Three Bachelors Prospectors Camp
In 2018, we found a small prospector’s camp out in the wilderness of the Death Valley region. I named it because three cabin tent pads are scattered around the site.
Cowboy Petroglyphs (Joshua Tree)
Back in 2017, we wandered out to this remote corner of Joshua Tree to check out an unusual set of petroglyphs. Unlike most of the abstract petroglyph panels I come across, these had a few human figures. A couple of them are a horse and rider, and another appears to
Par Value Mill
Late autumn of 2017 found us tracking down a very unusual stamp mill high in California's Sierra Nevada mountains. The mill was a unique hammer design called a Pratt Ideal Stamp Mill. Very few of these mills were ever put into use, and even fewer (if any!) still
Cary Ranch Pictographs
I've been invited by Dick Cary to visit his historic Cary Ranch and examine some of the pictographs there a few times. The Mountain Cahuilla Indians first inhabited the ranch area. The site is near a natural pass and an old Indian trail that connects inland Southern California
Summit Mine
High up in the spires of the Eastern Sierras, there lies a hidden and seldom visited gold mine perched on steep cliffs at 10,900 ft elevation. The Summit Mine is difficult to reach and is not for the fainthearted. To get there, you will have to follow a steep
Chalcedony Cabin
On a scorching late spring day in 2015, we journeyed out to a lonely cabin in the central heart of the Mojave Desert. This is a barren landscape of sand and lava. Any roads that once traversed this wasteland were wiped out by monsoonal thunderstorms long ago.
Silver Canyon Cabin
In the summer of 2014, at the end of an exploration trip in the White Mountains of eastern California, we decided to take a little side trip to a cabin I had heard about. From what scarce history I could find on the place, there didn’t seem to be