Marta Becket, who made Amargosa Opera House famous, dies at 92

Marta Becket on February 8, 1993 in the Amargosa Opera House, Death Valley Junction. (Mary Walter Scodwell)

By HENRY BREAN
LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL

A flat tire brought classically trained dancer Marta Becket to Death Valley Junction, California, in 1967.

Nothing could ever make her leave.

For decades, the artist and performer put on one-woman shows inside the Pacific Coast Borax Co.’s old community hall, which she transformed with her paint brush and her passion into the weird and world-famous Amargosa Opera House.

Becket died Monday at her home in the near-ghost town of Death Valley Junction, according to Inyo County deputy coroner Jeff Mullenhour. She was 92.

Susan Sorrells, who owns the nearby town of Shoshone, California, and knew Becket throughout her time in the desert, said she will remember Marta for her talent and generosity, her sense of humor and her deep love of animals — from her small army of pet cats to the herds of wild horses and burros she fed and ferociously protected near her home.

The world will remember Marta for what she created, Sorrells said. “Her art really came first. She was extremely dedicated to her art to the point where she could become something of a hermit.”

Becket was born Aug. 9, 1924, in New York City, where she grew up studying dance, piano and art. As a young woman, she performed on Broadway and at Radio City Music Hall.

Becket was camping with her husband in Death Valley in the spring of 1967 when a flat tire sent them to the junction for a repair.

While there, she discovered an abandoned theater in the then-booming mining town just across the border from Nevada, 95 miles west of Las Vegas.

They rented the old building the next day for $45 a month.

PAINTED ‘AUDIENCE’

The curtains parted every Monday, Friday and Saturday for years after that, though some nights no one showed up to buy a ticket.


So she would never have to perform in front of an empty house, Becket decided to paint herself a permanent audience. Over the course of several years in the early 1970s, she decorated the walls and ceiling with elaborate murals depicting a Renaissance theater.

Her marriage dissolved in 1983, but she soon took on a performing partner named Thomas J. Willett, “Wilget” for short, who served as stage manager, emcee, comic relief and companion for Becket until his death in 2005.

Amy Noel, an artist and business owner in Tecopa, California, said she caught her first Marta Becket performance about 30 years ago, and she returned to the opera house countless times.

First-time audience members didn’t always know what to make of the theater and its star, Noel said. “Then the lights would go off, and it was magic.”

The curiosity of Becket’s creation gradually drew attention from around the globe, as the famed dancer in the desert was profiled by dozens of magazines, newspapers and television programs. “Amargosa,” a 2000 documentary about her life, won an Emmy and was a finalist for an Academy Award. Her memoir, “To Dance on Sands,” was published in 2006.

Film crews and so-called “paranormal investigators” also showed up periodically to hunt ghosts in her theater and adjacent motel, but the spirit Sorrells remembers best is the one Becket painted on canvas and in one of her murals: a ghostly ballerina twirling through the opera house’s colonnade.

“That pretty much let everyone know what her wishes were,” Sorrells said.

‘THE SITTING DOWN SHOW’

Becket was still dancing — and still rising onto her toes to stand “en pointe” — well into her 70s. When a fall left her injured and unable to dance, she began staging what she called “The Sitting Down Show.”

“She’s an inspiration to us all,” Noel said. “She was so dedicated and so sharp. She had such a sharp mind, even when her body started to fail.”

Becket gave her farewell performance on Feb. 12, 2012, at age 87, before relinquishing the stage to a series of visiting dancers and placing the property in the hands of a nonprofit board.

Noel was there for the final show.

“It was packed to the gills,” she said. “Before Marta said a word, she got a standing ovation. She said, ‘That was a first,’ and then she went right into (her performance). It was beautiful.”

No funeral arrangements had been announced on Tuesday, but those who knew Becket expect her to be buried in Death Valley Junction’s tiny cemetery, near the graves of her mother and her beloved “Wilget.”

“She never wanted to leave Death Valley Junction,” Sorrells said.

As long as the Amargosa Opera House still stands, Marta Becket’s presence will be felt there, Noel said. “She promised to haunt it, so I expect she’ll be around.”

According to a biography on the opera house’s website, Becket gave her first performance in the theater on Feb. 10, 1968, before an audience of about a dozen people. She made all her own sets and costumes, and she wrote and choreographed the entire production, just as she would for all her original shows — each a mix of ballet and old-fashioned Broadway theatrics, often autobiographical.

Popular western artist Bill Bender dies at 97

Oro Grande resident's paintings were collected by President Eisenhower, J. Edgar Hoover

Bill Bender, considered one of the few original and last plein air western artists who captured the beauty of the American desert, died Jan. 5 on his 97th birthday as a result of a fall at his farm in Oro Grande. (Courtesy of Ann Japenga)

By Rene Ray De La Cruz
The Daily Press

ORO GRANDE — Bill Bender, a working cowboy and western artist whose artwork was purchased by a President Dwight Eisenhower and other political leaders, has died.

Known as “Cowboy Bill” by those who knew him best, Bender died Jan. 5 on his 97th birthday as a result of a fall at his farm in Oro Grande, according to his wife, Helen Bender.

“He was a good man who worked hard and always kept moving,” Helen Bender, 83, told the Daily Press on Wednesday. “We were married for almost 60 years, then we moved to Oro Grande from the Los Angeles area.”

Helen Bender said the couple continued to live in the same house, an abandoned tavern, that they began fixing up back in the 1950s, “when there was nothing out here but dirt.”

“Bill was quite the accomplished artist and he, his wife and his mother were the nicest folks around,” said Joe Manner, a longtime resident of Oro Grande. “When I delivered mail, I never had to put it in their box because one of them would always come out and greet me.”

Those in the art world knew Bender for his paintings of desert landscapes, horses, cattle and ranch scenes; and illustrated stories and written work. As a stuntman, the cowboy began unleashing his artistic side while recovering from an injury suffered during a rodeo ride, his wife said.

Bender was considered one of the few original and last plein air western artists who captured the beauty of the American desert, according to many online art sites. Plein air paintings are created outdoors, with the painter reproducing the actual visual conditions seen at the time of the painting.

Bender’s friend, Mark Cliath, said some of the collectors of Bender’s work included FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, Supreme Court Justice Tom Clark and President Eisenhower, who was surrounded by bodyguards when he visited the farm on Old Highway 66 for some painting pointers.

Over the century, Bender was one of many artists who would travel to the lower High Desert to find the perfect location to paint. The Oro Grande artist would often camp out under a cottonwood tree and survive on grapefruit while he worked on his masterpiece, according writer Ann Japenga.

Japenga, a Palm Springs writer specializing in stories about the California deserts and the West who operates the website www.californiadesertart.com, said Bender was good friend and the “poster boy for longevity.”

“Bill was into holistic medicine and he was the perfect picture of health,” Japenga told the Daily Press on Wednesday. “He was 100-percent cowboy, but still very caring and kind.”

From movie stuntman to a lineman who traveled by horse to string utility line from Kernville to Lone Pine, Japenga said Bill Bender lived an adventurous life.

“I just got a card from him and his handwriting was perfect,” Japenga said. “He was a man who left his mark on the art world and will truly be missed.”

Bender, who admired the work of artist James Swinnerton and his lifestyle, began taking “sketching trips” with Swinnerton on unpaved roads in the late ‘40s. Bender said the two would often park their car on high ground in Arizona, throw their sleeping bags near their car and cook steaks over an open fire, Japenga said.

“Bill’s artwork hangs in big buildings in San Francisco, New York and Los Angeles, yet he lived a simple life in a house that was probably in the family for over a hundred years,” Manner said. “They don’t make people like Bill anymore.”

Helen Bender said the family will have a private ceremony to celebrate her husband's life.

Indian Wells builds new monument to artist Carl Bray

Built in a park-like setting, the Carl G. Bray Smoke Tree Painter monument on Highway 111 in Indian Wells includes six panels – five of which detail the city’s past and one devoted to Bray.
(Sherry Barkas/The Desert Sun)

Sherry Barkas
The Desert Sun

Driving east on Highway 111 through Indian Wells, one can’t help but notice the Carl G. Bray Smoke Tree Painter monument, with its rock walls, colorful display panels and the palette sign near Miles Avenue.

Dedicated in November, the tribute to internationally known artist Carl Bray is situated where his art gallery and the home he built once stood.

“The monument speaks to the history of Indian Wells … and to Carl Bray,” said Jan Holmlund, advisory committee chair for the city’s Historic Preservation Foundation.

The monument was built by the city at a cost of $84,617 in a park-like setting, that includes six panels – five of which detail the city’s past and one devoted to Bray.

The artist built his home himself in the early 1950s along the edge of what is now Highway 111. The Oklahoma-born painter, who worked as a brakeman for Southern Pacific Railroad, was living in Los Angeles at the time but found the desert landscape irresistible as an artist.

He and his wife, Luella, bought the property for $1,000. At the time, their neighbors included “a few cabins, a dance hall, two small grocery stores, two gas stations, a café and … a rattlesnake pen located just across the highway,” preservation foundation President Adele Ruxton wrote in a short historical biography of Bray.

As the city grew and resorts and country clubs went up around them, the Brays held on to their “little homemade house” until 1999, when they sold it and moved to Banning.

Bray’s gallery was a gathering spot for a group of artists who came to be known as the Smoke Tree School.

Under the new owner, the Indian Wells property fell into foreclosure and the city bought it in 2008. It was declared unsafe and demolished in 2010 amidst protests by preservationists and fans of Bray’s work.

His home was the last structure left on that historic site that was at one point also a stagecoach stop.

“It’s the last piece of that village,” Holmlund said.

“This monument and panels speak to so many of the moments in history and early settlement” of Indian Wells, Historical Preservation Foundation member Ann Japenga said.

The original sign marking the landmark spot is displayed in City Hall along with pieces of Bray’s artwork.

Bray’s paintings are prized today “for their blue collar mysticism, lonely freight trains and glowing smoke trees,” the monument states.

His artwork is mystical yet “very precise; detailed,” Holmlund said.

While most of his paintings are of desert landscape and smoke trees, he painted in a variety of genres, including a rare seascape he was commissioned to do, Holmlund said.

Holmlund, Ruxton, Japenga and foundation Secretary Sharon Devine gathered recently at Ruxton’s Indian Wells home to talk of the artist they knew and the importance of making sure he and the city’s rich history aren’t forgotten.

All four women knew Bray and described him as laid back, usually wearing suspenders and speaking with an Oklahoma accent – a working class man who wasn't the typical Indian Wells resident.

“His ordinariness” is what Holmlund most liked about Bray. “He was just a friendly, neighborly, compassionate person.”

He was always ready to help others and made people feel at home in his gallery and his house, the women said.

“His home was your home,” said Ruxton, who has binders full of notes Bray wrote, each of them in envelopes he would mark with a special drawing. “I think anyone who met Carl felt like they had known Carl a long time.”

“He had tremendous appeal,” Japenga said. “He had a very calm and accepting manner. He was more accepting of his house being torn down than we were.”

Ruxton was at Bray’s home in Banning the day he died – July 23, 2011. Luella Bray had died three years earlier.

“We went to see him,” she said, but were met by a doctor who thought they were family and told them of Bray’s passing.

Bray’s hat, easel and paint brushes are on display at the Historical Society and Museum of Palm Desert, where some of his paintings are also for sale.

“With every painting he told a story,” Japenga said.

First Sketch Made in the West

A painting inspired by Thomas Moran’s sketch of Green River tops Christie’s auction of William Koch’s Western artworks.

Christie’s New York still holds the artist record for Thomas Moran, for another Green River oil, painted in 1878. A collector bid $15.8 million for it seven years before the above Green River 1896 oil hammered in at $7.5 million. Editor's Note: Despite Moran's title, his sketch was not the "first" made in the West. George Catlin, Karl Bodmer, Alfred Jacob Miller and Albert Bierstadt were among the other artists who drew earlier sketches during their travels to the American West.

Written by Meghan Saar
True West Magazine

Before 34-year-old Thomas Moran reached his ultimate destination of Yellowstone in Wyoming Territory in the summer of 1871, he stepped off the Union Pacific Railroad and viewed the towering cliffs of the Green River. The artist completed a field study that he later inscribed, “First Sketch Made in the West.”

Moran would return to this first Western subject of his many times during his storied career. His 1896 oil of Green River, featuring a troop of American Indians in the lower right, was exhibited at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and appeared at auction for the first time, on May 21, 2015, at Christie’s New York. Not surprisingly, this rare work of art landed the top bid, at $7.5 million.

The painting was sold from the collection of American businessman William Koch, who is most famously known in the Old West collecting arena for paying $2.1 million for the only known photograph of outlaw Billy the Kid. Koch has been collecting Western artworks for an Old West town he hopes to build, but he ran out of room and decided to put some of the treasures on the auction block.

The Green River oil was painted a quarter century after Moran spent five weeks with Dr. Ferdinand Hayden’s surveying expedition to Yellowstone to complete an article assignment for Scribner’s Monthly. His visual documentation of more than 30 sites, along with photographs taken by William Henry Jackson, inspired the creation of Yellowstone as America’s first national park in 1872.

Although Moran took eight trips to the West, between 1871 and 1892, he never forgot his first experience of the frontier. His sketch of Green River lived on in his studio as the basis for more than 40 depictions he created of the river’s bluffs. His daughter Ruth recalled that whenever the household needed funds, the family would joke, “Well, it’s time for Father to paint another Green River.”

The artist did have a tendency to minimize signs of civilization in his paintings. He didn’t portray Green River’s railroad settlement, which had about 2,000 residents in 1868, the year Congress established Wyoming Territory. Moran ignored the town’s schoolhouse, church, hotel and brewery, and a landscape scarred by train tracks. Easterners viewing Green River from Moran’s perspective saw a virgin, pristine area, whose only inhabitants were wild American Indians. “I place no value upon literal transcripts from Nature. My general scope is not realistic; all my tendencies are toward idealization,” Moran freely admitted.

Along with Moran’s oil, collectors purchased works by other artists who similarly portrayed a more romantic and nostalgic impression of the frontier.

Indian Wells moving forward on Carl Bray tribute

A sign from the now-demolished Carl Bray gallery and home along Highway 111. (Photo: Xochitl Peña/ The Desert Sun)

Xochitl Peña
The Desert Sun

A huge wooden painter's palette that stood along Highway 111 in Indian Wells and served as a tribute to Carl Bray's artistic contributions will be resurrected.

City officials plan to use either a replica of the memorable landmark or restore the original one that's now in storage to create an historical monument.

"It is an iconic sign," said Jan Holmlund, an adviser to the Indian Wells Preservation Foundation. "It is something that means a lot to a lot of people,"

The famous palette sign, which also let people traveling east on Highway 111 know they are close to the edge of the city limits, came down in 2010 after the city purchased the property and demolished Bray's gallery and home.

Since then, leaders have discussed — but never formalized — ways to honor the desert landscape artist.

The Indian Wells City Council last week finally set that vision in motion by approving a concept for the monument, one of three scenarios that HSA Design Group presented.

City leaders indicated they wanted two curved stone walls with plaques mounted on the walls, showcasing the history of the city and Bray. The wooden palette sign also will be showcased prominently near its original location.

"It is the last remnant of the old village of Indian Wells. This was the historic beginning," said Adele Ruxton, president of the Indian Wells Preservation Foundation.

The plans also includes natural stone benches, green space and the addition of the smoke trees, which Bray favored in his art.

The site is accessible from a public sidewalk. Public parking nearby will not be provided.

Councilwoman Mary Roche said she can envision walking maps with directions to the monument being handed out to guests at the city's local resorts.

"I think this concept would be a wonderful addition to our city," she said.

While Bray is best known for his art, Roche said he also is considered a founder of the city and its commercial area.

According to Ruxton, Bray's neighbors back in the day included "a few cabins, a dance hall, two small grocery stores, two gas stations, a café and … a rattlesnake pen."

Bray bought that property along Highway 111 in the early 1950s for $1,000, which used to be the location of a Cahuilla village and was said to house an Indian well.

Bray sold the land around 2000, and moved to Banning. The 94-year-old died in 2011. The city in 2009 purchased the property in a foreclosure.

The city decided to demolish the buildings on the property because they were run down and deemed a safety hazard.

But because of the land's historical significance and ties to the Cahuilla Indians, an environmental impact report required an "interpretive exhibit" related to Bray as "artist, railroad man, builder and last resident of Old Indian Wells Village."

Development of the monument is expected to cost more than $30,000. The council has asked HSA though to look at revisions that could reduce the cost.

Indian Wells plans for Carl Bray monument revived

The former Carl Bray House & Gallery building prior to its demolition in Indian Wells. Bray, known for his desert landscapes, bought property along Highway 111 in Indian Wells in the early 1950s. The city bought the land in 2009. (Omar Ornelas, The Desert Sun)

Xochitl Peña
The Desert Sun

INDIAN WELLS – Talk of creating a monument along Highway 111 to honor the late artist Carl Bray — in the spot where his home and gallery used to be — has taken place for years.

But recent renewed interest in the idea has the Indian Wells City Council taking up the subject during a study session next month.

Adele Ruxton, president of the Indian Wells Historic Preservation Foundation, hopes this time, the project will actually happen.

“It’s time. It’s like ‘OK let’s get something done.’ It’s something that has been on the (list) of things to do and then something else comes up,” she said.

On Aug. 21, the council is expected to provide direction to staff on the design of the monument, said Warren Morelion, the city’s community development director, via email.

“Once staff receives direction, it will go through the normal entitlement process. The plan is to get the project construct(ed) by next summer,” he said.

The city has been talking about an “interpretive exhibit” at the location where Bray’s home and gallery used to be since at least 2010.

Bray, known for his desert landscapes and most notably his paintings of the wispy smoke tree, bought property along Highway 111 in Indian Wells in the early 1950s for $1,000. His neighbors at the time included a few cabins, a dance hall and a couple businesses.

As Indian Wells developed, Bray’s paint palette sign and misshapen landscaping started to look out of place surrounded by golf courses and gated communities, but the property’s historic significance could not be ignored.

The property used to be the site of one of the largest Cahuilla villages in the valley.

Bray sold the land in about 2000 and moved to Banning. He died in 2011 at the age of 94.

Ruxton knew Bray personally, and visited him at least once a month after he moved.

“He had a great sense of humor. If you met him for the first time you would think, ‘I’ve known this man for my entire life,’ ” she said.

The city purchased the 14,148-square-foot former site in January 2009 for nearly $260,000 claiming the structures on the land posed a “safety hazard.”

The home and gallery were eventually demolished, causing debate between the city and those who wanted to see the buildings preserved.

Ruxton wanted the structures saved.

“That should be turned into something historic,” she said of the now-vacant site.

The historic preservation foundation will meet with city officials next month to talk about the monument, as well.

What had been envisioned, she said, was a monument worked into the landscape that bicyclists or walkers could access. There would be no place for people in cars to park, she added.

In 2012, city staff had anticipated costs of about $35,000 for the monument. Morelion said the city recently directed up to $65,000 for the project.

Resident Denny Booth believes even $30,000 is too much for the city to spend, especially at a time when funds are tight.

He thinks there are much cheaper options available.

“Put up a boulder with a bronze plaque,” he said.

Exhibit focuses on mysterious shacks

Kim Stringfellow’s “Jackrabbit Homestead” documents the history behind empty dwellings that dot the desert

This image of a desert shack in Wonder Valley is part of Kim Stringfellow's "Jackrabbit Homestead" exhibit. (KIM STRINGFELLOW/CONTRIBUTED IMAGE)

By Mark Muckenfuss
Riverside Press-Enterprise

Broken glass and dirt crunched under Kim Stringfellow’s sandals as she picked her way through an abandoned desert cabin in Wonder Valley, a thinly populated plain east of Twentynine Palms.

The walls were nearly skeletonized — mostly bare timber frames with a few asbestos shingles still hanging onto the weathered wood of the exterior.

In what once was a living area, a tangle of rusted coils and a wooden frame were all that remained of a couch, its upholstery shed long ago. In the ruins of the bedroom a dresser still stood, its top two drawers gaping and full of debris.

Stringfellow peered in, curious.

“You wonder about the people that inhabited these cabins and what their stories were,” said Stringfellow, 49, an artist living in Joshua Tree. “How long did they live there? How did they end up here?”

The cabins — some still occupied, others nearly ghosts — dot the desert chaparral east of Twentynine Palms. Stringfellow’s fascination with them has spawned an art exhibit, “Jackrabbit Homestead.”

The show opens at the UCR Culver Center of the Arts in downtown Riverside on Saturday, June 29 and includes photographs, historical material and a life-sized floor plan of a homestead cabin. A companion website offers audio interviews and a map showing where people can tour some of the cabins.

Stringfellow published a book on the subject in 2008. But she has continued to explore the cabins, built as part of the Small Tract Act of 1938, as well as their importance to the landscape and to the development of today’s desert communities. These were the original residents who helped make towns such as Twentynine Palms and Yucca Valley viable.

“It looks like a wash came through here are some point,” she said, noting the alluvial soil covering the cabin’s floor. “People would build during the dry season, and they weren’t accustomed to what happened when the rain came.”

Often when a cabin was hit by a mud flow, she said, the occupants would abandon the place, suddenly realizing the utopia of free wide-open spaces and self-determination was more often than not just a fantasy.

Tyler Stallings, artistic director of the Culver Center, said Stringfellow — an assistant professor of art at San Diego State University — is one of dozens of artists seeking their own utopias in the Mojave Desert near Joshua Tree. Many of them are drawn by the open expanse and the stark beauty of the desert, as well as the affordable property that once drew the homesteaders.

Stringfellow’s show is the latest in a series of projects and exhibits Stallings has produced in an effort to connect art and the Inland region’s deserts.

“Many nationally recognized artists are choosing to ground their work in and around Joshua Tree National Park in the Mojave Desert in a relocation that is akin to the spirit of the Wild West,” Stallings said via email.



JOHN WAYNE EXPERIENCE

Stringfellow said many of those who built the desert cabins in the middle of the 20th century were attracted by the romance of the vast open spaces.

“Everyone wanted that John Wayne Western experience,” she said.

And for just a handful of dollars, they were able to take a stab at it.

The Small Tract Act grew out of a migration of necessity, but blossomed into something wholly different.

The genesis of the historic episode is generally credited to Dr. James Luckie, a Pasadena physician often acknowledged as the father of Twentynine Palms. In the wake of World War I, Luckie was treating veterans with respiratory problems resulting from mustard gas exposure. He encouraged many of them to relocate to the desert, where the air was warm and dry.

Some acquired land through the existing Homestead Act. But meeting that act’s requirement for cultivating a certain number of acres on a homestead was a challenge in the Mojave. In the mid-1930s, a federal land inspector suggested a different set of rules were needed for the region. The Small Tract Act, passed in 1938, provided homesteaders with five acres, requiring only that they construct a dwelling of at least 400 square feet within three years.

For a $5 filing fee and a lease of $1 per acre per year, a person could lay claim to a piece of the desert. If a dwelling was constructed and approved, homesteaders usually could purchase the land for $10 to $20 per acre.

Hundreds of homestead cabins popped up on the landscape after World War II. Even some famous names got involved. Stringfellow said Desert magazine reported that Ronald Reagan applied for a homestead at one time but never built a cabin, so the land reverted to the government.

The cabins were dubbed jackrabbit homesteads.

Stringfellow said the name came from the fact that the local rabbit population would take advantage of the ample shade the cabins offered in the desert heat. As if on cue, as she walked around the corner of another shack, a jackrabbit leaped off into the sparse brush.

“BE BACK SOON”

Some homesteaders made a go of it. Most did not. The result is the half-deteriorated shacks scattered across the landscape. Stringfellow’s photos depict these relics. But while the images are compelling and saturated with color, she purposely avoids any of the mystique that might have drawn the early residents.

“I wasn’t trying to romanticize the cabins,” she said. “I don’t want to do romantic skies and clouds.”

Instead, she wants to intrigue.

“I’m hoping it opens people up to investigating,” she said. “I want people to go out and actually experience the landscape. You don’t have a sense of the scale unless you’re out there.”

Part of the project is a website — www.jackrabbithomestead.com — that contains a map for touring the area and audio interviews with local residents and historians. Stringfellow wants people to understand that the cabins are more than a curiosity, more than a disturbance of the desert vistas.

“Maybe one of these should be made into a monument for the Small Tract Act,” she said. “I hope, at one point, the historical society acquires one.”

Such a monument could tell the history of the homesteads, and perhaps even some of the stories of those who lived there. Although, she said, she’s found more mysteries than stories.

One shack she photographed had remained largely undisturbed since its abandonment. She found shirts hanging in a closet and an old manual typewriter.

“There had been a note posted to the door that was, ‘Be back soon … something, something,’” she said. “It was probably like the last thing that was left there. So this thing has been flopping in the wind for 25 to 30 years, it’s just sort of faded out.”

Such experiences only pique her interest more.

“I think I’ll always be photographing these,” she said. “I never really get tired of looking at them.”

Jackrabbit Homestead

• ART EXHIBIT: “Tracing the Small Tract Act in the Southern California Landscape, 1938-2008, a project by Kim Stringfellow”
• WHERE: Culver Center of the Arts, 3824 Main St., Riverside
• WHEN: June 29-Sept. 28, 2013
• CLOSING EVENTS: Panel discussion, 3-5 p.m., and reception, 6-9 p.m. Sept. 28
• HOURS, INFORMATION: 951-827-4787 or artsblock.ucr.edu

By Kim Stringfellow
KCET.org

Jackrabbit homesteads are only for folks who have a bit of pioneering blood in their veins. The land generally is rough, no water is immediately available, more or less road building has to be done. But fortunately there are many Americans who find infinite pleasure in doing the hard work necessary to provide living accommodations on one of these sites--and cabins are springing up all over the desert country.

--Desert Magazine, 1950

Beyond the proliferation of big box chains, car dealerships, fast food joints, and the nameless sprawl located along California State Highway 62 the desert opens up. Out there, where signs of familiar habitation seem to fade from view, a variance appears in the landscape in the form of small, dusty cabins --mostly abandoned--scattered across the landscape. The majority of the existing shacks, historically found throughout the larger region known as the Morongo Basin, lie east of Twentynine Palms in outlying Wonder Valley. The curious presence of these structures indicated that you are entering one of the remaining communities of "jackrabbit" homesteads left in the American West. The mostly derelict structures located among the occasional inhabited ones are the remaining physical evidence of former occupants who were some of the last to receive land from Uncle Sam for a nominal fee through the Small Tract Act of 1938.

One of the many land acts designed to dispose of "useless" federal lands from the public domain, the Small Tract Act authorized the lease of up to five acres of public land for recreational purpose or use as a home, cabin, camp, health convalescent, or business site to able-bodied U.S. citizens. If the applicant made the necessary improvements to his or her claim by constructing a small dwelling within three years of the lease, the applicant could file for a patent--the federal government's form of a deed--after purchasing the parcel for the appraised price (on average $10 to $20 an acre) at the regional land office. This highly popular mid-century homestead movement reflects the quintessential American desire to claim territory and own a piece of the land even if the property in question is virtually "worthless" from an economic perspective.

Although some cabins have been passed down from the original jackrabbit homesteaders to family members for recreation and other purposes, today the majority of the area's jackrabbit homesteads have fallen beyond repair, lending a ghostly and feral presence to the landscape. Others have found new function as primary, full-time residences with modifications, often referred to as "biltmores" by area residents. A small, but growing community of artists and musicians fleeing rising housing prices and general urban ills of the Los Angeles metropolitan area are reclaiming and re-envisioning the structures as artist studios or as creative retreats. Inventive enclaves forming within this geographically defined area are inspired by the Morongo Basin's spacious desert backdrop, its perceived tranquility, and a desire to form a sense of community within a rural environment. Many have migrated to the region with aspirations uncannily akin to the original homesteaders and share similar outlooks or values with them.

In their quest for renewal and reinvention, musicians and other artists have converged on this part of the desert during the past half-century for the creative stimulation that the openness of the place provides. Cosmic, country-rock music icon Gram Parsons, who frequented Joshua Tree often, died there; and other musicians, such as Tim Easton, Gram Rabbit, Ann Magnuson, and Victoria Williams have homes there.

Artists see the desert as a place of refuge and as a source of inspiration. Joshua Tree and its vicinity are home to a well-documented community of creative types. Bob Arnett, Diane Best, Helena Bongartz, Chris Carraher, Shari Elf, Perry Hoffmanm, Mary-Austin Klein, Jack Pierson, Randy Polumbo, and Andrea Zittel are some of the diverse group of artists living throughout the Morongo Basin and who also own cabins originally built by jackrabbit homesteaders. There have been numerous in-depth articles in both the New York Times and Los Angeles Times concerning the artists' presence in the area. Zittel, an internationally-known artist living in Joshua Tree, co-hosts the High Desert Sites, a biannual series of experimental, site-specific art projects, providing an alternative space for both local and out-of-town artists. Helena Bongartz employs the architectural structure of the cabins directly in her art, using the fascade of an abandoned shack near Amboy to project her video work at night.

Historically, the region has also served as a place to build alternative communities, including those of gays and lesbians. It is not known how many gays and lesbians settled in jackrabbit homesteaders, but there is speculation that some are believed to have done so. A long-time lesbian resident refers affectionately to her neighborhood as the "gay ghetto," a tightly knit community home to many practicing artists who have restored cabins into artist studios and very distinctive creative retreats.

As structures for the imagination, the abandoned cabins have become a catalyst for various human projections, where physical and symbolic constructions of space play out over time. If you look closely, you may also find that the cabins reveal a personal text that describes their former occupants in a much more intimate way. Chris Carraher, an artist and cabin dweller in Wonder Valley, asserts: "The homestead cabin is the other icon that figures this place for me. A pervasive relic of a small-time working-class fantasy land-rush, it is the American Dream writ miniature. Abandoned, ghostly, habited, or reclaimed, the cabin is a lone prop that sets the stage of this tremendous theater at the edge of civilization and wildness, a porous vessel through which the desert and human pass, and pass again."

About the Jackrabbit Homestead Project:

Jackrabbit Homestead is a project produced by Kim Stringfellow exploring the cultural legacy of the Small Tract Act in Southern California's Morongo Basin region near Joshua Tree National Park through a physical installation of photographs, maps, documents, and other related materials. Another component of this project is the Web-based multimedia presentation featuring a free, downloadable car audio tour component available at www.jackrabbithomestead.com. The accompanying book, Jackrabbit Homestead: Tracing the Small Tract Act in the Southern California Landscape, 1938-2008 was published in 2009 by the Center for American Places. The Web site and audio tour were funded by the California Council for the Humanites California Story Fund initiative and were released in March 2009.