Notes and Reflections on Books and Media

by Hannah Leitheiser

Death Valley

2017-04-28

"a caravan of Mormons, numbering about seventy, struck out from Salt Lake, to cross the Mojave Desert and make a short cut to the gold fields. All but two of these prospectors perished in the deep, iron-walled, ghastly sink-holes, which from that time became known as Death Valley."

"Funeral Mountains"

"On a ridge above Furnace Creek we came upon a spring of poison water...Nielsen, kicking around in the sand, unearthed a skull, bleached and yellow, yet evidently not so very old. Some thirsty wanderer had taken his last drink at that deceiving spring."

"As for white women—Death Valley was fatal to them." - Tales of Lonely Trails by Zane Grey , 1922

Sounds unfun. Also racist and sexist.