Andrew Jackson Longstreet left his mark in the Armagosa Valley near the end of the 19th century.  Much like the shady “Scotty” of Scotty’s Castle, he lived in what is now Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge.  His history ranges from cattle thief to Indian advocate.  We visited the Longstreet cabin and spring that bears his name.

To see our short Ash Meadows video on YouTube, click here

Several of the springs in Ash Meadows are crystal clear and blue.  Pup fish dart back and forth and the sound of crickets and the breeze are the only sounds.  We tried to capture this experience for you with this one minute video.  Watch closely and you can see the water flowing up from the bottom of this spring.

It has truly been a great visit for us, here in the Death Valley, Armagosa Valley and Shoshone Village area as we wrap up the show in Shoshone today and head home.

Borax mining was a big part of the Armagosa Valley and Death Valley areas last century.  The Armagosa Opera House is a part of that legacy.  Built by the mining company in the 1920’s, the opera house was a theatre/community meeting place/church, part of a complex that housed the mining company offices, hotel, dining room, dormitories and store.  Marta Becket, revitalized the theatre as the “Armagosa Opera House” in the 1967, performing one person shows until 2012.

Currently, the complex operates a motel, café, museum, tours, and limited shows.  Death Valley Junction is the name today of this historic site and gateway to many local Mojave Desert Wonders.

It truly has been a “Super Bloom” of wildflowers this year and we are enjoying day two of the Art Show, here in Shoshone “village.”

Sherry’s glass work, in addition to minerals and fossils, includes items that we have collected from nature.  Armagosa Valley was home to Native Americans, later miners, ranchers and farmers.  Now home to Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge and with much evidence of settlers from the last century.  Before our modern landfills, trash was dumped in shallow pits and burned.  What was left behind was mostly glass bottles and rusting cans.  We found one such area here in Armagosa Valley.  Almost a square mile dotted with old dump sites that date from 60 to 100 years ago.

Above are some of the treasure we found in areas outside of protected lands.

Sherry will use mostly pieces of broken bottles and scraps of rusted metal to create her “repurposed” art that have become popular.  The building in the background is the remains of a water system that pumped ground water for farming, ranching and mining.  lawsuits in the last century have seriously limited any future large scale development in an effort to protect the groundwater and biodiversity of the Armagosa Valley, just outside of Death Valley.

Today is the start of the Art Show here in Shoshone and the wildflowers are still in bloom!