site as such a valuable resource and using my information for the past 15 years or so.  It has always meant a lot to receive the thoughtful e-mails in regards to how helpful the site has been and to even be spotted and recognized by members of the public when I am out and about in Death Valley thanks to the site.  And I especially treasure having gotten to know and spend time with Death Valley park staff.  As stated before, I will soon look for a way to put a lot of my discovery and adventure hiking information into book form so that it is not lost forever.  I expect it will take me about a year to put all that information together, but it will be fun to do so.  Take care, everyone.

Regards, Steve

https://panamintcity.com/dvablog/

[MojaveGeek]

Well, all right then. Thanks for posting DVD, I don't regularly read Steve's blogs so I would have missed that.

[netllama]

Its disapointing that Steve is not amenable to a transition plan, but this is his content, so he has unquestionble ownership, and I must respect his wishes.

I won't pretend to understand his reasoning for refusing to transition the site to long term hosting.  He literally put years of effort into creating this content, only to effectively throw it away.  If he was concerned about keeping the content updated, then converting it to PDF or dead tree format will obviously not accomplish that goal. 

Its frustrating and disapointing that some people who have taken up the mantle to host Death Valley knowledge & communities can be so capricious about what they started, with little regard for those who have come to rely on their efforts.

[trailhound]

Its disapointing that Steve is not amenable to a transition plan

I am a cancer survivor myself.  Perspective changes.  It's that near miss from death and Steve had two.

[DAW89446]

I won't pretend to understand his reasoning for refusing to transition the site to long term hosting.  He literally put years of effort into creating this content, only to effectively throw it away.  If he was concerned about keeping the content updated, then converting it to PDF or dead tree format will obviously not accomplish that goal. 

Its frustrating and disapointing that some people who have taken up the mantle to host Death Valley knowledge & communities can be so capricious about what they started, with little regard for those who have come to rely on their efforts.

I think I understand Steve’s reasoning on two levels. The years of creating content and prioritization.

I’ve experienced much of the two points I quoted from Netllama’s comment.

* I put years of content into the early forums, including the grandfather of this forum. I was a struggling author (and spending a lot of money on each project), yet gave away a lot of content that I could have put into a book and made money on. So looking back, I basically shot myself in the foot.

* I also had a large website that was very popular. I also gave away a lot of my work on that as well. Great Basin Research / Reconnoitering Through the Sagebrush in the Great Basin by 4x4 became a burden and strain on my marriage as I daily worked on it on dial-up internet while also working full time in Trona working 12-hour rotating shifts. Twice I took my website down, both times popular demand by those who lived vicariously through my website hunted me down and in various ways influenced me to keep the content flowing.

Until I took my life offline for good in 2011 for a few years. My wife’s increasing disability changed my priorities. Steve’s health has changed his.

As for the last point, I’ve been burned as well by similar forums that suddenly disappeared with no warning. I put a lot of effort into those forums, then had the carpet yanked out from under me and others who really liked them; their owners decided You Tube was more profitable and went for the sensational paranormal angle instead of what they felt was boring old history. Lonnie’s forum is in reality in its third life (D-V.us, D-V.net and now dv.netllama.us), and I thank him for resurrecting it. Panamint Valley.com has also been taken off life support after it went away for a while recently. It’s also in its third life (Panamint Charlie, Panamint Valley and Panamint Valley 2.0). And it still is showing damage from its brief demise in the form of an information gap of over a year of lost data.

Behind the scenes, those who host and create just can’t keep giving forever. Knowing a little of the behind the scenes, the money drain, the eventual breakdown of and lack of cooperation by those working on these forums, and their toll on personal lives; and things we in front of the screen took for granted all these years are sad to see them go away. But I understand because in some ways, I’ve been in those shoes behind the screen as well.

Years have passed since I stepped back into the shadows. I don’t post near as much as I used to, I am more choosy about what I respond to. I don’t jump in and give details on 4x4 trails, locations, history and the like because it’s all there already. And since I’m not actively involved in writing / researching I’m am really no longer relevant anyway.

It’s nice to have the chains off so I can live out the remainder of my life unfettered. I wish Steve well in his fighting his health issues and hope for a successful outcome.

[trailhound]

DAW - Well spoken, thank you.

[MojaveGeek]

Thank you for the perspective, DAW.  Much appreciated.

I don't know how much money people make on books.  I suspect the biggest factor is getting them blessed by the NPS and sold in the VC bookstore.  I gather even Digonnet had to edit his a bit.  I guess these days there is on demand publishing so you can sell successfully to a pretty small audience.  And look at the silly money being made by Insta "influencers" and all.  We are crazy people I guess

I'm in the process of setting up a trip next month.  It will be my 32nd year of hitting DV at least once.  That translates to a lot of hiking days.  It has been a long process of discovery and, initially, getting comfortable dragging little kids (my daughter was 3 on our first trip) around the wild places.  Along the way many people have helped me, given me advice, rides, GPS data, and the books too.  I try to pass on some of what I got to others, but have no desire for any major public-facing venture.  And the people I give to are often not the people I get from.  But you can't think that way, satisfaction in life is not something tallied by a CPA.

Anybody who loves the desert shares something with me, and these days, with our society polarized to the breaking point, we need anything we can find to make us feel something in common.

Thanks to everyone who's helped me along the way!

[DAW89446]

I don't know how much money people make on books.  I suspect the biggest factor is getting them blessed by the NPS and sold in the VC bookstore.  I gather even Digonnet had to edit his a bit.

In my case, I spent thousands, made less than $1,000 over a span of about two decades. I was regularly published in one historic periodical; wrote and contributed to other publications; did a lot of research for other authors/historians. I participated in one video that is/was sold at the DV VC @ FC (GHOST TOWNS OF DEATH VALLEY); I wrote several online articles; I got hundreds of photos and videos scattered about the internet. My name is found in a number of books in the bibliographies.

Timing is also a factor. The world was transitioning from paper to bytes by the late 1980s through 2005 during the time that my efforts were at their height. Instant wealth has since eluded those who struggled over old Smith Corona typewriters and blessed those who made a few swipes with their finger on a tablet screen.

Getting one’s books into the visitor center requires a lot of work, luck and some political skill. My late father managed to turn his photographic skills into post cards and then got into Joshua Tree National Park right at the transition from monument to park. His cards and refrigerator magnets are still sold there, though he sold his business around a decade ago at the age of 85.

One of my 4x4 trail pages on my former website provoked the park service to contact me to request changes. A couple of well used trails that branched off the Steel Pass route were technically closed but not signed at the time I was running the trail for photography and noting trail conditions. Thus I “sanitized” that page.