Con artist builds a crooked road in Death Valley

Feb. 9, 1969: Death Valley naturalist Dwight Warren checks a portion of Titus Canyon Road, which had been closed by a cloudburst. This photo by staff photographer Frank Q. Brown was published in the Feb. 21, 1969, Los Angeles Times.

Posted By: Scott Harrison
Los Angeles Times Framework

The history of Titus Canyon Road was explained in a May 22, 1977, Los Angeles Times article by staff writer Charles Hillinger:

DEATH VALLEY NATIONAL MONUMENT – It is undoubtedly the longest one-way, no-other-way road in the country.

The 27-mile road winds its way west through a scenic gorge in two states – California and Nevada.

It is so narrow in spots there is barely enough room for a car to squeeze between the 500-foot-high sheer limestone walls that rise spectacularly from the canyon floor.

Titus Canyon Road is, for good reason, the least used of nine roads into Death Valley, America’s hottest and driest place.

Its 27 miles are miserable, none of it paved, strewn with dirt and rocks.

The road was built by a con artist who pushed it through the canyon in 1925 to provide access to one of the most notorious mining hoaxes of the century.

It was in Titus Canyon that Chauncey C. Julian “salted” the Grapevine Mountains and spawned a town near Bloody Gap he called Leadfield.

He proclaimed the hills in “his” canyon were alive with pockets and veins of lead, and published brochures showing ships steaming up Death Valley’s Amargosa River to the mouth of Titus Canyon to take on ore.

The Amargosa River is bone dry.

In March, 1926, Julian ran a 15-car “Leadville Special” train from Los Angeles to Beatty, Nev., for 340 investors – 24 of them women – to visit their diggings. The investors were driven from Beatty through the winding gorge to Leadfield in a caravan of cars.

A hotel, stores and homes were built in Leadfield. But the town lasted only two years. There was a post office from August, 1926, until February, 1927.

Then the bubble burst.

Julian skipped the country and fled to Shanghai where he committed suicide in 1934.

A handful of decaying structures still stand at Leadfield on the Titus Canyon Road, named after Morris Titus, a miner who entered the narrow canyon to do some prospecting in 1906 and never was seen again.

It gets so hot along the road that the National Park Service closes the canyon from mid-May to mid-October – so that nobody gets stranded and perishes in the scorching sun.

Project examining Route 66 effect on Native Americans

A van with a tour group passes through Route 66 in San Bernardino County. (Kurt Miller)

by David Olson
Riverside Press-Enterprise

Route 66 is probably the most iconic road in the nation, but few of the tourists and other travelers who drive it likely know very much about the original residents of the land they’re passing through.

A new initiative from the American Indian Alaska Native Tourism Association aims to change that with a guidebook that will steer visitors toward Native American cultural sites and educate them about Route 66’s effect on American Indian life.

Route 66 passes through San Bernardino County in its 2,400-mile journey from Chicago to Los Angeles, and a meeting with Southern California tribes on their possible involvement in the project is expected in January 2015, said Rachel Cromer, a spokeswoman for the tourism association.

“This is a part of the Route 66 story that hasn’t been told yet,” Cromer said. “We hope this will draw new visitors and allow people who have traveled Route 66 to experience it in a new way.”

The National Park Service is helping fund the project.

Many Americans and foreign tourists have a Hollywood-movie view of Indians as living in teepees, wearing headdresses and riding horses, said Virginia Salazar-Halfmoon, coordinator of the project.

Here in the Inland area, among the best-known Route 66 attractions is the Wigwam Motel in San Bernardino, which features teepee-shaped rooms.

Yet Southern California Indians did not live in teepees, which were used by some Plains Indians.

Salazar-Halfmoon said the guidebook will help dispel the teepee myth and other stereotypes and generalizations.

“There are 27-plus tribes that exist along Route 66, and many people don’t realize they have distinct cultural heritages that they hold on to tenaciously,” she said. “If people knew more about the tribes, they would be more aware of the distinct cultural heritages that exist and would probably have a more enriched experience on Route 66.”

Route 66 had a major impact on Native Americans’ lives, Salazar-Halfmoon said. For example, the road was used to transport many Native American kids to Indian boarding schools, she said. The federal government set up the schools, which were aimed not only at teaching educational basics to Indian children but also at eradicating Indian culture.

Route 66 also had positive effects on tribes, Salazar-Halfmoon said. The road created a larger market for Indian arts and crafts and exposed more people to Native American culture, she said. Artisans set up stands and trading posts at the side of Route 66 to sell their goods.

“Because of Route 66, they didn’t have to leave home” to sell their products, she said.