Wildrose Station - Vintage Visit Memories

[DeathValleyDazed]

I created this video to appreciate the Wildrose Station well before my time as I only visited the past five years. I thought I had posted a link to it here but I can't find it if I did. The following comment on the video was most informative for me. 

"Wild Rose station was private property and a long time thorn in the Death Valley administration’s side. They didn’t like the idea that there were private enterprises within the park area that they did not control or profit from, even though Wildrose Station pre-dated the park. Wild Rose Canyon was one of the first major entrances to Death Valley, with people commuting up from Barstow through Panamint Valley. Improving Wildrose Cub Rd was one of the first California Civilian Conservation Corps jobs in Death Valley and their camp was nearby. The station survived a number of fires only to be eventually flattened by a large boulder. For a while DVNP maintained a lovely picnic area with bathrooms, as well as maintaining the roads and culverts. In the early 90s a change in DVNP administration turned it back on Wildrose Cyn, allowing roadside springs to overflow onto the road and seasonal rain storms to cover it in mud and debris. I imagine, eventually, when the road gets poor enough, they will close it all together. They have already changed the intersection by wild Rose Campground by erecting a stop sign on the through road. Over the years they have been allowing a number of the tertiary roads to degrade and close, funneling traffic to a handful of entrances. Local conjecture eventually they will start charging entrance fees on the roads rather than at the visitors center. This is good for the park, but not so much for locals that use the roads to commute through." by Larry Riendeau commenting at YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBe0kS78C3U

[DAW89446]

The park service has allowed concessionaires to operate facilities in the park, such as the facilities at the ranch, since the inception of the monument in the early 1930s.

I forget the details of the station; but it was razed during the reign of a superintendent who had a campaign to remove historic structures, such as the company office complex on the hilltop above the Skidoo mill.

My wife lived in Trona since 1955 and used to clean house for George Pipkin and one of his daughters. George came to Trona early in the 20th century and operated Wildrose for some years. He was also was editor at the paper in Trona and knew many Panamint Valley and Death Valley characters. He died in the 1990s. His daughter, Lit Brush, headed the historical society at Trona for decades.

There is a compilation of his columns, which he wrote under the masthead, DESERT SANDS, online somewhere. Just Google it. The compilation begins with:

“George Pipkin lived and worked in Trona for some decades beginning in 1928. He wrote books and articles on desert personalities and events, including a series of articles published in regional newspapers during the 1960s called "Desert Sands". *

The text in these pages was scanned and reproduced in earnest. All typos, grammatical errors, page breaks, and paragraph formatting have been retained from the original manuscript. Any new mistakes, or corrections of old mistakes, are purely accidental.”

It’s a great read, great for quiet winter evenings. It’s 117 pages long. Some of his columns include his days at Wildrose.

[GowerGulch42]

That's cool, DAW! YT Commenter appears to have misunderstandings about many Park activities surrounding Wildrose.

[DeathValleyDazed]

It’s a great read, great for quiet winter evenings. It’s 117 pages long. Some of his columns include his days at Wildrose.

Hey DAW, your reply placing this thread in historical context is really cool. My reading list for DEVA this winter is expanding. Thanks for all of your tips and insight.

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YT Commenter appears to have misunderstandings about many Park activities surrounding Wildrose.

As usual it seems there are at least three sides to every human event and story. Of course me being so far removed from the Wildrose Station saga leaves the option of viewing its history from various perspectives which is why I posted the YT comments to see if there is more to the story. GG, if you have time (you're busy with college, etc) I might not be the only one curious to hear from your perspective.

[Candace66]

They YT comments copy-and-pasted above seem to lean toward uninformed cynicism.  There's a lot of that around these days.    So I'd take everything in that comment with a grain of salt.  It would appear that DAW has provided a more reliable source.

For one thing, it seems the ship has sailed on collecting fees along the roads.  The trend has been going in the other direction.  The little entry station at Grapevine has been closed for years.  Then the kiosks became the preferred method of paying fees.  But IIRC, they are now out of commission (someone tell me if I am wrong about that!).

I'd also be interested in knowing which specific roads are referred to here: "Over the years they have been allowing a number of the tertiary roads to degrade and close, funneling traffic to a handful of entrances."  Could anyone name an entrance road that has been closed?  In particular, in the last 20-30 years?

I'm reminded of this thread on PanamintValley.com:  "Roads and Historical Site Closures"  It was started to discuss and document "illegal road closures."  But the specific road closures people were complaining about were not  illegal.  The roads were in Wilderness areas and did not receive corridors.  There were vague illusions to other closures that weren't legal.  But details were lacking.

Having said all that, though, whatever became of this project?   Lower Wildrose Road Repair   I haven't been on lower Wildrose Road for awhile, was the road finally improved?

[DAW89446]

It’s been about 14-15 years since I drove over lower Wildrose Road. Then and for quite a few years previous it was a mix of pavement, broken pavement and dirt due to repeated flash flooding. At times it was closed for lengthy periods until it could be repaired after flooding.

I remember a time when the road was fully paved, but I imagine the county finally gave up because nature is a more powerful force. I assume Inyo County still has jurisdiction over the road after the expansion and monument > park status change in 1995.

As for roads being closed entering the park, I get confused over the road from Sand Spring up Oriental Wash. I tried once to head up there in 2000 only to find a closure sign and barricade. The last time I traveled the road through Oriental Wash was in 2008 and I accessed it from the mouth of Tule Canyon just inside Nevada. That road was recently graded and angled over to the old road out of the park and up Oriental Wash. Esmeralda County annually grades the roads in the Gold Mountain country and sometimes they slightly alter their route depending on what antics nature did since the last time they came through.

As for my sources, I remember reading somewhere about the particular superintendent whose motivation was to remove historical sites except for native American in the late 1960s; but I forget where I read it. Wildrose and the Skidoo mill office buildings atop the knoll were razed; Wildrose in 1966, Skidoo in 1969 if memory serves me right.

When Alan Patera and I were researching in preparation for the book WESTERN PLACES: SKIDOO!, we tried to invoke the Freedom of Information Act regarding the razing of the office complex, but got nowhere and nothing. I remember being in the archives at Cow Creek around 1995 or so and seeing a 8x10 black and white photo of the buildings burning but at the time wasn’t working on any project involving Skidoo and dismissed it, giving it little thought. But I noted it in my research notes. Later, when Alan and I were collaborating, I again visited the archives at Cow Creek when Alan and I were working on the book and looked but couldn’t find the photo. Linda Green was in charge of the archives then, but she was on vacation. The woman substituting for her knew nothing of the photo.

I interviewed George Pipkin via letters shortly before his death, he living with his daughter Myrtle Murchison in Washington state at the time. Unfortunately my focus was on Joe Simpson’s skull so never touched base with him on the destruction of Wildrose. He died in the early 1990s.

[Candace66]

It’s been about 14-15 years since I drove over lower Wildrose Road. Then and for quite a few years previous it was a mix of pavement, broken pavement and dirt due to repeated flash flooding. At times it was closed for lengthy periods until it could be repaired after flooding...


As for roads being closed entering the park, I get confused over the road from Sand Spring up Oriental Wash. I tried once to head up there in 2000 only to find a closure sign and barricade. The last time I traveled the road through Oriental Wash was in 2008 and I accessed it from the mouth of Tule Canyon just inside Nevada. That road was recently graded and angled over to the old road out of the park and up Oriental Wash...

I first started visiting the Park and the area around it in 2002.  In that period, lower Wildrose Road was always an old road with bad pavement in certain stretches.  I recall it was then closed for at least at least one to two years due to being badly damaged by runoff.  Though toward the end of that time, I and others drove through there with no problem.

Since then I have driven through at least once, namely on September 1, 2020.  I recall the road being okay, but I don't recall seeing any dramatic improvements or reconstruction.  I didn't write anything about the road conditions in my notes for the day, so apparently nothing struck me as particularly good or bad.

I've also driven between Death Valley and Gold Point via the Oriental Wash road more than once.  The "closure" you saw might have been temporary due to road damage.  Or just a CYA sign like Inyo County has so many times put out on the Saline Valley Road.

[DAW89446]

As a kid growing up east of Victorville between the 1950s to early 1970s, my parents and I would occasionally go to Death Valley via Trona and the Wildrose road. My first wife and I married in 1976 and we honeymooned in DV, again going via Wildrose. Shortly after, I moved to June Lake, so my access to DV was by other routes.

I moved to Trona in 1987 from Wyoming and went to work in the plants. I lived in Trona until 1992, when my current wife and I moved to Ridgecrest. However, I continued to spend a lot of time in DV and vicinity, going in by way of Wildrose.

We bought our home in Big Pine in 1994 and eventually moved there for good in 2002. I rented a duplex to stay at during my working days (four on, four off working week, non-rotating day shift). My commute to and from work was always through Panamint Valley and in to Owens Valley via Panamint Springs and Keeler. Periodically, I’d run up Wildrose if I took a few hours off early on my last day of work for photography or to go play in the snow up at the kilns.

I left work in Trona in 2004 and I haven’t been back to town since after I completed moving my belongings from the duplex a couple weeks after my departure from employment there. In 2008 I moved to north central Nevada. After I moved my parents up here in 2016, I haven’t been to or through the Owens Valley or the east side of Death Valley, as I often took different routes to their home in Joshua Tree.