THE MOJAVE RIVER VALLEY

(Silver Valley) 

Approximately 3,500 years ago, semi-civilized tribes of prehistoric man had their homes in the Mojave River Valley, where they hunted waterfowl, mined deposits of turquoise and sent off trade caravans to such distant places as far off Yucatan.  The stone age tools and weapons of this early man have been found recently by scientific groups excavating in caves at Newberry and in gem mines of great antiquity explored in the Baker area to the north.  Because of these discoveries, it is not improbable that some of today’s freeways are, in part, but superimposed on the foot trails of the ancient dwellers. 

The Mojave River Valley’s written history begins in 1776 when Francisco Hermenegildo Garces, a missionary-priest, came overland from the Colorado River, following a trail parallel to the Mojave River on his way to the San Gabriel Mission.  Father Garces is important to us today because he was the leader of a colorful pageant of travel that brought successive waves of civilization to this desert area then occupied by the semi-nomadic Chemehuevi Indian tribes. 

Fifty years later, a devout Angle-Saxon mountain man named Jedediah Strong Smith, a renowned trapper and explorer, came west over the same trail from the Colorado.  His arrival caused consternation in the Spanish-Mexican province of California.  The next year, 1827, he returned, this time fleeing from a massacre near the present Needles, where the formerly friendly Indians had turned on his men to rob and kill. 

In the 1830s and 1840s the old trail along the Mojave was followed by gaily-garbed traders from the province of New Mexico, intent upon trading their fruit of the loom for the colorful abalone shells and Yankee notions brought to California by ship.  These Santa Fe caravans suffered continuous harassment from an Indian chief named Walkara and his hard riding band of outlaw tribesmen who swept like a scourge through the Mojave , stealing horses by the thousands from California’s ranchos.  Often he was an ally with unscrupulous men such as Jim Beckwourth and Thomas (Pegleg) Smith. 

In the same period, the great American Pathfinder, John Charles Fremont, returned east from an exploring expedition accompanied by his peerless scouts, Kit Carson and Alexis Godey.  Enroute, these fearless westerners avenged an outlaw Indian attack on a New Mexican caravan trader.  The year 1846 began a new epoch.   Horse thievery became unprofitable with soldiers of the Army’s Mormon Battalion guarding Cajon Pass and with California placed under the Stars and Stripes.  When the war was over, the discharged soldiers of the Mormon Battalion headed back to Salt Lake, venturing to take with them a wagon loaded with flour, seeds and fruit cuttings from the verdant Santa Ana del Chino Rancho.  That historic wagon pioneered the old pack train trail for wheeled vehicles.  It was the forerunner of today’s route of U.S. 91 Highway and Union Pacific Railroad. 

The 1850s probably brought the greatest occasion for wonderment on the part of the desert’s natives when a Lt. Edward Beale led a herd of camels driven be swarthy Syrian drivers through the Mojave, with Los Angeles and his ranch in Tejon Pass as destinations.  By this time, the sketchy early trail had become rutted by the wheels of settler’s wagons.  In 1851, a group of nearly 500 Mormon colonists had come from Salt Lake.  They were to settle in San Bernardino.  In 1857 a large part of them went back on call by the church but by that time, covered wagon caravans had become a common sight on the desert. 

The 1860s brought the great American civil war, with divided loyalties in California and the threat of its invasion from Confederate forces in Texas.  California volunteers set out to secure the state’s gateways and established a chain of little redoubts or forts across the Mojave, with the main base, named Camp Cady, located northwest of the present Newberry.  When the war ceased, desert travelers were plagued with raiding Paiute bands from farther north and the little desert forts again were manned, this time by regulars.  Mail service began and stage coaches jolted over what became known as the Old Government Road to the Colorado.  Gold was found along the Colorado at Eldorado Canyon in the San Bernardino Mountains at Holcomb Valley.  Silver was discovered north of the county line in Panamint City and a pioneer stage line was brought into service through what is now the Hinkley district.  These discoveries, together with a rich silver strike at Ivanpah, accounted for an unprecedented influx of settlers and merchants who established what was known as “stations” to serve the traveler. 

Two of the most prominent stations were the Fish Ponds, located at the site of the present Marine Corps Supply Center, and the Grapevine, which was about where the present Fort Irwin Road turns away from U.S. 91.  Lafayette Mecham was owner of Fish Ponds, so named because a natural pond in the Mojave River at that point abounded with fish.  He raised hay and grain for the travelers, repaired wagons and supplied leather to mend harness.  Those desert stations were a predecessor to the general store of later villages.  Roving Paiute Indian bands were troublesome and one day an Indian rode off with one of Mecham’s saddle horses.  The Indian had a good start and as the owner trailed his thief into the calico colored hills to the north, he noted some likely signs of ore.  Darkness called off the pursuit. Months later, Lafayettte Mecham recalled the likely ore signs.  His memory sparked the famous Calico silver discovery. 

Similar to the station at Fish Ponds was one operated by Ellis Miller at Grapevine.  While camping on day at this station, Robert W. Waterman and John L. Porter heard of an abandoned prospect nearby where one George C. Lee had located what he thought was quicksilver in 1875.  In December 1880 a claim was filed for what became the famous Waterman mine.  About the same time Sheriff John King geard of he possible ore vein previously noted by Lafayette Mecham and agreed to grubstake a party in a hunt for it.  Several claims were staked and some ore located but nothing sensational.  Later, when assessment work was due on the claims, Frank Mecham’s brother, Charley, and Thomas went out.  Mecham climbed up a hill where he sand his pick in what proved to be horn silver.  That was the start of the bonanza Silver King mine, which produced millions and started the county’s biggest silver rush to the Calico Hills. 

The next year, in 1882, the Southern Pacific started a railroad line from Mojave east to the Colorado River .  It was obvious, because of its strategic location on the railroad, that the infant settlement of Dagget would become the transportation center for the Calico mines, a well a the outfitting point for mining districts being developed father north and east.  Soon a mill was erected on the Mojave River and a little narrow gauge railroad engine puffed back and forth between Dagget and Calico hauling ore.  In 1889 Francis M. (Borax) Smith transferred operations of his borax company from the Death Valley area to the Calico Hills, where a rich deposit of colemanite borax ore had been found.  Pacific Coast Borax built a plant near Daggett.  The colorful twenty-mule teams hauled the ore from the mine at Borate to the railside near Dagget and that desert town became both the silver and borax capital.  Smith retired his mule teams and built the little Daggett and Borate Railroad to his mine. 

In a trade of railroad trackage, the Atlantic and Pacific ( a subsidiary of the Santa Fe) took over the Mojave-Needles branch of he Southern Pacific in 1884.  A year later, another subsidiary, the California Southern, which ran from San Diego to San Bernardino, pushed its rails through the Cajon Pass to a junction with the Atalntic and Pacific some 9 miles west of Dagget, at a point first known as Waterman Junction, then renamed Barstow.  With the Santa Fe Transcontinental railroad extending from Chicago to Los Angeles and San Diego, the need cam for a major railroad town with yards and shops between San Bernardino and Needles.  Dagget is said to have been chosen but it was so ill kept as a secret that land prices there soared.  The railroad simply went to Barstow, bought land at reasonable terms, and developed its main division point there.  About 1905, another railroad entered the Mojave River Valley.  Senator William A. Clark built the San Pedro, Los Angeles and Salt Lake railroad diagonally northeast from Dagget.  It used the Santa Fe tracks from Riverside to Dagget.  Around 1922 the Salt Lake line was bought by the Union Pacific, which established its main division point in the Mojave River Valley at Yermo. 

A new form of transportation began to take shape before World War I when a few hardy folks started trying to see how far overland they could travel in automobiles.  The dirt road paralleling the Santa Fe east to Needles carried the brave name of the National Old Trails Highway.  After the war, automobile travel stepped up in earnest despite ruts, rocks and dust.  Then in the early 1920s a shortened version of the Old Mormon Trail to Salt Lake became the Arrowhead Trail, a second major highway.  It was built by Arthur L. Doran, Pioneer Barstow resident who served for many years as a county supervisor.  By 1929, both the National Old Trails and Arrowhead Trail had been surfaced to the state borders.  The former became U.S. 66 and the latter received the new name of U.S. 91. 

Despite the fact that the silver and borax mines were no longer a factor in 1907, business and population in the Mojave River Valley continued to expand year by year over the past half century.  Farming became of increasing importance to the economy.  With the ever-increasing migration of newcomers to California, it was obvious that railroad and highway activities would surge forward at an unprecedented pace.  World War II brought in the vast military bases, U.S. Marine Corps Supply Center and Fort Irwin, with new payrolls.  And now, with the operations of the Goldstone Tracking Station ushering the “space age” into the desert, the future holds promise far beyond the wildest dreams of the rugged pioneers. 

California Interstate Telephone Company, 1961