Castle, Crater & Racetrack

On the north end of Death Valley National Park is a home that gained notoriety as a castle that was built over a gold mine, but what most people think is remarkable is that a home of this size and beauty was built near Death Valley. The house was built from the 1920's - 1939.

Walter Scott was a cowboy from Kentucky,a showman with Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show and a con man. In 1902 Scotty started convincing wealthy businessmen that he had a gold mine claim in California and they should invest in it with him. During his time with the Wild West Show, Scotty learned how to promote himself and his schemes to make money. He was very flamboyant, out going and told a good story. And that's how he sold shares in his secret gold mine in Death Valley, CA. One gentleman who invested with Scotty was Albert Johnson, a millionaire businessman and former architect from Chicago. Albert's health was not good and he was encouraged to seek warmer climates so he decided to visit his "investment gold mine". It soon became very obvious that Scotty had no gold mine but Albert didn't mind. He enjoyed Scotty's company and loved the California desert. When his wife wanted to join him on his vacations to Death Valley, Albert decided to build a vacation home at Scotty's "gold mine" .

So with Scotty on site and Albert working with an architect from Chicago, the Spanish-style castle-in-the-desert was built. Albert had to be self sufficient in the harsh desert so he used solar panels to heat the water and a gushing spring to power a generator for electricity. Special insulation was used in the walls to and water falls were featured in some of the rooms as a cooling mechanism. He also built a special room where they could watch silent films with a pipe organ for the music. The pipe organ could be played manually or with roller music. It has over 1,200 pipes. One huge piece of the home that was never completed was the swimming pool. The hole was dug but then the depression came along and they ran out of money. All the tile for the pool lies in piles in the tunnels. That is the other unique aspect of this castle is that Albert had tunnels dug under the home running from room to room.

At one point the house was used as a bed and breakfast. As guest were dining, Scotty would get a few of the servants to go to the tunnels and bang on pots and pans. The guests were told it was miners digging for gold underneath the house. Scotty had his own room in the house but only used it to fool people into thinking it hid the secret entrance to the gold mine. In reality, Scotty lived in a small cabin about a mile away from the castle. It became know as Scotty's castle after Albert and his wife passed away. Their estate paid for Scotty to live there and be cared for until his death.

Just down the road from the castle was Ubehebe Crater, a 770 foot deep crater created when a steam-explosion occurred and blew out this hole.

We then aired down the tires on the Jeep and drove 27 miles down a washboard gravel road to go to the Racetrack! On the way we passed Teakettle Junction.This is probably the slowest race you will ever see on earth. The track is actually a playa created by a dry lakebed. The racers are boulders or rocks that move mysteriously across the lakebed leaving furrows in the mud. Some of these rocks weigh up to 700 pounds. The furrows show how the rocks have wiggled, jiggled, zigged and zagged across the perfectly flat bed. Geologists have a theory that rain may make the mud bottom slippery and that wind "pushes" the rocks along. No one has ever seen them move so no one knows how or why they move. It was a long drive back on the washboard road!