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Death Valley

Death Valley National Park and adjacent regions.

94 posts

Lost Burro Mine

Lost Burro Mine

Bourke Lee wrote in the 1930s: "There is a Lost Burro Mine on almost every mountain." Prospectors spent so much time chasing their wandering burros through the desert hills that the animals became their best prospecting partners. The Lost Burro in the Cottonwood Mountains of northern Death Valley

Braden Cabin and the Berman Murders

Braden Cabin and the Berman Murders

Spend enough time around the warm springs in Saline Valley and someone will eventually mention "the Murder Cabin." The name has stuck for decades, carried by rumor and retold with increasing inaccuracy. The cabin in question once belonged to Roy "Red" Braden, a pistol-packing cinnabar prospector

Cyty's Mill

Cyty's Mill

Just north of the well-known Keane Wonder Mine site lies Cyty's Mill, a smaller, seldom-visited mill site and cabin. A short hike along the base of the Funeral Mountains will lead you past scenic Keane Wonder Springs to John Cyty's 1910 cabin and mill, which processed

Mexican-American Labor Camp, Death Valley Railroad

Mexican-American Labor Camp, Death Valley Railroad

I came upon this site in a rather odd way: a video from an ultralight pilot flying over DV that came up on my YouTube feed last year. He passed over some odd looking ruins somewhere in the eastern part of the park that I glimpsed on the background. After

Mother Wood's Saloon, Death Valley

Mother Wood's Saloon, Death Valley

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

Greene Denner Drake Mill

Greene Denner Drake Mill

Tucked away in a small canyon just off of Emigrant Canyon/Wildrose Road, on the slopes of the northern Panamint Mountains at 5,020 feet elevation, sits the Greene-Denner-Drake Mill. Forever in the shadow of its more famous neighbor, Skidoo, this quiet spot sees few visitors. This little camp contains

Graham Mine

Graham Mine

Prospectors flooded into the southern Black Mountains during the Greenwater mining boom of the early 1900s, scouring every canyon and wash. The Rhodes Spring area as well as Virgin Spring Canyon saw intermittent activity, with limited productive mining resulting (See Lost Rhodes Mine). The remote location with its subsequent high