Turrets of Scotty's Castle in Death Valley, CA
About this photograph
- Creator
- Margery H. Freeman
- Date created
- Unknown
- Location
- Death Valley, California
- License
- This photograph copyright ©2009. All Rights Reserved
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- Search LEARN NC for Albert Johnson, arid, badlands, Badwater Basin, California, castles, Death Valley, Death Valley National Park, Death Valley Ranch, Death Valley Scotty, deserts, dry, erosion, gold, gold mining, Great Depression, Kentucky, lowest point, mines, mining, mountains, national parks, Nevada, rain, rainstorm, ranches, salt, salt flats, sedimentary, volcanic, and Walter Scott.
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The turrets of Scotty’s Castle in Death Valley, California. The Castle has an interesting and strange history. Walter Scott ran away as a boy from his Kentucky home to join his brother on a Nevada ranch. He worked several jobs before he was discovered by a talent scout and became a cowboy for Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. After touring with the show for twelve years, Death Valley Scotty, as he’d become known, started to convince investors that he had an excellent gold mine in Death Valley. The claim was untrue, and the investors received no returns from the money they gave to extract ore. All but one, Albert Johnson, withdrew. Scotty and Johnson struck up a friendship, despite the fact that Scotty was swindling Johnson. The two began construction on the Death Valley Ranch in the 1920s. Johnson claimed to reporters that Scotty owned it and that Johnson was only his banker, and Scotty claimed that money for the castle came from gold mine profits. When the Depression hit the area in the 1930s, construction on the Ranch, known now as Scotty’s Castle, halted, and the structure remains as it did then--unfinished.
Death Valley National Park is located east of the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range. It is home to the lowest point in North America at Badwater, which is 282 feet below sea level, but it also encompasses parts of several mountain ranges. Its highest point is Telescope Peak, at 11,049 feet. Located in an rainshadow exaggerated by the presence of four major mountain ranges between it and the ocean, Death Valley receives less than two inches of rainfall a year and is famous as one of the hottest and driest places in North America. Summer temperatures often hover around 120 degrees Fahrenheit.
