Rawhide & Prickly Pear Memories

[Bob Boze Bell]

January 8, 2013

Yesterday I went home for lunch and whipped out a little "Prickly Pear" study:

 

I'm quite intrigued by prickly pear cactus and their spiny, seemingly willy-nilly growth. Meanwhile, I was looking through an old True West magazine and saw a great photo of Rawhide, Nevada in the late forties. Inspired this daily whipout which I executed this morning before coming into work:

 

This Is Where I Came In

 

That is what this makes me think of, the fact that when I was really getting into Western history as a kid in Kingman this is how all the old mining towns looked: White Hills, Chloride, Stockton Hill, Cerbat, Gold Road, Oatman, Signal to name but a few in Mohave County. Virtually all of them tied to minig and the ever present A-frame mining hoist on a distant hill.

 

Finished "On The Road" by Jack Kerouac this morning. I loved this book so much I came into work and immediately ordered "On The Road: The Scroll Version" which has all the sex and the real names. Much of the novel takes place in Denver in the late 1940s and while the Beat Generation is drinking and howling, Kerouac drops in this dead on description:

 

"Outside the saloon old former prospectors sat dreaming over their canes under the locking old clock. This fury had been known by them in greater days."

—Jack Kerouac

 

"

[Sue Cauhape]

Rawhide, NV, has to be one of the most "out there" places in Nevada. Tried to follow the road map to get oriented to where it was in relation to something familiar. Thanks for alerting me to the existence of this intriguing spot for a future Jeep trip, but whatever possessed you to paint it? How did you learn about it? Huh???

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rawhide,_Nevada

[Bob Boze Bell]

I was looking at an old article from a 1950s True West magazine. This is from a photo taken about 1947. It's how I remember those old towns, boarded up and leaning heavily.

[Sue Cauhape]

 Leaning, indeed.

[Bob Boze Bell]

I've never been to Rawhide, Nevada but by the comments here and on Facebook, it sounds like the town is gone except for foundations. This is true of almost all the ghost towns I grew up with. In the seventies old barn wood became popular for dens and it only took a couple weekends for every building to be stripped and carted off. This is the way of the world. The buzzards come and clean up the mess and so do human buzzards.

[Sue Cauhape]

Union, NV, then, must've taken quite a hit from the barn wood scavengers. All that's left of Union is a rooftop laying on the ground and some bedsprings. Union is located at the southwestern edge of the Black Rock Desert, where the Burning Man celebration is held every Labor Day weekend. (That's ironic. It's an alternative lifestyle/hippie/art gathering that belies the need for labor unless it's to build a huge art piece that is burned during the festival.)

Margaret, you spotted it right on. The photo is the Bodie Hotel, looking a little bent with age.