Description:
2.
Original Photograph Album Showing Prospectors in Panamint Valley. by (PHOTOGRAPHY: PANAMINT VALLEY) - [ca. 1920]
by (PHOTOGRAPHY: PANAMINT VALLEY)
Original Photograph Album Showing Prospectors in Panamint Valley.
by (PHOTOGRAPHY: PANAMINT VALLEY)
- Used
- Hardcover
N.P.: N.p., [ca. 1920]. Small album measuring 5 1/2 x 3 1/4 inches and with 11 original Brownie photographs mounted into corners. The photographs are the standard 3 1/2 x 2 3/8 inches. Album with card boards, string tied. In the original small envelop on which is written the places visited by the photographer, Walter Sorenson. Album and photographs in beautiful condition.The Panamint Valley is just west of Death Valley and it is almost as desolate as that famous valley. While mined around the turn of the century it was never really the site of any great gold discoveries. Rather there were sporadic mines that sprung up for small periods of time. The main town in the Panamint Valley was not a mining town but rather a sort of supply depot for prospectors heading out on mule or car. The site that would become Ballarat was frequented by travelers and prospectors as early as 1849 as Post Office Spring, a quarter mile south, was a rare and essential watering hole in an otherwise harsh and dry desert wasteland. It wasn't until the 1890's that a town started to form at Ballarat. A store and blacksmith shop were established to service some of the traffic coming through the Panamint Valley. Ballarat was a growing regional supply center, and by 1900 the town had a school, a post office, three hotels, seven saloons, but was reported to have no churches. The town was the "jumping-off point" for prospectors, and when mining rushes occurred in the region, Ballarat would swell with people looking to get in on the action. Up to 500 people called Ballarat home during the town's peak years between 1897 and 1905. Gradually the town diminished to the point where its post office was closed in 1917. After that just a handful of desert rats, most notably Shorty Harris and Seldom Seen Slim, were its only residents. Both men died there; Harris in the 30s and Seldom Seen in the 60s. The photos in this album show the attempts by some prospectors in the early 1920s to find gold in the Panamint. The first and second photograph both show Shorty Harris at the town of Ballarat. After Ballarat, the party made camp at various sites and these camps are all shown. This prospecting party was driving a 1920 Chevrolet coupe and a 1919 Chevrolet truck (modified); a risky population at that time unless the driver were also a mechanic. Two photographs show men actually digging into the earth. Almost all the photographs are annotated and the writer had a penchant for the term ‘Old Man’. He also liked to state to mileage to Trona the only population center anywhere near (and likely the most forlorn and unattractive city in the country). Oddly the last photograph is of the Dawn Mine, way down in the San Gabriel Mountains. The last gasps of mining in that part of the Mojave.
- Bookseller Independent bookstores (US)
- Book Condition Used
- Quantity Available 1
- Binding Hardcover
- Publisher N.p.
- Place of Publication N.P.
- Date Published [ca. 1920]