Way, Way, Way Out Yonder

The north edge of Death Valley--where a nameless two-lane highway winds through rugged Grapevine Canyon in the Amargosa Mountains--is not the most isolated place on Earth.

But it seems that way.

The nearest towns, if you can call them towns, are the gas-pump burgs of Stovepipe Wells and Furnace Creek, more than half an hour to the south. Real communities, with supermarkets and housing tracts, lie so far across the barren landscape that they might as well be mirages.

“The closest grocery store that has groceries--and not enough to buy--is in Beatty, Nev., and that’s 60 miles away,” says Jack Van Essen, a tour guide at the lone attraction here: Scotty’s Castle, a rambling Spanish-style villa erected by a pair of eccentrics in the 1920s, smack in the middle of nowhere.

Van Essen squints into the late-afternoon sun as if trying to see beyond the desolation.

“Tonopah,” he says, “is 90 miles away. Pahrump is about 120. I go to all of them. You get tired of going to the same place all the time.”

At 78--old enough to know better, he’ll tell you--Van Essen keeps coming back, for reasons he can’t quite define, except that he loves the desert and loves cracking one-liners for the young desert rats who run Scotty’s Castle for the National Park Service.

Theirs is a strange, hard-bitten camaraderie, operating the sleepy landmark by day and retreating at night to a tiny desert trailer park three miles beyond the castle walls.

The trailers, here since the 1960s, are hardly worth looking at--faded boxes set on a low hill of mesquite and cottonwoods. The inhabitants never number more than 30 or 35--nomads who arrive about Oct. 1, the start of the desert tourist season.

The Van Essens, Jack and Alice, bring their own camper, driving 800 miles from their summer home in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho.

Audrey Trevaskis, 57, was a mental health therapist who took early retirement to work at national parks across the country. This is her first stop and, so far, she is delighted.

“The isolation is fine,” she says. “It’d be nice every week to go get fresh vegetables, but you can’t, so you adapt to that. One thing I’ve discovered is that the Park Service is like a family.”

Evenings are spent gossiping, playing cards and watching videotaped movies. On days off, workers fight the tedium by making long drives to shop or by hiking in the desert. Some read. Some watch the days turn to nights and the Milky Way emerge from the blackness.

“Sunsets are incredible,” says Colleen Bathe, a Park Service supervisor who has been here 16 years. “We live in a place people pay to come visit; that’s what’s wonderful about it.”

Bathe stays on year-round, along with eight or nine other employees. They are the exceptions, catering to the trickle of guests who come through when the desert floor bakes at 120 degrees. Employees like to point out that the castle, located at 3,000 feet, is cooler than Furnace Creek.

But, hey, what isn’t?

“In the summer,” Bathe says, “it’s nice to go into Vegas and catch matinee after matinee . . . spend the day in air-conditioned theaters.” The trip is not that far by desert standards--about 180 miles.

Most of the paid tour guides and cashiers are gone by mid-April, returning in the fall to this quirky outpost.

“The moods of the castle change,” says Trevaskis, a castle tour guide who enjoys photographing the desert. “If it rains or snows, it’s almost like a living thing. It’s almost like it’s evolving and growing just because of the stories we tell about it.”

The origin of the castle is one of the goofier Wild West yarns, centered on a glib, gun-carrying Kentucky con man named Walter E. Scott, later to be known as Death Valley Scotty.

Scott spent his boyhood, in the 1870s, on the harness-racing circuit. He was a stunt rider in Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show, and later he hauled borax on a 20-mule team in Death Valley.

The valley inspired him, and he dreamed up a scam apropos of the region. Using gold nuggets mined in Colorado, Scott claimed to have struck the mother lode and managed to generate extensive press coverage and to sucker wealthy financiers. Albert M. Johnson of Chicago became such a fast friend that he stuck by Scott even after the mining claims were discredited.

Johnson made visits to Scott’s desert cabin and eventually bought land and brought out his wife. When he decided to build a mansion, Johnson approached Frank Lloyd Wright. But he rejected the great architect after sketches failed to incorporate a Spanish-style theme, according to one account. The villa ultimately featured tile roofs and archways, as well as towers and parapets with a medieval influence. The interior has dark wood beams, tile floors, faux-candle chandeliers and ornate fireplaces.

It was the Johnsons’ home, but Scott lived there and, because of his notoriety, became associated with the place. After his death, in 1954, he was buried on the hill behind the castle under an imposing wood cross. A plaque quotes him: “I got four things to live by: Don’t say nothing that will hurt anybody. Don’t give advice--nobody will take it anyway. Don’t complain. Don’t explain.”

Jack Van Essen knows the lines by heart. He gives tours in character, as if part of Scotty’s Old West. He wears the cowboy boots and jeans and a battered felt hat. He uses the folksy accent. He tells tales of swindling and high living and the celebrities who rolled in since the castle was built--Errol Flynn, Will Rogers, William Randolph Hearst.

“He’s trying to build a castle somewhere too,” Jack tells one tour group.

Scotty’s Castle is a lot smaller than Hearst’s but draws about 70,000 visitors a year.

The Van Essens are surrogate parents to others in the close-knit crew of guides and office employees. Some sadly anticipate the day when Jack and Alice will no longer return, but both plan to continue as long as they can. The desert means a lot to them--even its miles of emptiness.

“The quietude is just remarkable,” Alice says as dusk casts a reddish light over their camper and the picnic table outside. “You sit out in the evening and you might hear a coyote, you might hear a car--but you might hear nothing. Total silence.”

Jack tilts forward.

“Only when I stop talking.”