Death Valley And The Creek Called Furnace

This is the history of Death Valley, where that bitter stream the Amargosa dies. It embraces the whole basin of the Amargosa from the Panamints to the Spring Mountains, from the Palmettos to the Avawatz. And it spans a century from the earliest recollections and the oldest records to that day in 1933 when much of the valley was finally set aside as a National Monument. This is the story of an illusory land, of the people it attracted and of the dreams and delusions they pursued-the story of the metals in its mountains and the salts in its sinks, of its desiccating heat and its revitalizing springs, and of all the riches of its scenery and lore-the story of Indians and horse thieves, lost argonauts and lost mine hunters, prospectors and promoters, miners and millionaires, stockholders and stock sharps, homesteaders and hermits, writers and tourists. But mostly this is the story of the illusions-the illusions of a shortcut to the gold diggings that lured the forty-niners, of inescapable deadliness that hung in the name they left behind, of lost bonanzas that grew out of the few nuggets they found, of immeasurable riches spread by hopeful prospectors and calculating con men, and of impenetrable mysteries concocted by the likes of Scotty. These and many lesser illusions are the heart of its history.

Our sense of place is permeated by ghosts from the past. In GhostWest, Ann Ronald takes the reader to historical sites where something once happened. Using the metaphor of hauntings, she reflects on how western history, literature, and lore continue to shape our visceral impressions of these sites. In chapters both lyrical and thoughtful, passionate and humorous, GhostWest covers sites in seventeen western states, including the Little Bighorn Battlefield in Montana, Willa Cather’s Nebraska prairies, and the Murrah Building bombing site in Oklahoma. Through these settings and their phantoms, the author mulls questions of why we find such ambience and artifacts so compelling. Volume 7 in the Literature of the American West series