UNIQUE PHOTOS & FASCINATING HISTORY IN NEW BOOKS

Book Review by Craig MacDonald

Arcadia Books recently published for Fonthill Media LLC's "America Through Time" series, several interesting photo-filled books, including these three on "art" left behind in California's Mojave Desert, nearby Rhyolite, NV. and the urban East Bay Area. The excellently, photo-documented works cause the viewer to think and wonder about the past, present & future of these unique, seldom-seen sights.

Readers will be amazed at the artistically-captured remains of abandoned & disintegrating autos, cafes, gas stations, mining equipment, furniture, street signs, hotels, railroad boxcars, a steel jail door, jetliners, collapsed bank & store structures and even a house made out of bottles. One of the books features graffiti. The author/lensmen & women have traveled extensively to record these out-of-the way sights.

"ABANDONED CALIFORNIA—The Mojave Desert" by Andy Willinger takes you on a fascinating journey through this spectacular 48,000-square-mile area, whose western boundaries are the Tehachapi, San Gabriel & San Bernardino Mountains. This desert is the hottest & driest on the continent and its Death Valley, the lowest, hottest spot in North America.

Readers will learn that Wonder Valley has the largest collection of abandoned buildings still standing in this desert. You'll be fascinated by the Mojave Air & Space Port, now a major boneyard to store commercial aircraft. There are dozens of jetliners in various states of disrepair, sitting idle, awaiting their fate. Full planes, fuselages, tails, passenger seats waiting patiently for possible salvage & refurbishment. But some of them have nearly totally disappeared.

Part of your "trip" is over the old Route 66, which became famous & the subject of songs from 1924-1956, when the Interstate Highway Act started the building of freeways that bypassed the route, leaving entire towns, like Siberia, Chambless & Bagdad, virtually erased from existence. You'll see the remains of abandoned gas stations, motels and much more.

Included are pictures of Hinkley, 14 miles northwest of Barstow. It's the town made famous by the award-winning movie, "Erin Brockovich," starring Julia Roberts, about contaminated ground water that led to cancer & a population exodus.

One of the most creative places in the Mojave is Lake Dolores Water Park, built by Bob Byers and named for his wife in the late 1960s. The tourist destination had fun waterslides & games. It was sold in 1990 and became "Rock-A-Hoola Waterpark," with 1950s & 60s rock music themes and a tube rafting river ride. It finally closed down in 2004.

Desert Center, off I-10, is where General George Patton's Desert Training Center was built to train thousands of troops for fighting in the African Desert in World War II. Then there's the town of Rice and its Army Airfield, where pilots were trained for fighting in Europe & Africa. Today, Rice is where travelers have been leaving pairs of shoes for decades, thrown over a tree, a fence and a closed Union 76 Gas Station.

The author has superb photos throughout this book that will capture your attention and want you to visit some of these unique places.

There also are stunning photos in "ABANDONED NEVADA—All That Glittered" by Susan Tatterson. Located just East of California's Death Valley is the grand ghost town of Rhyolite, with its crumbling, skeleton structures, which used to be successful stores, banks and a train depot. "As the haunting breeze stirs the desert dust, it's difficult to imagine (a bustling town of 6,000)," the author writes.

In 1904, gold was discovered & Rhyolite would boom with numerous saloons, casinos and places to stay. By 1907, it had electric lights, telephones, a hospital, school, opera house and a stock exchange as Tycoon Charles Schwab, head of Bethlehem Steel, sought riches there. Three railroads even served the desert town. But, by 1910, as mine outputs slowed and because of other issues, banks closed and the once-promising city started coming to a halt. Many of its buildings were dismantled and moved to other towns, including the Miner's Hall, which now stands in nearby Beatty. In 1925, Paramount Pictures filmed "Air Mail" in Rhyolite & in 2005, the Sci-Fi movie, "The Island," used it as a location shoot.

In Gold Point, the streets offer a bounty of mining artifacts as two brothers and a friend have been restoring buildings there. This scenic book also will take you to photogenic places like Goldfield, once the state's richest mining district, Tonopah, Nelson and other ghost towns with colorful pasts.

"ABANDONED EAST BAY San Francisco—Where Graffiti is King" by Xan Blood Walker is a peek at this ancient and sometimes controversial art form in the Oakland, Berkeley, Alameda and Richmond areas. "Either you like it or hate it or don't even notice it, Graffiti is an important part of some people's culture," writes Photographer Xan Blood Walker, who has degrees in printmaking & painting as well as a Masters Certificate in Art Therapy. She ventures into some of her favorite spots to visually document it. She said some artists are paid to spread their graffiti on walls, others do it as vandalism. One, Banksy, sold one of his pieces at Sothebys for $1.9 million.

(The reviewer loves visiting old mining camps & Death Valley. He also used to live in the East Bay Area. His grandfather mined in Rhyolite, shopped in the Porter Brother's Store and used the Cook Bank. The crumbling store and bank are pictured.)