Trailer Trip 2014: Scotty's Castle

Tuesday, October 28.

Nearly all of the national parks we visited are huge. It is often a hundred miles round trip to see a feature in the park. And it is almost always worth the drive. It is the same with Death Valley. The paved roads go to or near the most popular things to see. It was over 100 miles round trip from our campsite at Furnace Creek to Scotty’s Castle. It was a paved road.

You can google Scotty’s Castle in Death Valley and it’ll be an entertaining read for you. The short version goes like this:

Walter Scott, Scotty, born in the mid-19^th century came to Death Valley as a mule skinner and trainer working at the Borax refinery. Because of his skills with the animals, he caught the attention of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show and ultimately landed a gig with them putting on his own performance. Eventually he got fired from Buffalo Bill and decided to go back to Death Valley to prospect for gold.

He found no gold but as he was a showman and big talker he decided there was another way to strike it rich. He went east and convinced investors to invest money in his Death Valley gold mine. One of his “Investors” was Albert Johnson, the wealthy head of a life insurance company in Chicago.

Johnson came to Death Valley to see the gold mine he was investing in and soon figured it was all a scam and Scotty was just all talk and a con man. But Johnson liked Scotty and bailed him out of his legal problems with his other investors and just became good friends with him because he liked Death Valley and thought he and Scotty could be good for each other there.

Johnson decided to build a home for himself and his wife, Bessie and for Scotty too. Johnson was a big thinker and wanted the home to be something special for Bessie and he had the means to do it. So he built the castle you see in the pictures. He didn’t do it alone. There were hundreds of workmen, artists, designers and skilled tradesman that worked on it for 5 or 8 years and it never did get finished as he had in mind. But the main house was finished enough to entertain Hollywood actors and President Hoover and his wife among others. It has multiple bedrooms and bathrooms and fireplaces. It even had air conditioning and electric lighting. The swimming pool never did get finished. It was all possible because of a 200 gallon per minute spring that flowed from the mountain. The spring water, plumbed into the underground part of the house, turned industrial water wheels to furnish power to the generators and compressors as well as watered the grounds for the grass and trees you see.

The pictures show a few things in the basement such as the battery bank for storing electric power. There are also mounds of ceramic tiles from the 1920s, some from Spain and Italy for the pool and other unfinished projects. It just sits there frozen in time to never be used except for tourists to marvel over.

There are two tours available to take, one underground to view the castle’s equipment and plumbing and the other in the main house. We took them both. Scotty’s castle and the castle grounds are not typical of Death Valley. It is a true oasis in the desert, something you couldn’t possibly anticipate before you see it.

We don't have any good pictures from inside the house but it is large with 1920s and 30s rich decor. Everything in it is as it was in the 1930s when Bessie died and he left the castle. There are paintings, leather curtains and a lot of hewn and carved redwood in the ceilings and beams. Bedrooms were decorated in Spanish or Italian themes with imported fixtures. The kitchen has the latest in appliances of the time with copper cookware still displayed.

The rest of the posts on Death Valley will resemble your preconceived notions a lot closer. But I will give you a hint that it is not the waste land some think it to be.