Day 79: Eighty Three Deathly Miles to Baker
Distance: 83 mi.
Today’s leg of the journey took us 83 miles with no water, electricity or services until the edge of Baker. In a strict sense it was the most desolate stretch of land we have ever treaded upon.
7:30AM: Pass through Frisco ten miles outside Baker: ghost town where abandoned mineshafts beckoning the eyes onto deadly black spaces of decay and collapse. I’d bet these voluminous mountains still hold secrets untapped by modern eyes; almost as if they were still wild. Think fitful, fanciful thoughts while staring at faint outlines of wreckages, little above the dust now — ’perhaps an outlaw dwelling once stood just below those low peak.’ Of course, little survives its eventual flattening onto Google Maps, which indicates Frisco as a simple blankness: no metadata available.
More on Frisco:
Located in Beaver County, Utah are the silent remains of the once booming mining camp of Frisco. Though, its life was short, it is filled with history, from millions of dollars in ore taken from the Horn Silver Mine to shoot-outs in its dusty streets. Today its crumbling foundations, charcoal ovens, and silent cemetery speak eloquently of its rich and varied past.
Though there were a number of roaring mining camps in the San Francisco district, Frisco soon gained a reputation for being the wildest. Like many boomtowns, its streets were lined with over twenty saloons, gambling dens and brothels. Reaching a peak population of nearly 6,000, vice and crime became prevalent in the town. One writer described it as “Dodge City, Tombstone, Sodom and Gomorrah all rolled into one.”
Murders were said to have been so frequent that city officials contracted to have a wagon pick up the bodies and take them to boot hill for burial. Eventually, a lawman from Pioche, Nevada was hired and given free reign to “clean up the town.” When the tough marshal appeared on the scene, he allegedly told the town that he had no intentions of making arrests or building jail. Instead, the lawless element had two options — get out of town or get shot. Apparently, some of the wicked did not take the new marshal seriously as he reportedly killed six outlaws on his first night in town. After that, most of the lawless moved on and Frisco became a milder place for its citizens. [Source: http://www.legendsofamerica.com/ut-frisco.html]
Three or four spires crown Frisco mountain, visible thru the fog; surely one or two cell towers, third probably a weather tower; but the fourth?! To me a manmade mystery. O mountaintop, how I wish I could spare another day and know your secrets.
Large black beetles scuttle scarab-like on the blacktopped asphalt, toppling into the dirt, exoskeletons glint in sun.
No cars go.
Thin blankets of stratocumulus ride the sky as our second pass jolts us eight miles downhill into low canyon walls. We proudly accomplish the first 1/3 of the days miles with far less than 1/3 of our total combined mass of water consumed.
{Add videos for house in the middle of nowhere}
Once in Baker we eat a plain, overpriced meal at the sole restaurant; Kerouac’s, the other overpriced restaurant in town, is closed on Tuesday, our hopes of meeting the owners from Brooklyn are dashed. After some grub we lolly over to the visitor’s center, loiter until it closes, not ready to be more than 10 feet from a water supply; I’m still hungry so I heat up some ramen and TVP and lay my head down on a cement bench that will probably outlast everything in the region by 500 years.
Two more miles down the road we camp beside an archaeological site on BLM land, fetching one of our most wondrous nights of tent sleep to date.
