Rensselaer Republican, Volume 24, Number 42, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 June 1892 — A Curiosity, Partly Natural Partly Artificial, in Death Valley. [ARTICLE]

A Curiosity, Partly Natural Partly Artificial, in Death Valley.

~ Dagger, coto., special. a~ • " The natural wonders of Death Valley have probably been more minutely and extensively described by professional writers than any other spot they never saw, but one wonder there has in some way escaped these untraveled scribes. In 1883 some borax works were built on the east side of the valley, a couple of miles or so above the mouth of Furnace Creek Canon. The road thence to the railroad led down the east side of the valley for several miles, and then had to cross over to the west side because no drinking water can be had on the east sidfr below Furnace Creek. Moreover, the land on the west side lies much better for a road. But how to get the wagons across the valley was a problem. From end to end the center of the valley is one long salt marsh, and in most places if i 3 so soft and wet that even a man would need snow shoes to insure his safety. Elsewhere, however, the ooze has been crusted over. This crust is in places very thin and treacherous, and only in one locality does it seem to be firm. Wherever this cimst has been cut through a thin slimy salt mud has been found to be of unmeasurable depth—unmeasurable with any line or pole. Dr. C. Hart Merriam’s pofps of Scientists cut through in one place and. easily shoved a pole down fifteen feet There is no guessing how much deeper the slime was. ’However, a road must be had, and ' so the workmen went about over the ] marsh where the crust seemed to be t thickest and sounded it with sledge hammers. They found ti e crust was a n/ixture of salt and sand, and eventually a route was decided upou. The road was then to be graded, and probably for the first time in the world a road the length of this one was graded exclusively with sledge hammers. Here is a stretch ©f solid salt some eight mises “across! "In a sense it j w r as level —there were no hills or ; valleys. In another sense there was 1 scarce a level square inch on the i bed. for the salt crust had probably, through the influences of heat from above and moisture from below, been | torn and twisted and thrown into the ; most jagged peaks, pyramids and j cpiscrossed ridges imaginable. They jjwfere not high—none more than four : fg^t —but there was not level space even for a man s foot between them! | Eveiyy step made was on a ragged i point or edge of- some kind. The nearest approach to anything like that I have ever seen was on the ice on Lake Erie where two fields had been jammed together by the wind and held so by the frost. The ragged : ice masses were somewhat like these j salt masses. They were larger, but they, were not so sharp or in any way so difficult to cross. [ Judging that the-crust would susj tam the weight of the wagons, the ] workmen slung their sledge |ham- ; mers day after day until they had : beaten down these pinnacles into a I smooth pathway six feet wide. It was perhaps the most laborious engineering work ever done in the country for the climate and the location. far from civilized habitations, combined to retard the efforts of the workmen. The roadway, when completed, led over what may be prop- | erly called a uapurally formed bridge ' of salt eight miles long—the only bridge of the kind in the world. As one enters the eastern end of this road two unmarked graves are ' seen in the salt crust near the track. They are the graves of unknown men who died there from the heat, and, after the fashion of the country, were buried where, they felt They “were covered aver witiLpieces of salt broken from the pinnacles near by! The crust was too hard to warrant digging into it. One must travel a long time to find to more graves ltke those, if, indeed, nwo more can b# found in the world: T - \V f. V 1 .. 1