Waterhole Ike, tale of a beer guzzler

Once upon a time there was a famous resident 

of Golconda, Nevada.  His name was “Waterhole Ike.”  He lived there in the 1970s.  Mark Cowley ran the local saloon called Waterhole  #1.  There was one customer who was regular as clockwork.  Every morning about 10:30 here he’d come for his bucket of beer.  There was one thing about the customer that was mighty peculiar; he was Cowley’s pig, named appropriately “Waterhole Ike.”  Cowley learned that big money could be made putting famous animals out to stud.  So he decided to form a syndicate, sell stocks and then watch the money roll in.  He read that the very same thing had been done when the champion racehorse, Secretariat, was sold to a syndicate.  Cowley began selling shares and soon the money was mounting up, so much so that Cowley figured he needed to open a bank account in Ike’s name.  The local bankers refused, because Waterhole Ike didn’t have a social security card.  Cowley got an application, gave Ike a last name, a father and mother, and a birth date (5/1/1974).  Cowley submitted the application, having signed for Ike and in no time at all Waterhole Ike had himself a Social Security number (530-80-4623) and later a proper bank account, so Cowley could deposit money for Ike’s retirement.  The $25 stud fees soon began rolling in.  The press got hold of this and soon Ike was in the national press.  Over several years Ike fell on hard times and his bank account started to shrink.  About that time Ike fathered nine little piglets.  Crowley went to the welfare office in Winnemucca.  He told them his friend with a proper social security card was out of work with nine children to support and long story short, Ike began receiving $600 a month and food stamps.  But Cowley never cashed the checks or used the stamps.   Cowley grew tired of the saloon business, so he sold it and moved away.  And what became of Waterhole Ike, a Golconda legend, he lived to a ripe old age, as far as pig life goes.  The End.

This is mostly fact believe it or not.  Sorry about the poor quality picture of Ike.  It’s the only one I could find.

Henry P. T. Comstock and His Big Mistake

Two Irish gold miners, Pat McLaughlin and Peter O’Reilly, were digging around a small spring up on Mount Davidson, near what would soon become Virginia City.  The year was 1859.  They found gold, but the two miners were annoyed by a bluish mud that fouled their sluice boxes and caked itself on picks and shovels.  When that mud was carried to an assayer in Placerville, it was found to be almost pure sulphuret of silver. 

    Not long after the discovery, Henry P.T. “ol’ Pancake” Comstock just happened to be passing by.  He had earned the nickname because people claimed he was too lazy to bake bread, making easy flapjacks instead.  He was born in Ontario, Canada in 1820 and as an adult drifted around a lot working in the United States and Mexico as a gold prospector, a trapper and a shepherd.  He arrived in the Nevada Territory just ahead of the greatest mining discovery ever made.  Comstock had earned the reputation as a braggart and somewhat of a charlatan.  Apparently Comstock had a keen understanding of ore.  The moment he accidently came upon the two miners and saw what they were doing he immediately announced that he owned the property. The gullible miners took him at his word and agreed to make Comstock a partner, which Comstock quickly accepted.  Because of his assertion, he insisted that the claim be named for him, so it became known, of course, as “The Comstock Lode” and went on to be the richest gold and silver strike in history.

    Gold and silver in Nevada also caught the attention of Abraham Lincoln, who needed additional capital in order to keep the Union solvent during the Civil War, so in 1864 Lincoln made Nevada a state even though officially it didn’t contain enough people to constitutionally become a state.  From this the state earned the nickname, “Battle Born State.”

    Comstock, a man who often made rash decisions, sold his interest prematurely for only a few thousand dollars.  He then purchased stores in Silver City and Carson City and bought a Mormon wife, who very soon upped and ran away.  Comstock’s businesses failed and he wandered off to Montana and wound up in Bozeman.  He died there in 1870 alone, having accomplished very little in his life. 

    It has been claimed that his turn of fortune and the missed opportunity with the Comstock Lode unhinged his mind.  It’s not clear exactly how he died.  One account says he was shot, either as a result of a robbery or as payback.  Another account claims he went insane because of his misfortune and committed suicide.  He had no family and so there was nowhere to send his remains.  He was buried in Bozeman. 

    But Henry P.T. “ol’ Pancake” Comstock lives on as one of Nevada’s colorful folk characters.

Q

O.D. Gass & the start of Las Vegas

While reading an article titled, The First 100 Persons Who Shaped Southern Nevada one name stood out from the others, not because of the person’s fame, but because I just liked his name...Octavious Decature Gass.

    He was born in 1829 in Richland County, Ohio of Scottish-Irish descent.  At 18 Gass began searching for a way to make a fortune.  Unfortunately his timing wasn't very good.  He’d arrived at the right places where either gold or silver deposits had been discovered, but always a little too late.  Since his mining claims never paid off, he decided to look elsewhere.  A friend asked him to be a partner in a store and ranch, which happened to be halfway between Salt Lake City and Los Angeles on the Mormon Trail in a valley that travelers in 1829 had named Las Vegas, which is Spanish for the meadows.  The valley was green and lush because of the many artesian wells. 

    In 1855 Mormons had built a fort and established a post office, which they named Bringhurst, in honor of the Mormon missionary who was directed by Brigham Young to establish a colony in the valley.  Two years later the site was abandoned because of political disagreements between the colony’s leadership.  Gass occupied the fort, renamed the site Los Vegas Rancho and built a ranch house using part of the fort's foundation and a wall.  He changed the spelling on purpose so as not to be confused with Las Vegas, New Mexico, a Mormon settlement 500 miles to the east.  The year was 1865.  

    Gass’s search for his fortune didn’t come from the pick and shovel work of mining; it came from selling to travelers and boomers (people who live in a boomtown) their daily necessities.  He and his partners restored and made many improvements to the old fort, hiring friendly Paiutes as laborers and soon it was a thriving way station.  Eventually Gass bought out his partners, which gave him sole ownership of 640 acres, to which he eventually added more acreage.  The ranch prospered, because it had sufficient water to support enough livestock, fruit trees and vegetable crops.  It kept O.D. in business for nearly twenty years.

    By the time Gass was 50 years old, he had all the appearance of a successful man.  He had expanded the ranch to 960 acres and had employed 30 men, which included a veterinarian, blacksmith, barn keeper, several Indian women to handle laundry and a cook.  O.D. was the Justice of the Peace of Lincoln County and had married the niece of U.S. Grant.  But he was also very much in debt, so he tried to sell the ranch.  At about that time  what was to be a bumper crop failed.  Gass had hoped it would bring in enough money to pay off his debts.  That was the last straw, so in 1881 he pulled up stacks and with his wife and children and 1,500 head of cattle abandoned the rancho and headed for California and oblivion.

    It would have been impossible in the late 1800s for O.D. Gass to imagine that his Los Vegas Rancho would eventually become a mega tourist attraction with high-rise hotels and all that glitz.  Ironically the man and the ranch are long forgotten, but there is a street downtown that bears his name.  And what would Gass say about not being well remembered?  I really don’t think he’d mind, because according to the article I read, apparently he didn’t care much for Nevada, anyway.

Shorty Harris, man of the desert

If you travel to the ghost town of Rhyolite, just outside of Beatty, Nevada, you’ll find this whimsical sculpture of a miner and his able bodied companion, a penguin.  What a hard rock miner would be doing with a penguin is beyond me, but then again nothing in the Goldwell Open Air Museum is a true reflection of reality (see my blog entry of May 2011).  The sculpture is a tribute to a local legendary character of the early days in Nevada, one Shorty Harris.  Shorty’s life mirrored the many mining towns that became Nevada ghost towns...rags to riches and back to rags.  (Side note: the artist, Fred Bervoets, said the penguin represented himself.  A penguin would be out of place in the desert and that’s just how Bervoets felt.)

    Frank “Shorty” Harris was born in Rhode Island in 1856.  He became an orphan at the tender age of seven and by age fourteen traveled from mining town to mining town, from Colorado to Arizona to Idaho.  Eventually he made his way to Death Valley and it must have agreed with him because he stayed in the area for the rest of his life.

    He stood 5’ 4”, had big ears, blue eyes and a bushy mustache.  Shorty was a teller of tall tells and a friend to anyone who was down on his luck.  In fact he was generous to a fault.

    Evidently Shorty could “smell” gold.  He made several discoveries, many worth a great deal of money, but Shorty rarely profited from them.  He was more interested in the searching than he was in amassing fortunes.  Then there was the fact that he like drinking and didn’t like the hard work of mining, so ultimately with each find he would sell it off for a pittance of its true value.

    His biggest discovery came as a lucky hapintance.  One morning he was camped with his partner, Ernest “Ed” Cross.  While Cross was fixing breakfast, Shorty was out chasing after his mule that had run off during the night.  Shorty tripped over a rock and as he stood up and brushed himself off he was amazed by the rest of rocks in the area.  He immediately yelled for Ed and they scooped up a bunch of the rocks and headed for Goldfield and an assayer.  The rocks where rich in gold and that was the beginning of the fabulous Bullfrog Claim.  Shorty named it that because of the color of the rocks.  To celebrate he went on a bender that lasted for days.  When he finally sobered up he learned he had lost or sold his interest in the discovery.

    Undaunted Shorty continued to wander the desert.  In 1904 he managed to get a grubstake and with a new partner headed for the Panamint Mountains where they found rich gold pockets.  And once again Shorty got drunk and spent much of time completely out of it while others were profiting.  As usual he came up penniless.

    A year later once again he convinced backers to grubstake him.  Now his partner was Jean Pierre “Pete” Aguereberry.  It was Aguereberry who made the discovery and this time Shorty’s backers kept Shorty from getting drunk and rushed him to San Francisco to find investors.  Finally Shorty came out of a discovery with money in his pocket: 50,000 shares in the Cashier Gold Mining Company and $10,000 in cash.  The town that sprung up around the claim was named Harrisberry and then a couple years later it was changed to Harrisburg.  Today there is very little left.

    Shorty Harris lived a long adventurous life.  He continued to prospect, but never really owning a mine of his own.  He simply loved the looking more than the having.  He died in 1934 in his cabin in Big Pine, California.  Shorty was laid to rest just as he requested, beside his old friend, Jim Dayton in the valley both of them loved, Death Valley.  The site is at base of the Panamint Range on the West Side Road.  He wrote his own epitaph.  He wanted it to read, “Here lies Shorty Harris, a single blanket jackass prospector.”

Hank Monk, one helluva stagecoach driver

So there I was in Carson City in my motel room watching a movie I’ve seen umpteen times and still enjoy.  It’s one of my top ten, and it’s none other than Stagecoach.  While the movie played on, I couldn’t help but think about what it must have been like to travel in one of those awkward looking contraptions.  It must have been pretty uncomfortable at any normal time and especially bad when racing across a playa with hostile Indians in hot pursuit.

 Stagecoach drivers were revered and in a class all their own.  They were the road warriors of their day.  I did a little research and found that they were called Jehus.*  The title was bestowed on them because of a quote from the Old Testiment, Kings 9:20,..” and the driving is like the driving of Jehu the son of Nimshi; for he driveth furiously.”  And some of them did indeed drive like Jehus.

    I ran across a piece on Henry James “Hank” Monk who was a real Jehus.  Monk drove the stage from Carson City, Nevada to Placerville on the other side of the Sierra and was famous for driving the route at breakneck speeds.  It was reported that he could make the 109 miles in less than 9 hours, which was amazingly fast then.**

    Hank Monk was born in Waddington, New York in 1826 and grew up with a great admiration for horses.  He first drove stage for Clark County in New York State.  His age at the time...12!  In 1852 he migrated to California and it’s believed he started driving stage between Sacramento and Auburn for the California Stage Company.  By 1857 he was driving for a different outfit that eventually was owned by Wells Fargo and Company.  He drove Nevada stages for them for more than twenty years.

    The trip that would eventually immortalized Monk was when Horace Greely, the famous New York Tribune editor, hired Monk to drive him from Carson City to Placerville.  As the story goes, Greely was running behind schedule.  He asked Monk if it was possible to cross the Sierra in time to make an appointment he had in Placerville that evening.  Monk assured Greely that he’d get him there on time.  What followed was the ride of Greely’s life.  Monk would later tell a newsman, “I looked into the coach and there was Greely, his bare head bobbing, ... holding on to whatever he could grab.”  Greely arrived in Placerville on time but completely disheveled and somewhat shaken.  He mailed the Tribune his version of the harrowing ride along with other accounts of Monk’s skills as a stagecoach driver. 

    The story eventually reached mining towns in Nevada and California where it was told and retold.  It then caught the attention of none other than Mark Twain.  If you go to chapter XX of Roughing It, you’ll find Twain’s heavily embellished version of the ride.  The following is from that chapter:

                  “Hank Monk cracked his whip and started off at an awful pace. The coach bounced up and down in such a terrific way that it jolted the buttons all off of Horace’s coat, and finally shot his head clean through the roof of the stage, and then he yelled at Hank Monk and begged him to go easier—said he warn’t in as much of a hurry as he was a while ago. But Hank Monk said, ‘Keep your seat, Horace, and I’ll get you there on time!’—and you bet you he did, too, what was left of him!”

    Humorist Artemus Ward, a pseudonym of Charles Farrar Browne, wrote a comical account of what he called the stagecoach ride from hell.  Apparently his version was less than flattering toward Greely.  It was read by Congressman Calvin Hulburd into the Congressional Record as a jab at Horace Greely, Hulburd’s political nemesis.

That's not Monk, but that's a typical stagecoach.

    Apparently Greely wasn’t pleased with what he considered less then flattering accounts of the trip.  He tried in vain to distant himself from Monk.  During this time Greely was a presidential candidate and he felt these stories could cost him the election, but actually it was his stand on major issues that led to a resounding defeat. 

    There’s even a song dedicated to the memory of Hank Monk.  It was published in 1885 with poet Joaquin Miller writing the words and none other than John Philip Sousa writing the music.  It was entitled Tally-Ho, which was the name Hank gave to his stagecoach.

    Hank Monk died of pneumonia in Carson City in 1883.  I’m sure that Mark Twain and the others had a lot to do with the fact that Monk is considered by many to be the greatest stagecoach drivers in American history.  And those same people called him one of our folk heroes.  On his tombstone these words are inscribed, “Sacred to the memory of Hank Monk, the whitest, biggest-hearted and best-known driver in the West.”

*Apparently Jehu can be pronounced several ways, JEE-hew, YAY-hoo, Gee-hu, or JAY-hugh.

**Stagecoaches averaged speeds of 4 to 7 mph for trips of 70 to 120 miles.  Monk made the 109-mile trip averaging 12 mph!

Wovoka

Wovoka was born a Northern Paiute In Nevada’s Smith Valley some time around 1856.  Very little is known of his childhood and his father is a bit of mystery also.  Some have speculated that his father was Tavibo, a Paiute religious leader and mystic, who prophesized that all whites would be swallowed up by the earth and all dead Indians would come back to life and they would be free of the white man forever.  He preached that before this could happen they must perform a traditional dance, while singing special songs.  Tavibo didn’t find an audience for his preaching, but his son, Wovoka, would.

    At age fourteen Wovoka’s father died and the young boy was taken in by David and Mary Wilson and given the name Jack Wilson, which he used when dealing with white people.  His foster parents were ranchers and Jack worked on the ranch well into adulthood.  The Wilsons were devout Christians and they taught Jack their faith.   He learned English, learned theology and could recite many Bible stories.

    No one knows for sure why Jack Wilson left the Wilson home.  He returned to live among the Paiute people where he gained a reputation as a powerful medicine man.  He began to make prophecies similar to the ones his father had made.

    Wovoka asserted that he could control the weather.   People claimed he could cause a block of ice to fall from the heavens, could end droughts with rain or even snow, could light his pipe with the sun and could form icicles in his hands.  He demonstrated his power by performing several seemingly impossible feats.  One of them was being shot with a shotgun and miraculously surviving.  Apparently no one questioned this even though magicians for many years had performed the same trick.  

    The Paiutes considered Wovoka a messiah based on a vision he had had during the solar eclipse of 1889.  It was a prophecy of things to come.  In it he saw the destruction of the whites, a replenishing of wildlife, the Indian dead would be resurrected and reunited with their families, suffering, starvation, pain and disease would disappear completely.  He taught that in order to bring his vision to reality, all Indians would have to live righteously and perform a traditional round dance.  Because ancestors were going to be resurrected, the dance became known as the ghost dance.  He told his followers that they must “not hurt anybody or do harm to anyone.  You must not fight.  Do right always...Do not refuse to work for the whites and do not make any trouble with them.”  News of his vision and the ghost dance spread like wild fire across the Rockies and onto the plains.  The Lakota people, the largest tribal group on the plains, adopted it with a fury and began performing the dance.   Wovoka’s teachings were now known as the ghost dance religion.

a Lakota ghost shirt

    Believers made ghost shirts, which they claimed would ward off any bullet fired at it.  While Wovoka’s preaching emphasized nonviolence, the Lakotas saw a chance to eliminate the whites once and for all.  News of their dancing and the ghost shirts caused great concern among the white settlers who had homesteaded former Indian lands.

    The year was 1890 and most of the Indian tribes were now living on reservations under the control of the US government.   However settlers on the plains began demanding the army do more to protect them and the army was concerned that Sitting Bull, the great Lakota chief, would lead the ghost dancers into battle again, so Sitting Bull was ordered to put a stop to the ghost dance, but the dancing continued.  Sitting Bull was arrested and during the arrest shot and killed.  A reorganized 3,000 member 7^th Cavalry, who fourteen years previous had been desimated in the battle at Little Big Horn, was ordered to the Lakota’s Pine Ridge Reservation.  The Indians were told that they must bring all their guns to a central location, which was located on the banks of Wounded Knee Creek.  During the confiscation of guns, a deaf Lakota either refused to lay down his gun or simply didn’t understand the order.  A struggle ensued and someone fired a shot.  The calvary commander order his troops to open fire.  The resulting gunfire was choatic and indescriminant and at close range.  There is disagreement as to the number of casualties.  Estimates as to the number of dead range as high as 300 Indians, which included men, women and children.  Twenty-five troopers also died, while 39 were wounded (It’s believed that many of the army’s casualties were from friendly fire). The tragedy became known as the Wounded Knee Massacre.  It marked the end of an era of Indian wars.  Just as quickly as the ghost religion had grown it died there at Wounded Knee.

    Soon after the massacre, Wovoka all but vanished.  Many years later he turned up at sideshows in county fairs.  He even become for a short time an extra in silent movies.  Wovoka died in 1932 basically a forgotten man.  It wouldn’t be until the 1970s that activitists would resurrect his memory and the memory of what happened at Wounded Knee. 

Robert Haslam & the Pony Express

Robert Haslam rode for the Pony Express during most of the time the brief service was in operation.  He was destined to become the most famous rider and would be known affectionately throughout the West as “Pony Bob.”  He was born in London, England in 1840 and arrived in America as a teenager.  He joined the Pony Express and was assigned the run from Lake Tahoe to Buckland’s Station, seventy-five miles to the east.  The ride that made him famous was a grueling 120 miles run that took him eight hours and twenty minutes, while wounded.  It was the fastest trip ever made by the Pony Express.  What was the message he carried?  It was Lincoln’s Inaugural Address.

    The famous midnight ride of Paul Revere and the Pony Express have something in common.  Over the years both have been embellished with a great deal of exaggeration.  One historian summed up the Pony Express’s history this way, “It’s a tale of truth, half-truth and no truth at all.”  Famed showman Buffalo Bill Cody, who had served as a rider, made a Pony Express enactment a part of his Wild West show, which greatly helped in making the mail service a bigger-than-life legend.

    But it is true that being a rider wasn’t easy work; it was lonely, arduous, and above all dangerous.  The Pony Express’s famous advertisement pretty much summed it up; it read,

               “Wanted: Young, skinny, wiry fellows not over eighteen.  Must be expert riders, willing to risk death daily.  Orphans preferred.”

    During the 1800s thousands of people left their homes behind in the East and headed out West.  Pioneers hungry for new lands left their roots and crossed the continent, thousands of future sourdoughs in search of riches raced to various mining sites throughout the new frontier and opportunists ready to provide services to all these people migrated along with them. 

    The only way these displaced people could communicate with those left back East was a very slow mail delivery by boat, which went from New York to Panama across Panama by canoe and mule, and then by boat again to San Francisco.  Or the somewhat faster method, but still slow overland mail service, which took three to four weeks.  In 1860 three men, William H. Russell, Alexander Majors and William B. Waddell, who were well-established freighters delivering supplies to military outposts came up with a fast mail service over land.  They claimed they would deliver the same mail in just ten days or less.  In the beginning the business was given the impossible name: Central Overland California and Pike’s Peak Express Company.  Very quickly it was shortened to simply the Pony Express.

    The route went through a whole lot of Indian land from St. Joseph, Missouri to Sacramento, California, a total of nearly 2000 miles and those Indians were already warring against the occupation of their land, so there was always the possibility that a rider would be attacked.  Being an expert rider and having a fast horse therefore were essential.

    Robert Haslam raised his right hand and took the following oath as did all the other riders:

         “I, ___, DO HEREBY SWEAR, BEFORE THE GREAT AND LIVING GOD, THAT DURING MY ENGAGEMENT, AND WHILE I AM AN EMPLOYEE OF RUSSELL, MAJORS AND WADDELL, I WILL, UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES, USE PROFANE LANGUAGE, THAT I WILL DRINK NO INTOXICATING LIQUORS, THAT I WILL NOT QUARREL OR FIGHT WITH ANY OTHER EMPLOYEE OF THE FIRM, AND THAT IN EVERY RESPECT I WILL CONDUCT MYSELF HONESTLY, BE FAITHFUL TO MY DUTIES, AND SO DIRECT ALL MY ACTS AS TO WIN THE CONFIDENCE OF MY EMPLOYERS. SO HELP ME GOD."

That’s a pretty remarkable, all encompassing oath if you ask me.  It seemed like a lot to expect from young adventure seeking youth.  But apparently it worked and they chose the right people, because in the eighteen months the service was in operation 34,753 pieces of mail were sent and delivered with only one mail delivery lost.  The service employed 183 riders and paid them as much as $150 a month, which is equivalent to about $2700 in today’s money.  And those riders survived pretty well considering all the hazards; Indians killed only one rider.  The completion of transcontinental telegraph service was the reason the Pony Express had to come to an end.  Obviously it wouldn’t be able to compete.  But it would have had to end as a business any way, because during the eighteen months it never ever showed a profit.

    And what became of Pony Bob?  He continued to work as a rider for Wells Fargo and later scouted for the U.S. Army.  He was with his good friend Buffalo Bill Cody, when Cody was sent to negotiate the surrender of Sitting Bull.  He died poor in Chicago in 1912.

JACK LONGSTREET, A Nevada Frontier Character

My interest in Andrew Jackson “Jack” Longstreet began when I picked up a copy of Sally Zanjani’s biography of this Nevada character.  She titled the book Jack Longstreet, Last of the Desert Frontiersmen.  Nevada deserts have always intrigued me; that’s why I visit them frequently.  I love the open spaces and the quiet solitude miles away from the maddening crowds.  I’ve come to realize that I wouldn’t want to live full time in any of them, but I do like to read about people who do, so when Zanjani’s book jumped out at me, or I should say the picture of Jack on the cover jumped out, I quickly bought it.  His story is as large as the man. 

    There he was a broad shouldered, bearded, determined looking elderly man dressed in sloppy clothes and a pointed hat with one hand hook in a pocket and the other holding what appears to be a walking stick. Longstreet stood six feet tall, but his powerful build made him seem even taller.  His long hair covered the fact that he was minus an ear.  He claimed that vigilantes, after capturing a gang of cattle rustlers he was with, hanged them, but because of his youth, they spared him and only cut off his ear as punishment.  The picture shows a deep tan, which apparently was as dark as the Indians he lived amongst; however there is no evidence of what Zanjani describes as his sparkling blue eyes.   Study the picture for a few moments.  Can there be any doubt that here was a force to be reckoned with?

    Longstreet made his way into Nevada in the late 1800s and was the kind of mysterious character that we find throughout Western lore.  So what is known about Longstreet?  First of all, he was a rugged individualist, who apparently had a strong moral code.  He was known to have a quick temper and was involved in several gunfights; as evidenced by the gun he packed, a long-barreled Colt .44 favored by old time gunfighters.  It had several notches scratched into it.  But Jack was also a man of contradictions.  In stark contrast to his persona, he spoke with a soft Southern drawl and had a “gentlemanly, almost courtly style, and a warm brand of Southern hospitality that offered every amenity to a guest and a cocked gun to the unidentified stranger.” He roamed the deserts of Nevada and Arizona engaged in a wide range of enterprises: at one time or another he was a prospector, a rancher, a saloonkeeper, a trailblazer, a stagecoach shotgun rider, a defender of Indian rights, and a thorn in the side of ranching and mining interests.  For the most part he was a loner, but he found friendship amongst the Southern Paiutes, learned to speak their language and had Paiute wives.  Eventually the Paiutes came to regard him as a leader.

    I learned that Longstreet once lived in what is now the Ash Meadow Wildlife Refuge located about ninety miles northwest of Las Vegas in the Amargosa Valley.  I wanted to learn more about Longstreet, so I visited Ash Meadow in 2008, where his stone cabin had been restored.  The location must have been to Longstreet’s liking; it was remote, sat at the edge of a crystal blue spring and was a good place where he could raise horses.  He squatted on the land and named it Ash Meadow Ranch.  He built the cabin up against a mound, into which he dug a cave that provided natural refrigeration.  There were two other structures on the property; a wooden frame house and a shed, but they’re long gone.  After a few years, he sold the place and moved to nearby Windy Canyon, where he established a ranch and a mine.

    Jack Longstreet’s last days are shrouded in mystery.  In 1928 he accidently shot himself in the armpit and shoulder.  He went to a hospital in Tonopah, was treated, but left before he should have.  Back at his Windy Canyon ranch, the wound festered and then Longstreet suffered a stroke.  After several days, when he hadn’t show up for his daily visit, a friend rode over to Longstreet’s place and found him unable to move, lying alone.  After suffering the stroke and without water for three days in the deadly heat, it was remarkable that Longstreet, a 94 year old, was still alive.  It remains a mystery as to where Fannie, his Paiute wife, was during this time.  Zanjani asks, “Had she turned aside from him, believing, in the Southern Paiute way, that a man grown old and helpless is better off to die?”  Once again Longstreet was in the hospital, but this time he would not up and leave.  A car was dispatched to find and bring Fannie to the hospital, but Longstreet died before she got there.  Four years later Fannie died and she was laid to rest beside him in Belmont, Nevada.

    Jack Longstreet lived the life of a self-reliant man, a man on the move, a man to be feared and a man of contradictions.  His early life is a mystery and his later life the stuff of which myths are made.  On that score Sally Zanjani concludes, “In the life of Longstreet, however, the myth was also the truth” and because of that he is remembered as one of Nevada’s frontier characters.     

Q

Scot's Shady Court

Every year during March I go on what I call My Walkabout.  It’s off first to Winnemucca and Shooting the West, an unfortunate title for a symposium, especially one conducted in the Wild West where most trucks come equipped with gun racks and some of the folks may be packing heat.  Nevertheless it’s a fantastic opportunity to listen to the luminaries of the photography world and to renew friendships with a bunch of truly nice people from all over the West, as far away as Illinois. 

I always stay at Scott’s Shady Court Motel, a throwback to a much earlier time.  Well, let’s face it so am I.  I love these funky relics and search them out wherever I travel.  The funkier the better.   Just as long as the linen and towels are clean, the rug reasonably stain free, and the bathroom scrubbed I’m happy.  I don’t even mind that Shady Court has no artwork on the walls.  Tis better to have no art then some of the stuff you see in motels.  The rooms are small, about the smallest you’ll find on the open road.  How small are they?  So small you have to step outside just to change your mind.   Ah, but there’s a swimming pool.  It’s indoor, which means winter or summer and all the times in between swimming’s a possibility.  Don’t expect a continental breakfast, instead Louise, the owner, has a large jar of penny candy on the front desk.  It’s a mystery to me how heat is delivered to the rooms.  I have yet to find any controls and vents are not apparent.  Luckily I like to sleep on the cool side.  Run the hot water in the shower a few minutes and the bathroom heats up.  The picture is from a few years ago when I was assigned to Room 58, Santa Catalina.

The motel got its start in the early 1930s.  It was used to house not only travelers, but World Progress Administration (WPA) workers as well.  The dual purpose continues today; it's not uncommon to find seasonal workers in residence alongside the weary I-80 traveler.

I made a survey of reviews posted on the web....7 travelers gave the motel 5 stars, 7-4 stars, 2-3 stars, 4-2 stars and one 1 star.   That averages out to 3.7 stars, which is pretty good for a funky motel.  One person summed up their stay this way. “I rather sleep in my car.  What a dump.”  Another said, “...stayed at this place 8 times, it’s perfect for people who like charming rooms with really cool 1960s furniture.”  Isn’t it amazing how opinions differ.  And then there was this, “We might stay there again if we absolutely must, but we hope to not have to return to Winnemucca for anything.”  Now that’s gone too far.  It’s one thing to run down the Shady Court, but when you malign Winnemucca, them’s fighting words.

And that’s the way it is at Shady Court.

Oh, there’s been a FOR SALE sign out front for the past few years.  No one seems to want to take on this millstone of a motel.  I can understand why, there’s a whole lot of deferred maintenance that would reach deep into a new owner’s pockets.  A friend tells me that he thinks whoever buys it will tear it down.  I hope not.  Would be a shame to lose this link to a time when the roads where less crowded and a cheap motel room cost under $5.

PS...If you go to http://www.rdmenzies.com/blog you can read my good friend Richard Menzies report on Shady Court.

Q

Sheep Ranch

Many years ago I attended a photography workshop in Sheep Ranch located in the Sierra foothills, not far from the historic town of Murphys.  I turned off State Route 4, the Ebbetts Pass National Scenic Byway, and headed into the center of Murphys and was surprised by the change.  I used to come to Murphys in the old days when it was just a tired out reminder of a time when people rushed in for gold.  It always appeared to be barely alive, but in recent years it has had a new birth and is now called the “Queen of the Sierra, One of the Ten Coolest Small Towns in America.”

   I drove down the main street passed boutiques, gift shops, cafes and wineries searching for Sheep Ranch Road.  The first time through, I passed right by it; I thought it was an alley. The road was narrow and wound its way up, over and around many mountains.  These mountains showed the scars of a recent devastating fire.  The Mother Lode country has had a long tradition of burning out its inhabitants, but still they come.

   Sheep Ranch got its name because of the sheep corrals that surrounded it.  In 1860, the place quickly changed to a mining town when gold was discovered in those corrals.  In a quick gold rush minute it went from corrals to fifteen saloons and five flourishing gold mines.

    Today it’s a mixture of old dilapidated shacks and a few newer homes.  When I arrived some children had placed a small bicycle ramp in the middle of “Main Street” and were noisily enjoying themselves.  The heart of what’s left of downtown with its one building was just a mere twenty feet from where they played.  Part of the old building was the post office, which appeared to be alive and well, the other part looked like it might have been at one time a grocery store.  Outside an old Texaco pump with a glass top sat rusting.  Everywhere paint was peeling, creating rich patterns of age and neglect. 

    The inn where I stayed was also a relic from a time when stagecoaches were the mode of transportation and passengers stopped for the night.  The parlor was filled with overstuffed furniture and a large steel barrel stove.  The green and red walls were a mosaic of pictures, deer heads, tools, a stuffed badger and a stuffed squirrel, the Mona Lisa and an assortment of treasures that one might find in an antique store.  Downstairs also contained a bar complete with a barber chair and spittoon, a small poker room just big enough for one table, a kitchen confused with old and new, two bedrooms with marvelous period furniture, and a large dining room with a buckboard hanging from the ceiling.  Upstairs there were more bedrooms, creaking floors and lumpy beds.  Bathrooms came late in the life of this old relic.  Several years ago a tower was added on the backside of the building.  It housed two bathrooms down and two up.

    Next-door, George Hearst made his fortune.  From the 3600-foot shaft George and his miners coaxed, sweated, and blasted millions of dollars worth of gold.  While nosing around I discovered a small mountain of tailings.  It gave mute testimony to their efforts.  While I stood on the pile of rocks, I imagined the following scene.  George Hearst and his son, perhaps on that very spot were deep in conversation.  George wanted his son to continue the family business. 

   “No, Father I have other plans, besides I rather live in an enormous castle on a mountain top overlooking the Pacific.”

    “Ok, my son here’s a couple million.  Go peddle your papers.”

    And so William Randolph Hearst did precisely that.

Q

Coeur d'Alene

Ah beautiful Coeur d"Alene!  We arrived during a drizzling rain and an unseasonable cold snap.  The thermometer should have read 75-80 degrees, but instead it only had been in the high 50s for days.  According to local weather forecasts, it would continue to be stuck there for a while.  I overheard a local man ask a sales clerk, "Well, did you enjoy your summer?"  He was joking about the brief warm spell they had had a week ago.  Enough about the weather, what is it about this wonderful place that makes me like it so?

    The lake, the marina, the many shops, the shoreline park, the high-rise condominiums, and the downtown work together perfectly to make this a great destination.  There had been a few changes since our first trip fifteen years earlier.  I guess it's inevitable that strip malls have to be built when a city grows.  But Coeur d'Alene has done a pretty good job of keeping theirs to a minimum.

    We strolled through the pleasant downtown and the nearby city park situated at water's edge. Nearby, dominating the waterfront, is the very posh, eighteen story resort simply called Coeur d'Alene Resort.  Linda remarked that the modern interior reminded her of a Las Vegas casino, without the slots.  People were gathered around a huge wood-burning fireplace while others window-shopped at the several boutiques.  Outside, the resort’s marina was filled with speedboats of every description.  Blue canopies cover each slip adding nicely to the ambience.  We strolled the pier and watched a seaplane land and then take off again.  I’ve got to hand it to the pilot; from what I understand landing on water can be tricky.  This guy made it look easy.  Two young boys were swimming in the lake.  "Egad! Don't they know it's cold?"  Then I remembered my own youth.  At that age when you feel like swimming, and there's no one around to say, "Don't you dare, you'll catch pneumonia," you swim.  Cause and effect is something a young swimmer doesn’t worry about.

    We took a trip around the northern part of the lake in one of the tour boats.  There were some really nice summer homes on the western shore.  In one section, the owners chose to have no roads, so the only way in is by boat, not bad if you ask me.

    So what does Coeur d'Alene mean?  You just knew I would eventually have to tell you, didn't you?  It is of course French.  The early trappers who traded with the local Indians found the tribe to be sharp, hard hearted traders.  "They have pointed hearts the size of an awl's point," the trappers declared.  So instead of calling the Indians by their rightful name, which was Schee-Chu-Umsh, they called them Coeur d'Alene, "heart of an awl."  The name stuck and there you have it.

    I think Coeur d’Alene is almost perfect, not too big, not too small, about 34,000 people, enough to have a decent infrastructure.  And then there’s the waterfront setting, snow, forests all around, beautiful scenery and a really nice downtown.  How could anyone ask for anything more?

Q