Photo: Kim Stringfellow. The Mojave Project is an experimental transmedia documentary by Kim Stringfellow exploring the physical, geological and cultural landscape of the Mojave Desert. The Mojave Project reconsiders and establishes multiple ways in which to interpret this unique and complex landscape, through association and connection of seemingly unrelated sites, themes, and subjects thus creating a speculative and immersive experience for its audience.
This dispatch concerns the fabrication and distortion of legends over time. Specifically, it delves into a fascinating saga revolving around a conjectured Mojave Desert gold strike of epic proportions still actively sought by an eclectic and persistent group of quixotic speculators: Earl P. Dorr's Lost River of Gold.
Either Uncle Earl Dorr discovered the richest gold deposit in the United States... or he was the most imaginative liar in the state of California. 1
-- Ray Dorr, nephew of Earl Dorr, Argosy magazine, September 1967
In 1933, a number of scattered newspaper articles appeared across Southern California extolling the grandeur and beauty of some recently discovered massive limestone caves within the Mojave's Providence Mountains near the old Bonanza King Mine. Known today as Mitchell Caverns, these geological wonders were named after Jesse E. Jack Mitchell who had initially explored the caves in 1929 and would later market them into a popular recreational destination accessible from the National Trails Highway, better known as Route 66.
Writer Philip Johnston's detailed observations of these particular subterranean treasures were published in the August 1933 issue of Touring Topics, a precursor to Westways, underwritten by the Automobile Club of Southern California that is still in print today. Johnston's article Crystal Caverns of the Mojave along with its accompanying photographs celebrated the beauty and geological mystery of the caves and speculated what future speleological discoveries awaited in the Mojave Desert.
Lost Treasures 1989 article, Underground River of Gold, is one of many treasure hunting pieces peddling the infamous Earl P. Dorr gold legend. | Photo: Kim Stringfellow.
Several regional newspapers ruminated further, including the San Bernardino Sun; in a piece dated August 5, 1933: Miners and prospectors have suspected for years that these caverns may be connected by a great underground river that rises somewhere in the center of Nevada, fed by the winter snows of Nevada's numerous mountain ranges, and passing southward through the Mojave desert and then on to the Colorado River. The column goes on to state how this great river has not been discovered. In fact, it may exist only in the imagination of desert dwellers whom [sic] thoughts of water are recurring constantly. But the legend prevails.
Mythic accounts of buried treasure and lost mines had been circulating amongst desert prospectors for years. Author John D. Mitchell (no relation to the Caverns recreational promoter) published several collections of these yarns starting with Lost Mines of the Great Southwest in 1933. Beginning 1940, Desert Magazine began reprinting Mitchell's lost mine stories every few months well in into the 1950s.
Cave of the Golden Sands (left) and Death Valley Gold (right) are two of John D. Mitchells lost mine stories published in Desert Magazine during 1940 and 1951. Each incorporate varying storylines woven into Earl P. Dorrs legend.
Death Valley Gold, published in March 1940, told the tale of two Pahute brothers that had discovered a limestone cave at the edge of a dry lake somewhere in Death Valley leading into a dome-shaped cavern with a dark pool of water at the bottom. 2 Here, water bubbled up from some unknown depth along with great amounts of heavy black sand piled on the terraces around the lake that upon close inspection sparkled with small nuggets and flakes of gold. Strangely, the body of water seemed to be affected by tidal movements.3 After gathering the gold laden sand to pack out, one of the brothers decided to take a quick swim in the pool when suddenly the water along with the man were sucked into the chasm. The man's body was never to be recovered. Notably, the illustration's caption accompanying the story reads: Neither Mr. Mitchell nor the Desert Magazine would attempt to defend the authenticity of this tale.
In August 1951, Mitchell's Cave of the Golden Sands appeared in Desert Magazine's August issue. This first person account, told to the author by an older gent at a Nevada mining camp at the turn of the century, shared a similar storyline but with a mysterious lone prospector as the main protagonist who claimed that he collected four pounds of gold nuggets from a black sand deposit near Clark Mountain northeast of Nippeno [Nipton]. 4 This cave was said to be located just above the western edge of a dry lake -- most likely Ivanpah from the description. While exploring the cave the prospector discovered a long tunnel leading to an amphitheater-like grotto full of churning water that appeared to ebb and flow as if controlled by tidal surges. The water would erupt miraculously twice every 24 hours and then drain furiously via a whirlpool only to reveal a black sand beach gleaming with gold.
By fall of 1934, an equally fantastic account of long-forgotten Hollywood photographer and desert explorer A.W. Plummer was published front-page in the September 28 edition of the Los Angeles Evening Herald Express, proclaiming 330-Mile California Cave System Rediscovered. The unsubstantiated story posits his theory that a system of giant underground caves, through which flows a mighty subterranean river extends for some 300 miles from southern Nevada to the Mexican border.
A.W. Plummers photograph of the Mitchell Caverns appears in
