Joshua Tree National Park, and the broader Mojave desert, are littered with remnants of the past. Remnants from the gold, silver, and copper rushes, even remnants of World War II, in Patton’s desert training grounds and various munitions testing areas. Some of them are well known, like the Wall Street Mill area or Keys Ranch, for example, and others are much less known, and left alone out in the silence of the desert. This week’s Picture of the Weeks features one of the latter.
My friend John and I stumbled on this site when we were searching for the Joshua Tree Junk Yard, featured last week. He and I were both fascinated by it, but left to wonder what in the world it was since there was no signage, and we frankly didn’t even know it was there until we walked up on it. There are some wells in the general area, and supposedly mines in the area as well, but this didn’t seem to necessarily be either of those. A s it turns out, these are the remnants of an old ore mill – which frankly doesn’t tell me much more than I had known before, except that our guesses about the wooden structure to the right in the back was, in fact, a ramp. Apparently trucks would back up to this, dump their ore in something that’s gone now, and it would be processed by other things that are no longer there. Regardless, I loved it!
When I visited in the spring, I actually took a shot of this exact composition during the day. I quickly checked my apps, and realized that nothing in the sky lined up with it, plus we were mentally fixated on trying to find the junk yard, so I moved on and didn’t think much of it again – until I got home and went back through my images. After studying the image and then checking my apps again, I realized that the sky *would* line up with it in the fall, so I set my sights on revisiting it. After months of thinking about it, I had a solid vision for what I wanted the image to look like, and with a little luck, I was able to make it all happen with the image you see above.
More next week!
–Dan Thompson