Oasis Too Button-Down Now, Nudists Say

Down 60 miles of bone-jarring road they come. Past abandoned mines and dead-end trails and vast open spaces. Past a lone scruffy trailer, whose inhabitants warn: “If you’re going to tell everyone about this place, we don’t really want you here.”

From around the world they come to this Godforsaken, heavenly place at the farthest reaches of Death Valley National Park--to the Saline Valley hot springs. Bohemians and bankers, hikers and Deadheads, cops and free-range philosophers--all destined to soak, naked and together, in steaming springs that have been a hidden mecca since at least the 1960s.

In recent weeks the Saline Valley faithful staged their annual clothing-optional softball game (final score: Skins, 18; Misfits, 16), and a caravan of dreadlocked wanderers set up tepees, ready for one of their number to give birth in the alkaline “soaks.”

“This is a place that heals your soul,” said a German architect who strolled, still dripping, from the springs. He wore only black combat boots, his female companion the same. And a rhinestone tiara.

Stays Are Limited to 30 Days a Year

But now authorities are threatening to rein in the unfettered, carefree ways of the Saline Valley hot springs. Four years after the area was absorbed into the new Death Valley National Park, the National Park Service has begun to enforce its rules and regulations in earnest at the springs. Rangers now ticket those who stay more than 30 days a year. Within a month, for the first time, campers will be forced to register for each stay. Even dogs can’t run free anymore, at least not when rangers are around.

Capping it all will be the completion this summer of the first General Management Plan for the national park since its 1994 establishment. The plan threatens to force all vehicles--from cars to trailers to funky love buses--to park a quarter mile from the trio of springs. Even with a clothing-optional rule still in place, regulars say the other changes are ruining what they consider the last, best spot in America for freedom, self-determination and community.

“It was once a massive, spontaneous good time,” said “Turtle” Jim Hay, a 30-year veteran of the scene. “Now it is so regulated that you have to have a permit to smell the flowers in the spring.”

The question of what to do with the hot springs has become more controversial than any other issue confronting the largest national park in the continental United States--eliciting more public comment than mining, endangered species and public concessions combined.

“I like to think of the hot springs like a place in the Old West, where you could make your own rules,” said Hay, 62, who lives in nearby Keeler. “Back then, you would stop at an inviting campfire and be welcome. One by one, those campfires have disappeared, except for the one in the Saline Valley.”

An unusual alliance of activists is campaigning to keep the springs regulated by the campers themselves. Three hundred letter writers--from as far away as the Netherlands and the Philippines--have complained bitterly about the changes, including the alleged “paramilitary” attitude of some rangers.

Park managers disagree, saying they have intruded very little and usually only when a few scofflaws tried to abuse the many freedoms Saline offers.

“Unfortunately, that kind of culture attracts some people who want to take advantage of the lack of rules,” said Eric Inman, a National Park Service law enforcement specialist. “We are not going to let that happen.”

The park service contends that the new rules are still far more lax than at most campgrounds. Officials say they only want to assure that the springs remain open and accessible to everyone and not dominated, as they once were, by a clique of semi-permanent squatters.

“First they bring out a couch, then they build a lean-to, and all of a sudden they think the area belongs to them,” Inman said. “It’s homesteading.”

For most of their history, the springs burbled anonymously from a volcanic source deep beneath the salt flats. Native Americans and laborers from nearby talc mines came occasionally to soak away their ills.

Only in the 1960s did the outside world begin to arrive in force. Hippies and spiritual seekers led a run to the baths, sometimes staying for months on end. Buses and trailers, tents and huts sprang up along the barren, sandy slopes at the foot of the Last Chance Range, where the water surges from the ground at nearly 110 degrees.

Over the years, volunteers corralled the water with stone and concrete, creating three large pools with hot-tub style benches, the first about a quarter-mile downhill from the other two.

They created rituals too.

At Thanksgiving, campers cook as many as 15 turkeys in a pit for a communal feast. They celebrate the long Presidents Day weekend with the softball game. And at Halloween, they once staged a body-painting contest; until, as one regular said, “all the perverted looky-loos came out and ruined it.”

The most abiding and important tradition of the springs, however, is the spirit of all for one and one for all. Campers share meals and rides to “town.” (The Owens Valley community of Lone Pine is a rugged 3 1/2 hours away on U.S. 395.) They dig new holes for the outhouse and drain the baths every day to scrub the stones with bleach.

When a camper gets particularly unruly or disruptive, the men of the camp will invite the offender to a meeting and politely ask him to leave.

‘This Is the Most Relaxing Vacation’

On a recent Thursday afternoon, about two dozen people camped around the springs. A typically eclectic crowd enjoyed a clothing-free soak at “Palm Spring.” A tugboat operator from Redondo Beach and his wife joined the German expatriate and his tiara-wearing friend, a West Hollywood performance artist. Beside them were a San Juan Capistrano firefighter and a heavy equipment operator from Livermore, Calif.

A fat, heavily tattooed workman floated near the well-toned firefighter. One brown-all-over regular’s beard had grown so long that it had become snarled in his chest hair.

“This is the most relaxing vacation you can imagine,” said Pam Sellars of Redondo Beach, floating in the buff next to half a dozen new friends.

Saline Valley is not, however, everyone’s cup of herbal tea.

Those not kept away by summer heat that can approach 130 degrees or driven back to civilization by a shortage of funds tend to be put off by “the road.” To call the dirt track from civilization “rough,” would be like describing the lobster-red denizens of the baths as merely “tan.”

Drivers must spend more than 50 molar-rattling miles on Saline Valley Road just to reach the turnoff to the springs. Then it’s another seven miles over sand and gravel, beside drooping creosote bushes, to reach the final destination. Without a hint of irony, a ranger tells a novice to bring “three or four” spare tires for the ordeal. A tow back to Lone Pine can easily cost $750.

“It’s dangerous out there, and people need to know it,” said one woman who lives near the springs.

The rugged ride also has kept the springs relatively undeveloped. The only shade for miles comes from a handful of palm trees and a military cargo net propped on poles over the lower, or “main,” spring. Volunteer camp host “Lizard” Lee Greenwell--who lives in a trailer surrounded by animal skulls, old military training shells and spare machinery--maintains a small patch of green grass and a tiny cupboard of paperbacks.

Visitors must bring their own cell phones and electric generators. There are no lines to the outside world. And the open, two-seat outhouse suffices for plumbing. Visitors put down where they wish, since there are no designated campsites.

Although campers generally greet newcomers warmly, a few snarl at rangers--and reporters, who they believe will expose their Shangri-La to the masses. “It’s people like you who are [messing] this place up,” one bearded soaker declared last week.

Until Congress created the national park in 1994, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management exercised a lax, live-and-let-live policy at the hot springs, which lay outside the old Death Valley National Monument. But the park service has gradually exerted more control.

Much of the current concern focuses on the draft of the management plan for Death Valley, a park nearly the size of Connecticut.

The plan would attempt to preserve some of the natural ambience around the springs by forcing visitors to park their vehicles at least a quarter mile to the west. Designated walk-in campsites would be created near the springs. Two makeshift dirt airstrips for small planes would be closed. Already, workers have begun installing an “iron ranger,” a metal box where campers will soon be forced to register, albeit at no charge.

Park service officials say registration is a mildly intrusive action that will let them keep better track of how long people stay at the springs. Otherwise, squatters tend to stake out prime camping spots for months, violating the 30-day limit enforced in many national parks.

Some Tribal Leaders Unhappy

Some campers said they appreciated rangers driving out those who squatted for months in dilapidated trailers. The general bonhomie of the camp can sometimes be upset by “some very, very shady characters,” visitor Sellars said.

The park service’s Inman said rangers were pushed into the registration system only after one camper who had stayed in the valley eight months fought the 30-day limit in court.

But the park service may not be the only group challenging the campers’ spirit of laissez faire.

A small Indian tribe, the Timbisha Shoshone, recently struck a deal to serve as a partner in the management of the park. If approved by Congress, the unique arrangement could give the 300-member tribe some authority over use of the springs.

Some tribal leaders clearly aren’t happy with the way things are. One elder objects to a stone peace sign that someone created on a hillock above the springs. Another protested the intrusion of palm trees and other exotic plants.

Tribal Administrator Barbara Durham fumed most, however, about the nudity, which she called “disgusting.”

Tribal Chairperson Pauline Esteves, 75, concurred. “The way the people are using the waters is not right,” she said, “lying out there nude and exposing themselves to anybody who happens to come by.”

Durham said she hopes the park service will close the springs periodically, so the tribe can conduct ceremonies on land it considers sacred. But park service officials said it is too soon to say if any changes will be made at the springs on behalf of the tribe.

In the meantime, old-timers like Hay see their beloved oasis slipping away.

Turtle Jim said he is already so disgusted that he limits his visits mostly to the annual softball game.

“There are already enough Disneylands and Yosemites and Grand Canyons,” Hay said. “Why can’t there just be a place that people can discover on their own and that is still unregulated and free?”