One of the things that I love most about a place like Death Valley is that you never know what you might discover literally anywhere. From the (at least) 12,000 year history of known & unknown Native American tribes that have called this place home to the ephemeral boom-towns selling hopes & dreams of riches.
In this case I was looking for the former and found the later.
I had been going through some old papers and books that found their way to me over the years and I noticed a vague reference to something listed as Mother Wood’s Saloon in Greenwater Valley. I had already been going over the satellite imagery of that area looking rock alignments (which is absolutely useless for the kind of smaller rock alignments that the Shoshone and their ancestors left behind here by the way) and had noted several more modern anomalies. One of those anomalies lined up with the approx. location listed in these papers by a Levi Noble in 1941, naming the former location of something he called Mother Wood’s Saloon.
This was especially interesting as A) the most well known settlement in Greenwater Valley, the boom/ghost town of Greenwater that sprang up due to false reports that the southern Funeral Mountains were almost solid copper below the surface, left very little behind that is visible from satellite, and B) the saloon is on the wrong end of the valley entirely to be connected with the infamous boom-town. And if I could add a C) it would be that the location was odd anyway: It's not at a crossroad, but over 2 miles away from the main road fork? Based on all the lore of the old west, you put the saloon at the crossroads! Because you need a stiff drink or two before you sell your soul to the devil at the crossroads, right?
Note that the main foundation has a circular 'driveway' of sorts around it. Perhaps this was it the first drive thru saloon?
Old churchkey.
The foundation is surrounded by about a solid acre of glass and tin-can trash… erm, I mean ‘artifacts’.
Walking around the area, many spots would seem to have been used as campsites nearby, which would make sense I guess: Down a bottle of rotgut and you’re going to be sleeping close by.
This is such an odd place. It's location in the middle of a flat with no water nearby is seemingly completely random. It's far from any other known settlements/boom-towns/or anything other structure I can find on the ground or in the historical record. And it’s so unusual to have an actually name for a ruin like this. Google gave me nothing to add to the story at all. Nor did speaking with every local historian I could find in Death Valley or Historic Shoshone nearby. One suggested that there may be nothing left to find in the historical record because "All you needed to start a saloon in Death Valley was a couple of barrels, a plank, and a case of whiskey." But some memory of the place and it's name lingered on for at least a time.
Has anyone else come across Mother Wood’s Saloon listed, mentioned, or remembered anywhere? I would love to find another source in writing that refers to the name or location. If it left all this behind surely someone dropped the name somewhere beyond the memory of old Levi Noble? Let me know if you've heard ANYTHING!
Be sure to check out my website for more of my unusual finds & adventures across the desert Southwest and especially Death Valley National Park: Pockets Full of Dust.
