Four Extremes: Scotty's Castle

Fri, 31 Jul 2009 23:59:59 -800

Friday, we decided to seek out some more extremes for our trip in Death Valley.
The first stop was at Scotty's Castle,
which is just a few miles west of the eastern edge of Death Valley National
Park. In the 1920s, a Chicago insurance company executive (Albert Johnson) was
taken in by a Death Valley shyster (Walter Scott) who had claimed that he had a
gold mine in a secret location in the desert. Of course, none of that was
true, so the executive took a train out to the desert, witnessed a botched
attempt by Scotty to scare him away, and decided to build a hot dry summer
house a few miles away from one of the warmest places on the planet. The
result? Scotty's Castle.