After checking out of our motel in Barstow, we drove to Mule Canyon in the Calico Mountains. I had gathered some locations where fossilized insects were found and it was just a short hike to one of them. Of course, there are rocks everywhere and I quickly realized I didn’t know how to identify a “nodule” that might contain a fossil. I need to do a bit more research before I try fossil hunting there again.
From Barstow we drove north on highway 395 until we reached Coso Junction. This was a convenient spot for a break, as well as the turnoff to go east out to a pictograph site. Pictographs are rock paintings. These particular ones are only a little over 100 years old, and historians believe they know the name of the native American medicine man who painted them. In addition to the pictographs, there are tons of obsidian flakes in the area.
A section of the pictographs at the site
Our next stop was at Owens Lake to check out two old, decaying charcoal kilns. They produced charcoal that was loaded onto a steamer and sailed over to Keeler on the east side of the lake, and then hauled up to Cerro Gordo to provide fuel for the mine furnaces. The kilns in Death Valley National Park near Rose Peak served the same purpose. Of course, Owens Lake is now dry because LA ships most of the Owens Valley water south via its aqueduct.
Charcoal kiln at Owens Lake
As the sun was setting, we drove out to the Manzanar Reservoir (just west of the Manzanar site) and looked at its concrete works and the graffiti scratched into the concrete by Japanese workers from the camp. Worker names and dates are in english, but the writings in Japanese characters express the workers extreme frustration at being held in the camp against their will.
Manzanar reservoir
We also made a stop at the Manzanar cemetery and, closer to Lone Pine, a small, memorial cemetery for those Lone Pine residents killed in a massive 1872 earthquake.
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