Trail's End Publishing Company - The Silence and The Sun
  • Home
  • About
  • The Silence & The Sun
  • Purchase
  • Gallery
  • Reviews
  • Blog

blog

Amboy School

10/21/2023

 
The original school in Amboy was a wooden structure built by Santa Fe in 1903 close to the railroad tracks on the southwest side of town.  It was a 2-room school with primary grades one through four in one room, and grades five through eight in the other. Once students graduated from the eighth grade they attended high school in Needles.  The school district in San Bernardino paid room and board for students to stay with families in Needles during the week, and on weekends the students returned home, usually on the train or by Greyhound bus.  While the Amboy school was in operation a school bus from Amboy picked up the grade school children from adjacent communities like Bagdad, Saltus and Cadiz, but it was not until years later that a school bus was available to take high school students from Amboy to Needles and back each day – a 3-hour hour round trip.  
 
A modern school was built in Amboy about 1931, and the original wooden school building was physically moved north of the highway to where it is now, near the new school.  For a time after it was moved the building continued to be used first for a teacher’s residence and later for music and shop classes..   
 
At its peak the Amboy school probably had less than fifty students and four full-time teachers, including the principal, several of whom also taught classes.  As the salt mining operations at Saltus began to decline and the roadside businesses along Route 66 began to close, the school population dwindled until it was no longer feasible to keep the school open.  The last teacher to hold classes in Amboy was Mary Bartel McGee.  Mary recalls that the job was especially challenging because students spoke three different languages – English, Spanish, and Navajo.  Mary taught at the school from the 1989/90 school year until the school finally closed in June 1999.   The last year the school was open there were only five students left to teach.
 
When the Amboy school closed the school in Essex was still open with classes being taught by Mary Howard.  Both teachers were fearful that when Amboy school closed the teaching materials would be swallowed up by Needles schools, so for several nights the two teachers spent their evenings loading supplies into boxes and spiriting them off to Essex.  The effort served its purpose for a year or two, but eventually the school in Essex also closed.

Picture
Amboy School, 1919

Picture
Amboy School, 1921
Picture
New school in Amboy, built in the early 1930s and open until 1999. The building is now abandoned and in a sad state of disrepair.

Mountain Spring Auto Camp

10/19/2023

 
34° 49’ 48.59” N.
115° 03’ 05.01” W.

Mountain Spring Summit is at the intersection of I-40, National Trails Highway, and Mountain Springs Road, 24 miles west of Needles, California and 14 miles east of Essex.  Today it is just an unremarkable interchange on I-40 and there is little evidence that before the construction of I-40 it was the site of Mountain Spring Auto Camp, a Chevron service station, a garage, a restaurant/café and several cabins owned by Joe and Effel Rudy.  There is some uncertainty if the Rudys were the original owners or if they acquired it from a previous owner.
 
Although the Rudys owned the property and occupied a house there, the café and service station were operated by Joe and Millie Turcott who lived in the small living quarters in the back of the restaurant.  Millie Turcott’s dad, “Grandpa”, who spoke with a think German accent, lived in one of the small cabins adjacent to the property.
 
When the Turcotts left, Mountain Springs was taken over by the Montoya family, but the years of ownership for all of the families who lived there are uncertain.  All of the facilities would have been demolished when I-40 was built in the early 1970s.
 
Today, there are some concrete foundations scattered on the south-facing side of the hill that faces the highway - traces perhaps of cabins or out-buildings related to the business, but I-40 has apparently been built over the place where the garage and service station once stood.

​                                                                All photos courtesy of Betty Hunter.
Picture
Mountain Spring Auto Camp.
Picture
Mountain Spring with Goffs Bluff in the distance.
Picture
"Grandpa" Turcott. A very distinguished looking gentlemanm, at Mountain Spring with Goffs Bluff in the distance.

Milligan Cemetery

10/17/2023

 
​Milligan is on the Parker Branch of the railroad leading from Cadiz, California to Parker, Arizona and dates from 1910 when the spur line was built.    As a railroad siding Milligan was active from 1910 to about 1955 and had several section houses, a foreman’s house and a bunkhouse where the railroad workers lived. It was also the center for a salt mining operation that is still active. 
 
The families of railroad workers who lived in Milligan planted Salt Cedar trees for shade as well as a windbreak. Although there is no one left in Milligan to water the trees, they are still surviving and the concrete water catchments built around the base of the trees by the residents more than seventy years ago are still there.
Milligan Cemetery
 
34° 16’ 39.41” N.
115° 09’ 57.08” W.
​
​There are about eleven graves at the Milligan cemetery.  I first discovered this cemetery in 2002 based on a description from a friend named Paul Limon, a former resident of Chubbuck.  Paul’s brother Efrén died in 1935 as a 2-week old infant and was buried at Milligan.  When I found the cemetery it was barely recognizable.  Three of the graves had wooden sticks or crosses but if names were ever inscribed on the crosses they had long since weathered away.  The other graves were simply ringed with stones.  It is a lonely cemetery, but Efrén has a new marker on his grave, placed there by his brother Paul.   In placing a new marker at his brother’s grave, Paul decided to place makers at the other graves as well and did so without disturbing the original wooden crosses.  
 
Other than Efren Limon, the only other person that I know of who was buried at Milligan is Delores R. de Fernandez, age 59 who died of heat prostration July 30,  1910.  Which of the graves belongs to Ms. De Fernandez is uncertain.
Picture
Milligan Cemetery in 2002
Picture
Milligan cemetery with the new markers.
Picture
The new marker on Efren Limon's grave in Milligan, placed there by his brother, Paul.

"Dove cabin"

10/8/2023

 

This cabin blended in to the shadows of the adjacent mountain so well that I almost overlooked it while exploring some mine ruins.  I just happened to notice a glint of sunlight from one of the broken windows.  This is one of the few cabins that I discovered where I was able to learn some of the history.

As I understand it, the cabin was originally occupied by an Indian woman named Dove who had lived there since childbirth.  Over the years she apparently mined some very rich gold ore from shallow excavations in this general vicinity, and she was married several times and all of her husbands disappeared mysteriously.  Dove eventually sold the cabin to a prospector named Bill Sherrill from Las Vegas and she moved somewhere near Sandy Valley, Nevada where she died in the late 1990s or early 2000s.  

Dove's cabin was probably an ideal home at one time with a large screened front porch, and it had at least 2 large bedrooms.  Judging from the rusty bed frames on the front porch, the occupants probably slept out there during hot summer nights.
Picture
Picture

Overlooking a dry wash

10/8/2023

 
This cabin was one of several small cabins in the area that I discovered that overlooked a dry wash.  They were all constructed in the same manner, with a wooden framework covered in chicken wire and smeared with a thin coat of plaster.  Unfortunately, the elements have not been kind and this cabin that I first visited in 2008, is rapidly deteriorating.   Adjacent to the cabin was a rock with the word "Dilworth" scratched into the surface.  The letters below the name were too badly weathered to be legible.
Picture

Abandoned mine & cabin

10/6/2023

 
I found this abandoned cabin while hiking on January 2, 2009.  I had celebrated New Years by camping in Ward Valley and was surprised to wake up the next morning to a light dusting of snow - the absolute last thing I expected to see when I crawled out of the tent although it had rained lightly and turned cold during the night.  

I started to hike to a high point in the mountains just to get a broad view of the valley when I ran across a faint trail that led to this abandoned cabin and an adjacent small mine.  Although the day turned warm, there were still remnant patches of snow in the shadows of the trees, but most of that was gone by the end of the day.  

As with most of these places, I do not have any information about who built this cabin.  There was a propane-powered Servel refrigerator and a gas stove in the room that once served as the kitchen, but what was once a porch on the east side of the cabin has completely collapsed.

Picture

Clipper Mtns. cabin

10/6/2023

 
When I first discovered this cabin in the late 1990s the roof was still relatively in tact, but it has since collapsed.  I do not have any information about who built it.  Some say it belonged to Tom Schofield from Danby, but that is uncertain.  The first time I visited the cabin the road was in rough shape, but in the last ten years or so the road has become nearly impassable; it is possible to drive there however with a good off-road vehicle and lots of patience.
Picture

"Hank's Place", East Essex, California

10/2/2023

 

​
About a half mile east of Essex, at the junction of National Trails Highway and Goffs road was the site of a Texaco service station that was commonly known as “Hank’s Place”, named for Hank (Henry Joseph) Cusson who wanted to get out of the San Diego construction business.  Hank purchased the property from a woman named Frankie Moran who was anxious to leave Essex after her husband died.   Whether the Morans are the ones who first built the place is uncertain.  After purchasing the property Hank moved his family to Essex and operated the business from 1960 to about 1972.

The original Texaco service station was a wood frame building that caught fire from an overheated kitchen grill in 1968 and was destroyed.  Hank rebuilt the place with help from his relatives who flew in from New England, and this time he used corrugated tin siding instead of wood.   When completed the business was operated as a truck stop and consisted of a Texaco gas station, garage, café, a towing service and a 2,000-foot runway out back.  Hank was an accomplished pilot and residents of Essex at the time recall that it was not uncommon for California Highway Patrol officers to fly to Hank’s Place for lunch.  They also remember Hank being somewhat of a ‘daredevil’ pilot and having several minor accidents with his plane, a Cessna 140 and later a Cessna 172.  In emergencies he also occasionally flew injured motorists to the hospital in Needles.

The business was run by Hank with the help of his wife, Elva, two of his children, and occasional employees who lived on the premises.  Hank also sold used cars when the opportunity presented itself by scavenging parts and assembling vehicles from those that had been abandoned by unlucky motorists.    

Shortly after the Interstate-40 was completed in the early 1970s California passed an ordinance that underground gasoline storage tanks had to be renovated.  The cost of the upgrade combined with the downturn in highway traffic on Route 66 forced the service station to close, but the business continued to operate for a while as a garage, towing business, and café.  
​
Hank sold the property about 1972 and retired to Kingman, Arizona where he passed away on April 22, 2002.  His estranged wife, Alva, was in a nursing home in Long Beach, California at the time and died there on the same day as Hank.
​
Levi Gudmundson purchased the property from Hank and ran the business from about 1975 – 1982, and 1985 - 1990/91, and in later years the business went through several different owners, but in the late 1990s or early 2000s the business finally closed permanently.  Today the site is in ruins with only the shell of the café still standing amidst a field strewn with rubble and trash.
Picture
"Hank's Place"  in East Essex prior to the fire that destroyed the building in 1968.
Picture
July 29, 1968 when Hank's Place in East Essex caught fire and was destroyed.  Patrons seated in the cafe were initially unaware of the fire.  Hank was returning to Essex from Needles, saw the smoke from the highway, and rushed in to get everyone out.  This photo was taken by a passing motorist who later sent the photo to Hank.
Picture
Photo taken in 1977 of the the rebuilt cafe in East Essex.  A TV antenna is being installed on the roof of Hank's cafe.  1977 was the year that Essex was able to receive television service.
Picture
Henry (Hank) Cusson (L) with his step son, Joe Schreiner (R) near Hank's Cessna at East Essex.
Picture
The remains of Hank's Place; photo taken in 2018.

Essex, California

9/30/2023

 
Essex has seen better days.  When Interstate-40 was completed in the mid-1970s the 70-mile stretch of highway between Ludlow, California and Fenner was bypassed, and towns like Essex and businesses that depended on motorists – motels, service stations, garages, and cafes - died almost overnight.
​
Essex is in eastern San Bernardino County, California, about 45 miles west of Needles and was initially established by the Southern Pacific Railroad (later the  Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway, and now the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway) in 1883 as a railroad maintenance camp.  It was originally called Edson, but sometime prior to 1915 the name was changed to Essex -- the railroad retained the precedent of naming the stops between Amboy and Needles in alphabetical order – Amboy, Bolo, Cadiz, Danby, Essex, Fenner, etc.  The railroad facilities in Essex at the time were nothing more than a converted box car that was used as a ‘station’, a section house for the railroad workers, and a house for the superintendent and his family.

Picture
Original "Essex depot", c. 1929.
By most accounts, the residential and business community of Essex that was not associated with the railroad was first established by a man named G. T. Blythe (no relation to the town off Blythe, California) who arrived there in 1930 with his wife and two daughters, Dorothy and Mary L.  Mr. Blythe noticed there were vast stretches of roads through the desert without facilities for motorists – it was 100 miles between Needles and Ludlow, California, and another fifty miles to Barstow so he decided to open a small garage and gasoline service station at Essex, at the intersection of Route 66 and the road going north to Mitchell Caverns.  At this time, Route 66 was just a dirt road adjacent to the railroad tracks.   

The original dirt road through Essex that paralleled the railroad and continued to Fenner and Goffs was designated National Old Trails Road by the National Old Trails Road Association in 1913.  In 1926, the road was renamed U.S. Highway 66, but it took several years to pave the new highway across the desert and it was paved by the county from west to east; from Barstow to Needles. When the road crews reach Essex in about 1931 the highway engineers realized they could shorten the remaining road length from Essex to Needles by eight miles by constructing a route directly east from Essex to the pass at Mountain Springs rather than following the gradual grade paralleling the railroad through Fenner and Goffs. Thus, was born the Mountain Springs cutoff.

With the bypass to Mountain Springs completed it then became Route 66 and the road through Fenner and Goffs was renamed Goffs Road.   The newly paved highway was positioned about an eighth of a mile north of the tracks, where the paved road is today, so Blythe was obliged to relocate his service station up to the new highway so it would be accessible to motorists.

As traffic on Route 66 continued to increase in the 1930s and especially in the late 1940s after WWII, more and more businesses began to be established in Essex.   At its peak Essex had 4 gas stations, two garages, two markets, a motel (The Wayside Inn), a post office, and two cafés but not all of them were operating at any one time.  There was never a church or cemetery in Essex.  A grave for a mother and two children purported to be east of the town in the early 1930s has now been completely erased by time.

In 1929 a school was opened in Essex through the efforts of Mr. Blythe and Mr. G W. Simpson, an Essex resident.  Classes were initially held in a converted boxcar and the first teacher to be employed there was Miss Ida Collins.   The school eventually was moved to a house that was donated to the school district, but a new school was built in the 1930s to accommodate from 20 to 30 students in multiple grades in two separate classrooms.  In 1940 Essex received a newly purchased school bus that featured “all-steel body, shatter-proof glass, hydraulic brakes, insulated gas tank, and a rear door exit.”   Exa (Derm) Neilson, wife of Johnny Neilson from Danby and Mrs. Howard taught classes in Essex for most of the time the school was open, and Mr. Rayburn Werts was the sole teacher in later years just before the school closed in 1967.  Although Mr. Werts was the only teacher at the time, the school principal, Mr. Tony Johnson, was in Needles.
​
The Essex school closed in 2002 because of the declining population in and around Essex and thereafter children had to travel 40 miles to Needles to attend school.  When the railroad ceased to require employees to be stationed at Essex the house formerly used by the railroad superintendent was donated to the school and was moved to the school grounds and used as a teacher’s residence.

Picture
Picture
The photo of the left is the original Essex school.  It was first the residence of the railroad superintendent ,and was donated to the school district when the Essex depot was closed.  When the new school was built (shown on the photo on the right), the original school building was used as a teacher's residence.
Essex reached its peak population in the 1960s and 1970s. The permanent population of Essex probably never exceeded about 35 people, and at one time there were 4 families there named Smith:  
  • Mary Blythe, daughter of Mr. Blythe who established the town, married Walt Smith and for a time in the 1960s they ran the Mobil service station adjacent to the post office.  
  • Doug and Patsy Smith also lived in Essex and ran John Bentley’s Shell service station.  
  • Jerry Smith (Doug’s brother), a truck driver, retired to Essex with his wife Virginia who worked in the school cafeteria and as a teacher’s aide.  
  • ​Erv Smith and his wife Helen and their three daughters lived for a time about nine miles south of Essex near Weaver’s Well and later moved to Essex and ran the Wayside Inn.
The post office in Essex and the adjacent former market are unique having been built by Mr. Blythe with a façade using rock gathered locally from the surrounding desert.  Although there were a number of Essex residents and school children who worked in the post office as helpers, there were only three postmasters during its existence – Eva (Parker) Craig, Eunice (Craig), and Jack Howard before the post office was permanently closed.
Picture
Picture
Two photos of the post office in Essex (now closed) that was originally built by Mr. Blythe and constructed with a facade of local rock.
Motorists driving across through the Mojave Desert in the 1940s, 50s and 60s did not have air-conditioned vehicles and consequently they traveled mostly at night to avoid the heat.  Still, overheating was a major problem for both passengers and the cars.  A former Highway Patrol officer commented that most mornings found a hundred or more cars alongside the highway through the desert, stranded because of overheating.  In the 1930s the highway maintenance crew put in a small water well on the west end of Essex to provide free water to travelers to fill their radiators without them having to ask for water and be pressured into buying gasoline or oil at a service station in town.  The well is still there today on the south side of the highway west of town - a small circular well with stone walls and a wood-shingled roof although it is no longer operating.
Picture
Water well at the west side of Essex installed by the California highway maintenance crew for the benefit of travelers needing water for their cars.  The well is no longer in service.
Picture
The “Carlos House” one of the few houses in Essex on the north side of the road, was built in the late 1920s to house the maintenance men who worked on the telephone line. The telephone line was just north of Essex and was installed in 1929 and connected the East coast with the west coast – the first intercontinental phone line.  The land was owned by the Craig family in Essex, and when it was no longer used for the maintenance personnel, Eunice Craig turned the building it into a restaurant.  All evidence of the telephone lines is now gone; the poles have been removed.  The Carlos family used the house as a home and ran a cafe for a while, but the years they were there are uncertain.  The house was also used as a beauty salon for a short time.  Sadly the years have taken their toll, and the house is now in danger of collapse.

Picture
Picture
The "Carlos House" in Essex in 2004 (left) and 2018 (right).
Wayside Inn
The Wayside Inn, on the west end of Essex, was built in the early 1930s and consisted of a cafe, grocery store, a garage, a gas station and 14 motel cabins.  It was the only motel ever operating in Essex.  In the early years it was run by Mr. and Mrs. Fred Miller, but whether they were the first owners is uncertain.  The motel caught fire in the mid-1940s when the Millers were running it, and the property was then purchased by Mr. & Mrs. Burl Chambers who rebuilt it and ran it from about 1946 until about 1950.  

​In later years the Wayside Inn had several different owners/operators including
Fred Boyer and Uell Woods of Phoenix, Arizona who leased the motel from Burl Chambers in 1950, Ervin Smith ran it for a while, and in the early 1960s it was run by a family named Finzell [sp?].  Records of who owned it and when are confusing, and it seems that eventually the café and grocery store closed and only the service station, garage and motel were in operation.   In 1948 Burl Chambers leased the business to Fred Boyer and Uell Woods from Phoenix, but it is doubtful if the men ever followed through with the lease because Burl still owned the property in 1950.  A fire destroyed the Wayside Inn again in 1958 and was probably the end of the business; there is no indication that it was ever rebuilt.   A couple of the small wooden cabins are still standing amidst the concrete foundations where other cabins once stood, but aside from that and some rusting clothesline poles little else remains.
Picture
Picture
Picture
Some early photos of the Wayside Inn (top), and the remains of one of the motel rooms that still remains.
Until the 1950s the houses and businesses in Essex were dependent on delivery of water by the Santa Fe railroad that drew the water from their facilities at Fenner, fifteen miles northeast of Essex.  However, Eunice (Craig) who owned property in Essex and Burl Chambers who ran the Wayside Inn, each drilled wells on their respective properties in about 1954 and the town no longer had to depend on water deliveries from the railroad.  Drilling of the water wells was inspired by the fact that 1954 was also the year that Essex was connected to the rural electric grid and no longer had to rely on generators for electricity.  This was also the year they got flush toilets!  It seems that 1954 was a banner year for Essex!  

Motorists driving into Essex today are greeted by a green highway sign that reads “Essex pop. 100, elev. 1775”.  Although the elevation is correct, there are only 3 permanent residents; the basis for the population figure on the road sign was decided upon by the highway department by the number of boxes in the post office.

Picture
  Once Interstate-40 was completed in the early 1970s, Essex was bypassed and the population quickly dwindled.  Now all of the businesses in Essex have closed and many of the buildings are unoccupied and succumbing to the elements – although a few residents remain, these days the only signs of life in Essex are mainly just the occasional railroad workers and highway maintenance crews.   

 Note: With the exception of the Highway Department maintenance yard almost the entire property encompassing Essex is privately owned and visitors should seek permission before venturing off of the highway.

An Underground Cabin

10/14/2022

 
About one-eighth of a mile east of the cluster of buildings at Danby on National Trails Highway, old Route 66, are the remains of a tiny 'cabin', which was built of railroad ties and mostly underground except for a 2' section above ground that was lined with sheets of tin as weatherproofing.

Whether there was ever a cabin or living area on top of the structure is difficult to tell, but having a living area underground would have been prudent given how hot it can be in this part of the Mojave Desert during summer months.  

What would have been the roof of the cabin is made of wooden planks that are now falling in.  The entrance to the underground area was a small cut-out in the roof that measures about 3' x 4' with a ladder leading down.  The ladder has long since rotted away, and the living area is gradually filling with sand that has blown in over the years.

Near the cabin are several large fenced corrals made of railroad ties that may have been for burros or cattle.  

I have never been able to find out when the structure was built nor who lived there, but it seems to be very old and pre-dates the existing buildings at Danby.  A fellow who lived in Danby
as a young boy in 1955 recalls that they used to play there as kids and the structure was old and abandoned even then.


Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture
<<Previous

    Overview

    Read more about Joe's photos, book excerpts, articles, updates, & more!

    Archives

    October 2023
    September 2023
    October 2022
    January 2022
    August 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    November 2019
    May 2018
    August 2017
    July 2017
    September 2016
    August 2016

    Categories

    All
    Amboy
    Cadiz_Calif.
    Calif.
    Carbonate Gulch
    Chambless
    Danby
    Desert_Engineering
    Desert_Tortoise_Episode
    Essex
    House On The Hill
    Ludlow
    Ludlow Garage & Service Station
    Milligan_Calif.
    Miner's_cabins
    Mountain Spring
    Old Woman Mountains
    Places To Visit
    Rattlesnake
    Roadrunner's Retreat
    Tarantula
    Train Vs Tank
    Ward Valley

©  2022 Trail's End Publishing | All Rights Reserved | Site built by Canopy Creative Marketing.  Please contact the author for permission to use any of these photos.
  • Home
  • About
  • The Silence & The Sun
  • Purchase
  • Gallery
  • Reviews
  • Blog