4x4 TRAILS STORIES CAMP SYNCRO PHOTOS SYNCRONAUTS ACTIVITIES RESOURCES
Trail Links:
Warms Springs, Mengel Pass (almost), and Barker Ranch (not!)
Friday, November 25, 2005
By: Jim Davis
Write some stuff here!
Notes: Got to the ascent of Mengel Pass late in the day and found significant challenges. We'd taken too long to get here and safely making it to Barker Ranch and back was not possible this day. We turned around and headed back down at 2:38PM and made it back to the pavement as it was getting dark at 5:06PM.
.
The roster included:
By: Jim Davis
Write some stuff here!
Notes: Got to the ascent of Mengel Pass late in the day and found significant challenges. We'd taken too long to get here and safely making it to Barker Ranch and back was not possible this day. We turned around and headed back down at 2:38PM and made it back to the pavement as it was getting dark at 5:06PM.
.
The roster included:
Syncros (7)Jim’s olive drab 87 Syncro GL
Steve’s silver ’91 Syncro Westy Sue’s blue ‘90 Syncro Westy Steve’s blue ’86 Syncro GL Larry's white '90 Syncro Westy Karl's '87 Syncro Westy TD Chris's '87 Syncro Westy |
Syncro-nuts (12)Jim & Matt (16) Davis
Steve Best, with friend Bob Sue Booth Steve and Jo Ann Wacker Larry Chase Karl Mullendore, with Kelly his dog Chris & Rebecca Canterbury, and girls Ivo (8), Emi (5) |
Note about this route from before Syncro Safari, Death Valley '05:
This trip is a long out-and-back trip and promises to provide both scenery and some challenging 4-wheeling. The route up through Warm Springs Canyon up to the approach to Mengel Pass should not be too tough and shouldn’t vary too much from the description from the guide books. Mengel Pass, and the area on the other side however will present anything from an easy to a very challenging obstacle. We’ll see when we get there. We’ll plan stops at several historic buildings along the rout including “Geoligist’s Cabin” and “Mengel’s Cabin”. Also we’ll pass Warm Springs and travel up Butte Valley with the unusual “Striped Butte” and cross Mengel Pass, where we’ll descend a bit and then take the spur trail to the east and visit the remote and famous (or infamous) Barker Ranch where (along with nearby Myers Ranch) Charles Manson and his gang hid out. In early October, 1969 Manson and 22 of his “family members” were arrested here. We'll plan to have lunch here and then retrace our route back to Furnace Creek. This route is round trip from Furnace Creek and back 44 miles on pavement, 54 miles on dirt, and another 44 miles on pavement back to camp.
Here’s some trail information from a published trail guide:
Excerpt of the route from Death Valley SUV Trails, by Roger Mitchell (Copyright 2001).
Mengel Pass via Warm Springs Canyon and Butte Valley
Primary Attraction:
Talc mines, interesting geology, unusual scenery, and a little history all come together to make this outing one of the most interesting in the park. Smart backroad explorers make the traverse of the Panamint Range, going up Warm Springs Canyon and down Goler Wash, which is somewhat easier on your nerves and your vehicle than going in the opposite direction.
Time Required:
It is an all day trip to Mengel Pass and back, or over the top and down. Three days could be spent exploring the various side roads.
Miles Involved:
It is forty miles from Furnace Creek Ranch [Jim’s note: via dirt West Side Road] to the beginning of the Warm Springs Canyon Road, and then another 24 miles to the Summit of Mengel Pass
Degree of Difficulty:
The route through much of Warm Springs Canyon is Class I. Beyond the road deteriorates to an easy Class II as far as Greater View ‘Spring. The last mile to the summit of Mengel Pass is Class III. For those planning on going over the pass, be aware that the Goler Wash side has several short Class IV and V sections (see Excursion #41).
To find the Warm Springs Canyon Road, take the Badwater Road 6.1 miles south of the Furnace Creek Inn, then turn right and continue south on the graded West Side Road another 33 miles. Watch for a sign pointing to the west that reads “ Butte Valley”; turn right on this graded road. For years, heavily laden ore trucks used this road. Then it was then a high standard road. Since the last talc mine in Warm Springs Canyon closed in the 1980s, the road has deteriorated some, but it still generally meets the Class I criteria of The Mitchell Scale.
Shortly after turning off the West Side Road, a side road to the left once went over to Wingate Wash, where a four-wheel drive route followed the path of the 20-Mule Team borax wagons up the wash on the long road to the railhead at Mojave. This road was closed by the National Park Service in the early 1 980s, because the United States Navy was having trouble with trespassers on N.O.T.S. Range “B”. Wingate Wash is still open to hikers and backpackers willing to carry sufficient water.
At a point seven miles from the West Side Road, Anvil Spring Canyon appears off to the left. Fifty years ago there was a road through here going all the way up to Butte Valley. It was not Congress or some faceless government bureaucrat that closed this route. It was closed by one of Mother Nature’s gully-washers in the 1940s.
In a little more than seven miles, our road enters Warm Springs Canyon. As you start up the wash, notice the rocks on the south side of the canyon, a dike of molten igneous rock was intruded into these sediments. As a result of this metamorphism, a band of talc was formed next to the dike. This band is two miles long and up to 25 feet thick. You can get a close look at the mineral in numerous abandoned workings on the south side of the road. Warning: Stay out of the underground workings. They are unsafe!
The first mine encountered is the Big Talc Mine. The access road to it is 9.1 miles in from the West Side Road. The next mine, also on the left, is the Number 5 Mine. It and the Big Talc had underground workings that connected and were all part of what was known as the Grantham Mine.
Of the one hundred or so women who have trod Death Valley’s barren hillsides in search of mineral wealth, Louise Grantham was by far the most successful. In 1931 she and Ernest “Siberian Red” Huhn recognized the potential of the talc deposits and started staking claims up and down the canyon. These were the depression years, however, and the demand for talc was not great; nevertheless talc mining began in 1933. With the advent of World War II, talc became an important commodity, and by 1943 it was a commodity crucial to the war effort. The mine’s output was continuous in the post war years. In 1972 Johns-Manville Products purchased the property, and they operated the mine another fifteen years.
In those later years both mines had extensive underground workings on sixteen different levels. Many of the tunnels were big enough to accommodate the use of rubber-tired diesel haulers and front-end loaders. The ceilings of the tunnels and stopes were supported in one of three ways. At times extensive heavy timbers were utilized. In other areas, roof bolts were driven into the “hanging wall” (the ceiling). In yet other areas, room-and-pillar mining was employed, where large columns of ore were left in place to support the ceiling. As these levels were worked out, the last areas to be mined were the pillars themselves leaving a very dangerous unsupported void. None of these underground workings are now safe to enter!
The third mine encountered off to the left is the Warm Spring Mine. It had an enormous open pit eight hundred feet long by four hundred feet wide by eighty feet deep. The access road to this mine is 9.6 miles in from the West Side Road.
At a point 10.8 miles in, a side road left goes to the Warm Springs Mine Camp, a worthy stop and a good overnight campsite. The Paiutes had camped at Warm Springs long before the first prospectors came this way. The Shoshone village of Pabuna was here when the Bennett-Arcan party made their long camp at Mesquite Well just a few miles to the north. The remnants of this village are said to have been destroyed by a flash flood in 1897. Only the fig trees planted by Panamint Tom in 1890 remain.
Warm Springs has served as a comfortable base camp for the many talc miners who have come and gone since the 1930s. In her book A Mine of Her Own. Women Prospectors in the American West, 1850-1950, Dr. Sally Zanjani of the University of Nevada in Reno postulates that it was the “woman’s touch” brought by Louise Grantham that brought these amenities to Warm Springs Canyon. I recall that when I was in here during the early I 970s, the place looked more like a mobile home park than a mining camp. While the last mobile home was pulled out nearly twenty years ago, many of the camp buildings remain in good condition, thanks in part to The Mojave River Valley Museum of Barstow, which has sort of adopted the place. They have placed a sign telling a little about the camp, and have a register for visitors to sign. The imported giant salt cedar trees still provide cool shade on a warm summer’s day, and the spring of lukewarm water still feeds the swimming pool. Camping is permitted here, and there are even a couple of picnic tables. Campfires are not permitted.
Talc was not the only mineral commodity handled here at Warm Springs. In 1939 gold miners erected a mill here to process gold ore from the Gold Hill Mine. The mill has suffered relatively little vandalism in recent years and looks very much like a reconstructed museum piece designed to display various types of ore dressing. Through a series of belts and gears, a single, horizontal-cylinder gasoline engine drives three different kinds of ore crushers. There is an arrastra, one of the most primitive ways of crushing ore, a small jaw mill, and a more efficient ball mill. Once it was reduced to sand-size particles, the ore and water combination flowed across shaker tables. Here the free gold was concentrated at one corner of the vibrating table, with the lighter waste material flowing off at another corner.
Beyond Warm Springs the road deteriorates to Class II, but it poses no problem for vehicles with high ground clearance. At a point 15.5 miles from the West Side Road, Warm Springs Canyon is left and Butte Valley is entered. It will be a couple of miles yet before the Striped Butte, from which the valley gets its name, is visible. The road gradually turns to the south and the scenery becomes dominated by Striped Butte, rising some nine hundred feet above the valley floor. The colorful layers of sediments in this butte make it geologically unique, for the surrounding country is made up of largely granitic rocks. When prospector Hugh McCormack passed through here in the I 860s, he named it “Curious Butte”. Through the years, however, the name has changed to “Striped Butte”.
At a point 20.7 miles in from the West Side Road, the main road goes straight; however, a Class II side road turns off to the right. By following it to the west 1.8 miles, the crest of the Panamint Range can be crossed at an elevation of 4,626 feet. On the other side, a deeply rutted Class III and Class IV road descends into Redlands Canyon all the way down to Redlands Spring nearly 2,000 feet below. Historian and tireless researcher Leroy Johnson thinks Redlands Canyon is the route used by Manly and Rogers in February of 1850, when they rescued the ill-fated Bennett-Arcan Party that was stranded in Death Valley.
A side road to the left off the Redlands Canyon trail takes you into an old miner s camp in Wood Canyon. It is in this general area that Panamint Russ claimed he found, and then lost, a fabulous vein during a prospecting trip in 1925.
Continuing ahead on the main road for 1.8 miles, a lone cottonwood tree marks the site of Anvil Spring. The stone cabin above it is sometimes known as “Geologist’s Cabin” after one of its original occupants. Supposedly Anvil Spring got its name from Lieutenant Charles Bendire, whose United States Army scouting party found an anvil here in 1867. Historian Richard Lingenfelter says that it had been thrown into the spring in disgust seven years earlier by Charles Alvord’s prospecting party, after Alvord was unable to locate a rich vein of gold that he had found only five months previously.
The stone Geologist’s Cabin is weather tight, stocked with food and water by passersby, and kept unlocked and available for public use. It is one of several such emergency shelters in the high Panamints. Use it if you wish, but please keep the place clean and restock any food you might use. There is a register for visitors to sign. On occasion the backcountry ranger stays here, as do National Park Service volunteers. If the flag is flying, the ranger is in residence.
Less than a mile south of Anvil Spring is Greater View Spring, once the home of veteran prospector Carl Mengel, a buddy of Frank “Shorty” Harris and Pete Aguereberry. 1-fe also had a close relationship with Bill and Barbara Myers, who lived on in a little ranch just over the pass in Goler Wash. Mengel, who lost a leg in a mining accident in Nevada, settled at the spring here in 1912, rebuilding an old preexisting cabin left by Mormon prospectors in 1869. In 1912 he also bought the Oro Fino Mine in Goler Wash. While trying to find a better route for his mules to haul ore out, he discovered a lode of high-grade ore that is said to have assayed as high as $35,000 per ton! Unfortunately, the deposit was small. Except for his financial interest in the nearby Lotus Mine, Carl died penniless of tuberculosis in 1944. His cremated ashes lie within the monument at the summit of what is today called Mengel Pass.
Mengel’s cabin, too, is left unlocked and stocked with water and some food. It may be weather tight, but it is not rodent-tight like the Geologist’s Cabin. Camp here if you wish, but if you stay inside, you will most likely have little fourfooted visitors during the night. One convenience that Mengel’s cabin has, and the Geologist’s Cabin does not, is an outhouse!
Beyond Mengel’s cabin, the first 0.3 miles is Class II, but soon that turns to Class III as the last 1 .3 miles of climb to 4,800 foot Mengel Pass is made. If you have difficulty getting up this last mile, go no further. Although downhill all the way, the descent through the Goler Wash side of Mengel Pass is much worse than the Warm Springs side.
Barker Ranch
[ Jim’s note: The following is taken from the book’s route #41 Mengel Pass via Goler Wash. Following the directions from the author on this route would have the reader turning right onto the road to Barker Ranch. Since we’ll be coming from the opposite direction, we’ll turn left.]
You might want to make a short side trip to the [ LEFT ]. The road swings to the right, abruptly drops down into the wash, and then makes its way eastward under the spreading branches of cottonwood trees. This is Sourdough Spring, so named by Bill and Barbara Myers who lived just up the wash between 1932 and 1960. They claim the name idea came from Carl Mengel, whose idea of a good breakfast was sourdough pancakes and fried liver. A half-mile above Sourdough Spring is the Barker Ranch, built by Bluch and Helen Thomason after Bluch retired from the Los Angeles Police Department. After Bluch died, the property was sold to Jim and Kirk Barker. Just beyond the Barker Ranch is the Myers Ranch.
The Barker and Myers Ranches are places that received quite a bit of notoriety and national press back in 1969. In the very first edition of Death Valley Jeep Trails written in 1969, I said, “During the past year these isolated retreats have been inhabited by a small band of ‘hippies’, doing whatever hippies do”. Little did I know that these squatters were Charles Manson and his murdering gang. It was at the Barker Ranch that Charlie was arrested, although at the time his role in the Tate-LaBianca murders was not yet known. (See Appendix F for additional details.)
Charlie moved his band into Barker Ranch sometime in 1968. Mrs. Arlene Barker, who owned the property and whose granddaughter Cathy Gillies was one of Manson’s followers, gave permission for Charlie to camp there. She thought he meant only a few days. Manson had other plans. Not only did Charlie move his brood into Barker Ranch, but he had also made plans to kill Mrs. Barker to obtain title through Cathy. By a stroke of luck, the three creeps he sent to do the job had a flat tire in Panamint Valley and never completed the task.
Barker Ranch has once again returned to the peaceful anonymity it once enjoyed. The house is open. The visitor is free to go in and look around. It looks quite comfortable, although someone has filled the toilet with cement to prevent its use. The house could be used as an emergency shelter should a sudden storm arise, but you would not be alone. Your temporary quarters would have to be shared with hundreds of mice and other little rodents. A few ghosts might join you, too. One person who was close to the Manson gang says that there are three bodies buried eight feet deep somewhere on the Barker Ranch. They have never been found.
The road continues up the wash 0.3 miles beyond Barker Ranch to Myers Ranch. Bill and Barbara Myers settled in Goler Wash in 1932, building themselves a comfortable house complete with such amenities as flush toilets, a swimming pool, an orchard, and of course, a garden. They raised three children there: Charles, Pat and Corky. The Myers family reluctantly moved to Fresno in 1960, so that their children could have a better education.
At one time a faint Class III road went on past Myers Ranch to steeply climb an unnamed pass, then continue on down into Wingate Wash, where it was an easy descent into Death Valley. That entire route has been closed to four-wheelers. Vehicle travel beyond Myers Ranch is now prohibited.
END EXCERPT
Mengel Pass via Warm Springs Canyon and Butte Valley
Primary Attraction:
Talc mines, interesting geology, unusual scenery, and a little history all come together to make this outing one of the most interesting in the park. Smart backroad explorers make the traverse of the Panamint Range, going up Warm Springs Canyon and down Goler Wash, which is somewhat easier on your nerves and your vehicle than going in the opposite direction.
Time Required:
It is an all day trip to Mengel Pass and back, or over the top and down. Three days could be spent exploring the various side roads.
Miles Involved:
It is forty miles from Furnace Creek Ranch [Jim’s note: via dirt West Side Road] to the beginning of the Warm Springs Canyon Road, and then another 24 miles to the Summit of Mengel Pass
Degree of Difficulty:
The route through much of Warm Springs Canyon is Class I. Beyond the road deteriorates to an easy Class II as far as Greater View ‘Spring. The last mile to the summit of Mengel Pass is Class III. For those planning on going over the pass, be aware that the Goler Wash side has several short Class IV and V sections (see Excursion #41).
To find the Warm Springs Canyon Road, take the Badwater Road 6.1 miles south of the Furnace Creek Inn, then turn right and continue south on the graded West Side Road another 33 miles. Watch for a sign pointing to the west that reads “ Butte Valley”; turn right on this graded road. For years, heavily laden ore trucks used this road. Then it was then a high standard road. Since the last talc mine in Warm Springs Canyon closed in the 1980s, the road has deteriorated some, but it still generally meets the Class I criteria of The Mitchell Scale.
Shortly after turning off the West Side Road, a side road to the left once went over to Wingate Wash, where a four-wheel drive route followed the path of the 20-Mule Team borax wagons up the wash on the long road to the railhead at Mojave. This road was closed by the National Park Service in the early 1 980s, because the United States Navy was having trouble with trespassers on N.O.T.S. Range “B”. Wingate Wash is still open to hikers and backpackers willing to carry sufficient water.
At a point seven miles from the West Side Road, Anvil Spring Canyon appears off to the left. Fifty years ago there was a road through here going all the way up to Butte Valley. It was not Congress or some faceless government bureaucrat that closed this route. It was closed by one of Mother Nature’s gully-washers in the 1940s.
In a little more than seven miles, our road enters Warm Springs Canyon. As you start up the wash, notice the rocks on the south side of the canyon, a dike of molten igneous rock was intruded into these sediments. As a result of this metamorphism, a band of talc was formed next to the dike. This band is two miles long and up to 25 feet thick. You can get a close look at the mineral in numerous abandoned workings on the south side of the road. Warning: Stay out of the underground workings. They are unsafe!
The first mine encountered is the Big Talc Mine. The access road to it is 9.1 miles in from the West Side Road. The next mine, also on the left, is the Number 5 Mine. It and the Big Talc had underground workings that connected and were all part of what was known as the Grantham Mine.
Of the one hundred or so women who have trod Death Valley’s barren hillsides in search of mineral wealth, Louise Grantham was by far the most successful. In 1931 she and Ernest “Siberian Red” Huhn recognized the potential of the talc deposits and started staking claims up and down the canyon. These were the depression years, however, and the demand for talc was not great; nevertheless talc mining began in 1933. With the advent of World War II, talc became an important commodity, and by 1943 it was a commodity crucial to the war effort. The mine’s output was continuous in the post war years. In 1972 Johns-Manville Products purchased the property, and they operated the mine another fifteen years.
In those later years both mines had extensive underground workings on sixteen different levels. Many of the tunnels were big enough to accommodate the use of rubber-tired diesel haulers and front-end loaders. The ceilings of the tunnels and stopes were supported in one of three ways. At times extensive heavy timbers were utilized. In other areas, roof bolts were driven into the “hanging wall” (the ceiling). In yet other areas, room-and-pillar mining was employed, where large columns of ore were left in place to support the ceiling. As these levels were worked out, the last areas to be mined were the pillars themselves leaving a very dangerous unsupported void. None of these underground workings are now safe to enter!
The third mine encountered off to the left is the Warm Spring Mine. It had an enormous open pit eight hundred feet long by four hundred feet wide by eighty feet deep. The access road to this mine is 9.6 miles in from the West Side Road.
At a point 10.8 miles in, a side road left goes to the Warm Springs Mine Camp, a worthy stop and a good overnight campsite. The Paiutes had camped at Warm Springs long before the first prospectors came this way. The Shoshone village of Pabuna was here when the Bennett-Arcan party made their long camp at Mesquite Well just a few miles to the north. The remnants of this village are said to have been destroyed by a flash flood in 1897. Only the fig trees planted by Panamint Tom in 1890 remain.
Warm Springs has served as a comfortable base camp for the many talc miners who have come and gone since the 1930s. In her book A Mine of Her Own. Women Prospectors in the American West, 1850-1950, Dr. Sally Zanjani of the University of Nevada in Reno postulates that it was the “woman’s touch” brought by Louise Grantham that brought these amenities to Warm Springs Canyon. I recall that when I was in here during the early I 970s, the place looked more like a mobile home park than a mining camp. While the last mobile home was pulled out nearly twenty years ago, many of the camp buildings remain in good condition, thanks in part to The Mojave River Valley Museum of Barstow, which has sort of adopted the place. They have placed a sign telling a little about the camp, and have a register for visitors to sign. The imported giant salt cedar trees still provide cool shade on a warm summer’s day, and the spring of lukewarm water still feeds the swimming pool. Camping is permitted here, and there are even a couple of picnic tables. Campfires are not permitted.
Talc was not the only mineral commodity handled here at Warm Springs. In 1939 gold miners erected a mill here to process gold ore from the Gold Hill Mine. The mill has suffered relatively little vandalism in recent years and looks very much like a reconstructed museum piece designed to display various types of ore dressing. Through a series of belts and gears, a single, horizontal-cylinder gasoline engine drives three different kinds of ore crushers. There is an arrastra, one of the most primitive ways of crushing ore, a small jaw mill, and a more efficient ball mill. Once it was reduced to sand-size particles, the ore and water combination flowed across shaker tables. Here the free gold was concentrated at one corner of the vibrating table, with the lighter waste material flowing off at another corner.
Beyond Warm Springs the road deteriorates to Class II, but it poses no problem for vehicles with high ground clearance. At a point 15.5 miles from the West Side Road, Warm Springs Canyon is left and Butte Valley is entered. It will be a couple of miles yet before the Striped Butte, from which the valley gets its name, is visible. The road gradually turns to the south and the scenery becomes dominated by Striped Butte, rising some nine hundred feet above the valley floor. The colorful layers of sediments in this butte make it geologically unique, for the surrounding country is made up of largely granitic rocks. When prospector Hugh McCormack passed through here in the I 860s, he named it “Curious Butte”. Through the years, however, the name has changed to “Striped Butte”.
At a point 20.7 miles in from the West Side Road, the main road goes straight; however, a Class II side road turns off to the right. By following it to the west 1.8 miles, the crest of the Panamint Range can be crossed at an elevation of 4,626 feet. On the other side, a deeply rutted Class III and Class IV road descends into Redlands Canyon all the way down to Redlands Spring nearly 2,000 feet below. Historian and tireless researcher Leroy Johnson thinks Redlands Canyon is the route used by Manly and Rogers in February of 1850, when they rescued the ill-fated Bennett-Arcan Party that was stranded in Death Valley.
A side road to the left off the Redlands Canyon trail takes you into an old miner s camp in Wood Canyon. It is in this general area that Panamint Russ claimed he found, and then lost, a fabulous vein during a prospecting trip in 1925.
Continuing ahead on the main road for 1.8 miles, a lone cottonwood tree marks the site of Anvil Spring. The stone cabin above it is sometimes known as “Geologist’s Cabin” after one of its original occupants. Supposedly Anvil Spring got its name from Lieutenant Charles Bendire, whose United States Army scouting party found an anvil here in 1867. Historian Richard Lingenfelter says that it had been thrown into the spring in disgust seven years earlier by Charles Alvord’s prospecting party, after Alvord was unable to locate a rich vein of gold that he had found only five months previously.
The stone Geologist’s Cabin is weather tight, stocked with food and water by passersby, and kept unlocked and available for public use. It is one of several such emergency shelters in the high Panamints. Use it if you wish, but please keep the place clean and restock any food you might use. There is a register for visitors to sign. On occasion the backcountry ranger stays here, as do National Park Service volunteers. If the flag is flying, the ranger is in residence.
Less than a mile south of Anvil Spring is Greater View Spring, once the home of veteran prospector Carl Mengel, a buddy of Frank “Shorty” Harris and Pete Aguereberry. 1-fe also had a close relationship with Bill and Barbara Myers, who lived on in a little ranch just over the pass in Goler Wash. Mengel, who lost a leg in a mining accident in Nevada, settled at the spring here in 1912, rebuilding an old preexisting cabin left by Mormon prospectors in 1869. In 1912 he also bought the Oro Fino Mine in Goler Wash. While trying to find a better route for his mules to haul ore out, he discovered a lode of high-grade ore that is said to have assayed as high as $35,000 per ton! Unfortunately, the deposit was small. Except for his financial interest in the nearby Lotus Mine, Carl died penniless of tuberculosis in 1944. His cremated ashes lie within the monument at the summit of what is today called Mengel Pass.
Mengel’s cabin, too, is left unlocked and stocked with water and some food. It may be weather tight, but it is not rodent-tight like the Geologist’s Cabin. Camp here if you wish, but if you stay inside, you will most likely have little fourfooted visitors during the night. One convenience that Mengel’s cabin has, and the Geologist’s Cabin does not, is an outhouse!
Beyond Mengel’s cabin, the first 0.3 miles is Class II, but soon that turns to Class III as the last 1 .3 miles of climb to 4,800 foot Mengel Pass is made. If you have difficulty getting up this last mile, go no further. Although downhill all the way, the descent through the Goler Wash side of Mengel Pass is much worse than the Warm Springs side.
Barker Ranch
[ Jim’s note: The following is taken from the book’s route #41 Mengel Pass via Goler Wash. Following the directions from the author on this route would have the reader turning right onto the road to Barker Ranch. Since we’ll be coming from the opposite direction, we’ll turn left.]
You might want to make a short side trip to the [ LEFT ]. The road swings to the right, abruptly drops down into the wash, and then makes its way eastward under the spreading branches of cottonwood trees. This is Sourdough Spring, so named by Bill and Barbara Myers who lived just up the wash between 1932 and 1960. They claim the name idea came from Carl Mengel, whose idea of a good breakfast was sourdough pancakes and fried liver. A half-mile above Sourdough Spring is the Barker Ranch, built by Bluch and Helen Thomason after Bluch retired from the Los Angeles Police Department. After Bluch died, the property was sold to Jim and Kirk Barker. Just beyond the Barker Ranch is the Myers Ranch.
The Barker and Myers Ranches are places that received quite a bit of notoriety and national press back in 1969. In the very first edition of Death Valley Jeep Trails written in 1969, I said, “During the past year these isolated retreats have been inhabited by a small band of ‘hippies’, doing whatever hippies do”. Little did I know that these squatters were Charles Manson and his murdering gang. It was at the Barker Ranch that Charlie was arrested, although at the time his role in the Tate-LaBianca murders was not yet known. (See Appendix F for additional details.)
Charlie moved his band into Barker Ranch sometime in 1968. Mrs. Arlene Barker, who owned the property and whose granddaughter Cathy Gillies was one of Manson’s followers, gave permission for Charlie to camp there. She thought he meant only a few days. Manson had other plans. Not only did Charlie move his brood into Barker Ranch, but he had also made plans to kill Mrs. Barker to obtain title through Cathy. By a stroke of luck, the three creeps he sent to do the job had a flat tire in Panamint Valley and never completed the task.
Barker Ranch has once again returned to the peaceful anonymity it once enjoyed. The house is open. The visitor is free to go in and look around. It looks quite comfortable, although someone has filled the toilet with cement to prevent its use. The house could be used as an emergency shelter should a sudden storm arise, but you would not be alone. Your temporary quarters would have to be shared with hundreds of mice and other little rodents. A few ghosts might join you, too. One person who was close to the Manson gang says that there are three bodies buried eight feet deep somewhere on the Barker Ranch. They have never been found.
The road continues up the wash 0.3 miles beyond Barker Ranch to Myers Ranch. Bill and Barbara Myers settled in Goler Wash in 1932, building themselves a comfortable house complete with such amenities as flush toilets, a swimming pool, an orchard, and of course, a garden. They raised three children there: Charles, Pat and Corky. The Myers family reluctantly moved to Fresno in 1960, so that their children could have a better education.
At one time a faint Class III road went on past Myers Ranch to steeply climb an unnamed pass, then continue on down into Wingate Wash, where it was an easy descent into Death Valley. That entire route has been closed to four-wheelers. Vehicle travel beyond Myers Ranch is now prohibited.
END EXCERPT