Mid-June, 1964
The stark grandeur of the Sierra rising up out of the Owens Valley stunned me. I had never seen such a thing in person. Nature, and the wonders it presented on that trip, formed an impression that has lasted to this day. I had always been intrigued with the idea of being a Forest Ranger. It seemed a romantic and rugged way of life. And though I had been accepted to Loyola University and was to start classes about eight weeks hence, I resolved to look into the Forest Ranger opportunity as a transfer to Humboldt State in Arcata in my sophomore year. As it happened, I found the curriculum at Humboldt dauntingly science-oriented and I decided to go on at Loyola U.
I have never lost my enthusiasm and joy at seeing those landmarks I discovered for the first time in 1964. They are like old friends and represent some sense of permanence and continuity in the world.
The standouts are......
Red Rock canyon with its multi-hued mud towers arrayed like some ancient fortress; the scene of many an early cowboy movie and completely accessible back then; with names and graffiti carved into the lower columns, some dating back years....
Red and black cinder cones dotting the valley floor; some overlapping others. Ancient lava flows, now frozen, gushed from those cones and flowed for miles. The highway had to be cut through those flows. The basalt palisades just before Little Lake rose almost two hundred feet above the floor of what had been the bed of the ancient glacier fed Owens River on its way to southern Death Valley to form a number of lakes.
The "Hubcap Capitol of the World" in Pearsonville. A vast junkyard of old cars with racks of hubcaps arrayed for hundreds of feet. Hubcaps, back in those days, were made of metal and mostly chrome plated. Pearsonville is no longer the hubcap capitol of the world. It looks forlorn and abandoned now, there being no evidence of management.
Owens Lake, dry and glaringly white in the afternoon sun. At that time the minerals and salts of the lakebed were "mined" in ponds where briny water evaporated under the hot sun and left crystalline residue that was scraped up and bagged for shipment to chemical processing centers. The different colors of the crystals were startling...reds, oranges, browns, ochres and greens. I remember fierce winds raising monumental clouds of salt and mineral dust over the lakebed as we drove south on our way home,
The "Ghost Trees" that dotted the valley floor north of the Owens Lake. The valley floor had once been fed by the Owens River all the way to the Lake. Once that water was diverted by Los Angeles, the stands of trees that grew along the river course and its tributaries began to wither and die. Many were still standing, but dead and bare. They disappeared over the years and I sometimes wonder if they were a figment of my imagination.
Manzanar, the "Re-location" center for the Japanese-American detainees during WWII. All that remained in view from the road was the stone guard-house that stood at the entrance of the center.
A bit north was a large hangar type building that served as a hall for the detainees. Manzanar has been made into a monument and tours are now conducted for visitors. Forty-eight years ago it was a desolate and forgotten place...but not forgotten by the people who were forced to live there for years.
On the western edge of the reserve there is a white obelisk towering above the camp cemetary. There are only two graves still marked by stone monuments. In one of them lie the remains of a two year old child. I found it touching to see hundreds of small paper origami birds and ornaments windblown through the sagebrush and desert terrain....all left by visitors. Many had faded messages handwritten in Japanese or English.
Olancha....on the map, but really a gas stop and a few commercial establishments, the Ranch House Restaurant being the only notable one. The inside is still hung with the pictures of Hollywood stars who had stopped in for food while shooting on location in the nearby mountains. I remember the huge cottonwoods shedding the "cotton" from their flowers in such quantity that the roadside looked buried in snow drifts.
Independence, Lone Pine and Big Pine.....Small towns that were stops for tourists and served local needs. My impression is that Independence and Big Pine have diminished markedly as businesses faltered or the old owners retired. They were charming in my eye back then. They still are.
Bishop....the metropolis of Owens Valley with several traffic lights and a modest golf course. Home of Jack's Restaurant and Schat's Bakery, or Bakkery, as they liked to spell it. We stocked up on Sheepherder's Bread, the best bread I have ever found as a base for a peanutbutter and jelly sandwich.
So a tradition was born....I never fail to stop tat Schat's for Sheepherder's and other baked goods.
Jack's Restaurant was old when I visited it on that trip forty-eight years ago. I believe some of the same waitresses are still working there today. They are a sassy bunch, but get the job done.
Sherwin Grade...back then this section of 395 was the death trap for any car, for that matter most cars, that had any issues with overheating. I wonder if any cars existed at that time that did not have cooling challenges when climbing mountain grades. That overloaded, swept-fin Plymouth we were in certainly didn't meet the challenge. We had to resort to the aforementioned canvas waterbag slung over the front bumper to refill the radiator while parked alongside the road. Sherwin Grade climbed around 2000 feet up from the valley floor along a tortuous route that tested all vehicles. It is now a four lane road and is an easy drive in modern vehicles.
Tom's Place....A landmark stop that has stood at the top of the Sherwin Grade for a very long time. My father stopped there as a boy when taken to the Sierras on family vacations, so I felt some kinship with his experience of the place. A restaurant, a bar, a grocery store, a sporting goods store, and a bait shop.....all under one roof. The gas station pump was outside next to the hitching post. And one could spend the night in one of the small cabins across the road. Tom's Place had it all.
This marks the end of my trip though the past...of my introduction as a teenager to the Eastern Sierra.
Going forward I will recount that October, 2011 trip.
-Continued-
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| Red Rock Canyon |
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| The Eastern Sierra |
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