Death Valley 2022/23

[MojaveGeek]

That's a pretty cool site. Looks extensive! Good job not tracking it up. No visual cues that help me figure it out, good job. Been wondering what you've been up to

[Beardilocks]

That's a pretty cool site.  Looks extensive!  Good job not tracking it up.  No visual cues that help me figure it out, good job.  Been wondering what you've been up to

I’ve been up to a bit more than this.  Lol.  Just lacking in decent cell signal anywhere in the main valley.

[Beardilocks]

Going through some old papers that found their way to me, I noticed something listed as Mother Wood’s Saloon in Greenwater Valley.  I had already been going over the satellite view of Greenwater looking geoglyphs (which is absolutely useless for the kind of geoglyphs the Shoshone and their ancestors left behind here by the way, saved you 20hrs of screen time) and had noted several anomalies.  One of those anomalies lined up with the approx location listed by a Levi Nobel in 1941 as Mother Wood’s.

This was especially interesting as A) the most famous settlement in Greenwater, the GW boom/ghost town left almost nothing behind, and B) it was in the wrong end of the valley entirely to be connected to that.  And if I could add a C) it would be that the location was odd anyway.  Not at a crossroad, but ~2mi and change away?   You put the saloon at the crossroads.  You need a drink before you sell your soul to the devil after all right?   



Note that it has a circular driveway of sorts around the main structure/foundation.  Was it the first drive thru saloon?   




Old churchkey 


About a solid acre of glass and cans… erm, I mean ‘artifacts’. 




Walking around the area, some spots looked like they might have been used as camps nearby, which would make sense I guess.  A few glasses of rotgut and you’re sleeping close by.  

Obviously I’m not discovering anything new here.  Just sort of a random find.  I’m sure some of you have been here.  But it’s so unusual to have a name.  Google gave me nothing to add to the story at all.  

Has anyone else come across Mother Wood’s Saloon anywhere?   I would love to find another source that uses the same name.  If it left all this behind surely someone dropped the name a second time?  Let me know!

[DAW89446]

Fascinating. I’ve never heard of Mother Woods.

There’s actually quite a bit to see of all the Greenwater area camps. Even the cemetery; though it takes some close scrutiny to find the graves. The most ruins lie at the original Greenwater location. At the Ramsey location (where the old AAA sign is) you can actually spot the old main street by subtle changes in the vegetation and the grade itself. And of course, the ever present cans. I think the Tin Age had its peak in Death Valley. There’s a bit to Furnace as well. And if you take the road between the Greenwater-Calumet mine and Furnace there are several other small mine camps with visible ruins.

I enjoy taking 8”x10” historic photos with me in the field, positioning myself as close as possible to the photographer’s location, and recreating the image for a then and now perspective. If anyone’s interested, I can put up my Greenwater images that I used on my old website in another thread.

[Beardilocks]

Fascinating. I’ve never heard of Mother Woods.

There’s actually quite a bit to see of all the Greenwater area camps. Even the cemetery; though it takes some close scrutiny to find the graves. The most ruins lie at the original Greenwater location. At the Ramsey location (where the old AAA sign is) you can actually spot the old main street by subtle changes in the vegetation and the grade itself. And of course, the ever present cans. I think the Tin Age had its peak in Death Valley. There’s a bit to Furnace as well. And if you take the road between the Greenwater-Calumet mine and Furnace there are several other small mine camps with visible ruins.

I enjoy taking 8”x10” historic photos with me in the field, positioning myself as close as possible to the photographer’s location, and recreating the image for a then and now perspective. If anyone’s interested, I can put up my Greenwater images that I used on my old website in another thread.

I would love that!

I would love to get a period photo of Mother Woods as well to do the same thing.  That would be awesome.

[Beardilocks]

It took me quite a while to find these alignments. And the first thing I want to do is thank Kauri and Ski3pin for their help. I'm a bit less concerned with showing the skyline in these because they're a bit more well known, they're damn near impossible to spot unless you're right on top of them, and they are a helluva long rough hike up the fan from the road. That should keep what I call the “no-gooders” out (opposite of do-gooders, cousin to the ne-er-do-well).

As I said, these alignments are shockingly hard to see from ground level until you practically walk on top of them. (And that's my excuse for the poor quality of the photos, so warm up your imagination). Even then, trying to envision the whole picture is completely impossible. You can get a glimpse of parts of it, but never the whole all at once. And I had to wonder if that was their maker's intent? ‘The maker's intent’... That thought was ever present while viewing these and on the walk back. I never expected them to be draped over the landscape in the way that they are, over ridges and seemingly not at all in line with the natural landscape. That was the most befuddling part for me. If the design had been rotated slightly it would sit in a much more 'sensible' way on the bench/ridge. Which makes you ask the question of what was more important: the placement within the landscape or the placement to something else, like perhaps the heavens. Or perhaps there was no “design” in the first place, and the makers simply laid out something pleasing to them as their own artform.

Second thing that surprised me was the seeming lack of effort that went into rock choices to make up the lines. In a lot of cases it seemed more like the rocks were picked up almost where they lay and simply turned over, so the slightly pink-ish, less varnished side was left up. Rather than collecting larger rocks to make the design really stand out. This is with a few exceptions within the designs of course, especially the wildly chaotic third one below. Which begs the question of the level of planning (or lack there of) involved in these seemingly complex alignments. The third alignment kind of gives us a hint to that: one of the lines (an oddly wiggly, inconsistent line) crosses an imbedded boulder of white quartz. The pieces of this white quartz are spread out down this line, but don't seem to be chosen to highlight anything, even though the white rocks stands out powerfully on the dark desert pavement. But more that they were just using the rocks closest to the line being made. Especially interesting with the huge cairns that also run down one side of this alignment that are obviously supposed to stand out

These are also very similar in design and construction to the one I had seen in Greenwater Valley. They are definitely related in one way or the other. The seeming randomness of combinations of dead straight parallel lines, wiggly lines, loops, cairns, etc. They almost feel like more than one personality designed different parts of each.

I was lucky enough to be able to have Ski3pin send me the maps of the alignments from his library. I have been trying to track down a copy of Alice Hunt's book with no success, it’s completely out of print (if you want to lend me a copy I will pay you handsomely!). It was IMMENSELY helpful in even being able to orientate myself around these alignments to avoid inadvertently walking on them.

First alignment:














Second Alignment.  This one was described as “poorly preserved” so who knows what’s missing from it.  











Third Alignment.  This one has so many elements.  At ground level it’s pure chaos, draped over several ridges and down a slope.  Also with very little contrast to its background surface making it nearly impossible to pick out large parts of the design. 












Here are the white rocks mentioned above.  It’s hard to discern a line even with the added contrast.  




This was about 700ft away on its own.  Sleeping circle?  It’s definitely more substantial than the other alignments.  

[Daymoth]

My mind just exploded.

[MojaveGeek]

Wow! Those are better than anything I've ever seen, except for a handful of very distinct sleeping circles I found on my first trip out there (and haven't found since). But these are much more elaborate and stretched out. Really stunning. I know approximately the area, but I'm sure it could take days of traipsing around to actually find them, as you say, they are not really meant to be visible from a distance.

And congrats on finding the saloon! Pretty cool. I'm usually limited to the main road in Greenwater Valley.

Envious.

[DAW89446]

I would love that!

I would love to get a period photo of Mother Woods as well to do the same thing.  That would be awesome.

Then & Now (netllama.us)

Just a start. I have others and will add them in time. I've tried to add image tags without success to the photos on my Google Drive so that they'll show in this post. I've stumbled upon it before successfully but forgot how I did it. So the links will have to do for now.

[TacoLand]

Amazing rock alignment documentation and trip reporting, thank you for taking the time to share all of this.