You Won't Need a Furnace at Furnace Creek in Death Valley

In November 2016, on my first trip to Death Valley National Park, I started with a sundown visit to Zabriskie Point. As darkness gathered on the floor of Death Valley, I located my campsite at the Furnace Creek Campground. The temperature felt warm, but after sunset, it no longer felt amazingly hot. With the doors and windows open on my coach, I was able to move indoors as the evening progressed.

The campground itself will look familiar to anyone who has camped in a National Park. You will recognize the layout as a series of loop-roads. Each loop has fifteen or twenty campsites. At Furnace Creek Campground, a recent change in management resulted in the repaving of all its roads and refurbishment of water and restroom facilities. The setting is ancient, yet the campground feels new again. Unobstructed views of both the Amargosa Range and the Panamint Range add drama to the scene.

Since the few full-hookup RV-sites were long since reserved, I settled for two nights of dry camping in a dry desert. Luckily, the water supply at Furnace Creek is sufficient for cooking and bathing. The first Anglos to visit Furnace Creek in 1849 barely found sufficient water to survive until their rescue in 1850. By the early twentieth century, residents and tourists at the village of Furnace Creek could enjoy potable water piped to the town from artesian springs in the nearby Amargosa Range. Today, groundwater withdrawal and storage tanks support what looks like a thriving oasis, but is actually doomed to return to its dry state at a time uncertain. With such paltry rainfall in Death Valley, groundwater pumping is ultimately unsustainable. Except for rare seasonal flow, what once was a true oasis along Furnace Creek is now mostly a dry wash.

Although there is a wide range of tourist services at Furnace Creek, the 2010 U.S. Census pegged the fulltime population as only twenty-four hardy souls. Admittedly, most of the public and private facilities in Furnace Creek are air-conditioned, making life easier for heat-weary visitors and workers. One exception to that is the Native Americans known as the Timbisha Shoshone Tribe. As a federally recognized tribe, their small, private enclave adjacent to Furnace Creek appeared to be hot, dusty and dry. What few trees and shrubs that survive the harsh climate provide scant shade or relief from the sweeping winds. Recent data suggest that the Timbisha tribal population in Death Valley is around forty individuals.

During my November 2016 visit, there was not a trace of water on the vast salt pan, including the Upper Basin, Middle Basin and Badwater, which lays almost 280-feet below sea level. Furnace Creek, on the other hand, is only 190-feet below sea level. This difference in elevation means that in wet years, water will overflow the Upper Basin, pass through the Middle Basin and form a large, shallow lake at Badwater Basin. Salt, borax and alkali, which dries in the connecting channels suggests a short-lived, landlocked stream that may flow through Death Valley in the springtime. Upon my return in February 2017, all three basins contained surface water. By April 2017, almost all of the surface water had evaporated or settled into the graben, leaving the salt flats dry and susceptible to wind erosion and vandalism.

While visiting Furnace Creek in February 2017, water seemed to be everywhere. The dry lakes were wet. Furnace Creek flowed down its traditional course and water fell from the sky, in the form of rain. Upon arrival, the evidence of flood damage to roads and trails was evident. Orange traffic cones stood guard at many small washouts along Highway 190, leading to Furnace Creek. Nearby Artists Drive, a one-way formerly paved road through spectacular canyon scenery remained washed out. After historic winter rains had swept that road away in many places, workers used heavy machinery to make repairs. During our February visit, only gentle showers passed through Furnace Creek. The showers cleared the air, leaving the scent of moist creosote in an otherwise desolate place.

Why was the winter of 2017 so wet in Death Valley? My personal observations may or may not be scientifically correct, but here is my theory. North of Furnace Creek the Panamint Range to the west and the Amargosa Range to the east form a sort of wind tunnel. Between Tin Mountain (8,953 ft. elev.) and Grapevine Peak (8,743 ft. elev.), a cyclonic effect can arise. If little moisture is available, a whirlwind or “dust devil” will rise and sweep toward Furnace Creek and Badwater to the south. If the counter-clockwise wind is strong enough, it can pull moisture from the Eastern Sierra Nevada Range and feed it toward the salt flats of Death Valley.

Another contributing factor in rainfall is dust particles. In February, I watched a tall, thin strand of wind shear traveling along the course I already described. As it reached the Middle Basin, it had enough strength to kick up untold amounts of dust from the periphery of the standing water. Soon, we could see a large cloud of dust and rain forming against the eastern slopes of the Panamint Range. Upon our return to the campground, another shower swept from North to South. With the minimal moisture we experienced, only the rock strewn landscape hinted at floodwaters issuing forth from every canyon and wash in Death Valley. The recent winter rains must have been a dangerous, yet remarkable sight.

By April 12, 2017, when I again visited Furnace Creek, it was hot and dusty. Again, I dry camped, but this time it was warmer, approaching 100 °F (37.8 °C). With the wind and sand looking to sandblast my truck, I decided to hunker down inside the trailer until the wind abated. Using my cordless vacuum to keep up with the dust in my coach was almost a full time job. If I had opened the door, it might have blown off its hinges, but would surely fill my coach with even more dust. With my afternoon spent inside a hot coach, I began to understand how the original pioneers of 1849 must have felt. Trying to allay both wind and dust, they had nothing more than brush lean-tos to protect them against the onslaught.

For me, temperatures above 100 °F (37.8 °C) are uncomfortable. In the heat of summer, many Norwegians visit Death Valley. Considering the cool air in their home country, Norwegians come to Death Valley in the summer just to feel outdoor heat for the first time in their lives. Whether my Norwegian story is true or not, German, Dutch other Northern Europeans find Death Valley to their liking. No matter what time of year, it is common to hear people speaking various European languages in and around Death Valley National Park. Since older members of the Timbisha Shoshone Tribe still speak their native language, you might have the rare opportunity to hear that language spoken at Furnace Creek, as well.

Email James McGillis

Zabriskie Point in Death Valley - It's not a gap...it's an abyss!

- “How you get there depends on where you're at.”

For most of my life, I avoided Death Valley like the plague. The stories about an ill-fated attempt to reach California by wagon train in 1849 - 1850 created a daunting image. The graben of Death Valley holds the record as the hottest place on Earth, with five consecutive days in 1913 registering 129 °F (54 °C), or above. Annual precipitation at Death Valley averages less than 2.5-inches. Further, its existence as the lowest point of elevation in the United States added to the negative connotations in my mind.

Then, in November 2016, I traveled from Las Vegas, through Pahrump, Nevada and on to Death Valley National Park, California. Other than photos and video I had viewed of the area, I had no idea what to expect. What I found upon arrival was reminiscent of a Martian landscape, rather than Earth. Volcanism, erosion and rocky or sandy soil abounded. As distinguished from the face of Mars, there were a few hardy plants and animals, but otherwise, normal life-support seemed unlikely.

Before arriving at my campsite in Furnace Creek, I visited Zabriskie Point. Relatively unknown until the latter 20th century, Zabriskie Point became the prime location and namesake of Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1970 counterculture flick. Filmed in 1969, with music by Pink Floyd and Jerry Garcia, the movie features an incoherent plot, as if the cast and crew were not only blazing in the sun, but also blazing on lysergic acid (LSD). In fact, the often-panned, but

of fame or infamy.

On Oct. 12, 1969, at Barker Ranch, in Death Valley, just north of the San Bernardino County town of Trona, the murder spree of the Charles Manson “family” ended with his arrest. In September 1973, members of the rock band, The Eagles accompanied singer and songwriter Gram Parsons to the place and time of his death in Joshua Tree, California. According to public records, between October 2003 and November 2013, twenty people of lesser fame died in or around Death Valley. On July 6, 2014, hikers in the badlands near Zabriskie Point discovered the body of British actor Dave Legeno, known for his role as werewolf Fenrir Greyback in three of the ‘Harry Potter’ films. Temperatures at the time of Legeno’s death were as much as 123 °F (50.5 °C).

In the film Zabriskie Point, I remember a scene with the male and female stars standing on a tiny pinnacle of land. Filmed at sunset, one can see the Panamint Range looming and glooming in the west. As the stars embrace, the camera revolves around them. Amid clouds of dust, we see lots of skin and writhing bodies. Amidst the whipping wind and the grand vistas at sundown, we see dozens of couples apparently copulating on the hillocks below. After almost fifty years, both film acolytes and the curious continue to trek up the hill to see that famous spot. That tiny pinnacle of film-fame has eroded into dust. Oh, that the faithful shall not trample His grave, too.

In 2004, a flash flood swept across the highway, uprooting and destroying the substantial concrete pit-toilets previously installed in the parking area. After extensive repairs, both then and in 2014, there is now a paved pathway, leading up to a viewing plaza. With its low stone wall, the plaza is about the size of a baseball diamond. Although the once remote place called Zabriskie Point is no longer so remote, the views at sundown are every bit as exciting or sublime, depending on one’s energies at the time.

heritage.

On an April 2017 visit to Zabriskie Point, I noticed a curious recurring phenomenon. Once again, the sun set through the abysmal gap, framed by the Panamint Range, which is visible west of Zabriskie Point. At sunset, the place darkened like a theater when the lights go down. After staring toward the sun for the final fifteen minutes of daylight, my eyes could not readily adjust to the twilight and approaching darkness. Although the sun still shone for a time on the Amargosa Range to the east, the Zabriskie Point plaza looked like there had been a solar eclipse.

After gazing around the plaza, I snapped a few photos of the sunlight as it receded from the Amargosa Range. As darkness rapidly approached, all visible landforms were in shadow. Since there was nothing more to see, I sauntered down the sinuous pathway that led to the parking lot below. Here is

the curious part. At the end of each visit, I spotted several photographers carrying long-lens cameras. Each was hoofing it up the pathway to the viewing area. I wanted to say, “It is all over. Don’t even bother going up there. There is nothing more to see”.

If you plan to visit Zabriskie Point and view that famous sunset, do not refer to the official sunset times listed in your almanac or on a weather website. They will list the time of day when the sun slips below the Earth’s horizon, not when it disappears behind the Panamint Range, which may be ten or fifteen minutes earlier.

Each time that I observed a Zabriskie Point sunset, several photographers ran toward the ancient plaza. With the sun already set, one can only hope that they arrived in time to take pictures of the

Email James McGillis

No Media For Me On Inauguration Weekend - 2017

During the recent presidential inauguration, I planned to get as far away as possible from all broadcast and online media sources. After reviewing my old blog articles, I decided that the Hole in Wall Campground in the Mojave National Preserve was the place to go. In the lower elevations of the campground, my mobile telephone might access a cell tower somewhere near Needles, California. At the upper reaches, terrestrial signals are weak, with only AM radio and an occasional text message transiting through the ether.

As it happened, my winter camping trip to the desert was epic. In my coach, I had vintage wines, great food and forced-air, propane heating at my fingertips. My electrical power emanated from two 6-volt “golf cart batteries”. Combined, they offered 12-volts of power to my lights and appliances. The system allowed for “deep cycle” usage and quick recovery during recharge. In the campground, as the temperature dipped below 40-degrees, I set the thermostat as high as 71-degrees. As it converts from a liquid to a gaseous state, propane expands by a factor of 270. Even with extensive burning, my ten gallons of propane would suffice for several nights of warmth. As the night progressed, I could have worn shorts and t-shirt inside.

Overnight, I set the temperature at a comfortable 60-degrees. As I slept in luxury, the furnace cycled five or six more times. When I awoke the next morning, it was raining. I pushed a button on the control panel and the electric-powered awning extended fully over the outside door of my coach. After sprinting through a light shower, I retrieved my old Honda EX1000 generator from the bed of my pickup truck. After pouring what we euphemistically call “gasoline” into its integral tank, I prepared to pull the recoil starter.

Over the past decade, the ethanol, or corn alcohol in our domestic fuel supply had twice clogged up the carburetor. Contemporary generators and automobiles have a pressurized fuel system that seals itself from leaks when not in use. My old Honda generator relied on gravity to feed the carburetor, thus there was no automatic shutoff of the fuel supply. As long as there was fuel in the tank, any change in barometric pressure would expand or contract the air in the fuel tank, thus sending a few drops of fuel into the carburetor.

The medical community entreats us not to eat or drink foods that contain corn syrup. Science proved long ago that corn syrup would clog our arteries and lead to diabetes and incipient heart failure. As with corn syrup in the human body, so it is with “corn fuel” in an engine designed for real gasoline. By leaving a small amount of gas in the tank during storage, I had twice gummed-up the carburetor. Each time, the engine failed to start, requiring a costly rebuild. In my case, it took two such episodes to determine that the gas tank on my EX1000 must be empty when placed into storage. By now, it had been more than two years since I had run the generator.

Since my EX1000 uses a conventional carburetor, it needs to be “choked” in order to fire-up and start running. For those who have lived only in the “fuel injection era”, choking means physically limiting the air supply to the engine in order to increase the fuel-to-air ratio. Upon startup, it gives you more “bang for the buck”, as they used to say. After achieving “lift off”, so to speak, one can open the choke incrementally. Once the oil in the crankcase warms up, fully opening the choke allows the engine to run efficiently.

I looked down at the choke-slider from above and behind the unit. From that odd angle, the hieroglyphics indicating that the choke was “open” or “closed” made no sense. After erroneously sliding it to the full-open position, I proceeded to pull on the recoil starter twenty or thirty times, with no success. By then, water was puddling four-inches deep beneath the aft-end of the coach and rain was whipping in my face. Enough was enough. I shoved the EX1000 under the coach and went inside to dry off.

The LED indicators in my coach showed that my “house batteries” were down to one-third of their normal power. Despite having to brave intermittent rain showers, I would dash out every couple of hours and run the engine on my Titan truck. Through an attached cable, the alternator on the Titan’s V-8 engine recharged my coach batteries. By nightfall, it was pouring rain, but the batteries recovered to two-thirds power. Feeling better about my power supply, I went inside, planning to stay there until sunup.

When I sat down at the dinette, the seat of my pants felt wet and cold. In my haste to run the truck engine, I had left my shirttail hanging out of my two-piece rain suit. The shirttail was soaked and so was I. In order to warm up, I had to remove all of my wet clothes and replace them with dry apparel. In the desert cold, one can rapidly succumb to hypothermia. Since I was still on limited battery power, I did not raise the thermostat for warmth. Instead, I relied on my own metabolism to warm my clothes and me. When I sat back down, even the cushions of the dinette were damp. Would my bouts with the cold and the wet ever end?

After dark, it became colder still, so I wore three layers on my torso and pajamas beneath my jeans. On my feet were two pairs of socks and warm slippers. In order to save battery power, I used portable lights and even kept the radio off. Television was not an option. Normally I stay up until at least midnight, but it was so cold and dismal that I went to bed around 10 PM. Soon after getting in bed, I spilled a small portion of white wine on the bed sheets. In order to stay dry, I had to leave my previously warm spot and resettle on the opposite side of the bed.

As I lay listening to the rain and wind, the only other sound was the blower on the furnace, which was cycling on and off. Each time the furnace relighted, I would turn it down a degree or two, hoping to conserve battery power. By midnight, I had turned it down to about 52-degrees. Two days later, I discovered an air-gap where the slide-out meets the chassis of the coach. That small air gap had the same effect as leaving a door ajar. With the high winds that night, it felt like a fan was blowing cold air into the coach.

As I slept fitfully, the wind and the rain battered the outside of my coach. After the weather front passed through at 1 AM, the wind began gusting to over forty miles per hour. During previous camping trips, I had always put a “four-by-four” piece of wood under each of the leveling glides on the coach. Since the motorized leveling system on my current coach is so easy to use, I had become complacent. Instead of placing a solid piece of wood beneath each glide, I had lowered them directly on to the wet desert sand.

The “full-room slide out” was fully extended, thus cantilevering a lot of weight over the open desert. As the winds picked up, the coach would heal like a sailboat under sail. In reality, the coach did not move much, but it felt unstable and ready to blow over. My lucky stroke was that the pickup truck was upwind, helping break some of the wind forces. Also, the aerodynamic front end of the coach faced into the wind.

Whether it is our voting choices or our camping practices, sometimes we humans act against our self-interest. If I had not been obsessed with saving battery power, I would have used the motorized system to retract the slide-out into the coach. Rocking in my unstable cradle that night, I recalled that if the house batteries dipped below 11.5-volts, the hardwired carbon monoxide alarm would start wailing. Worse yet, the alarm would not stop until the batteries were sufficiently recharged. By the time I remembered that, it was freezing outside, so I did not venture out and run the truck engine.

The potential for a wailing alarm was more powerful than my fear that the coach would overturn, so I left the slide-out extended. With four-inches of water pooled beneath the rear leveling glides, that was not a wise idea. In the end, everything stayed upright. Still, for the better part of three hours, it felt like I was inside the tornado from The Wizard of Oz. After 3 AM, the furnace stopped cycling and the wind gusts seemed to abate, or maybe I passed out, with a pillow over my head.

When I awoke, the sun shown above the low horizon to the east. As its rays struck the back window of the coach, the air inside slowly rose toward 55-degrees. Although the warming trend was encouraging, in order to feel comfortable, I needed more heat. Then, I remembered that a group of campers had spent the night in tents, down at the windiest, coldest part of the campground. How were they feeling that frigid morning, I wondered? After dressing as warmly as I could, I stepped out and walked toward my truck.

On a whim, I dragged the old Honda EX1000 generator out from beneath the coach, “choked it” and then pulled the rope. It fired-up on the first pull. The EX1000 employs some old technology, including what amounts to a small motorcycle engine mated to a 1000-watt generator. Even when warm, it emits pollutants far above a current-generation “CARB Compliant” generator. With gloved hands, I plugged the power cord from the coach into the 120-volt electrical receptacle on the generator. Within 40-minutes, the coach was warm and toasty and the batteries registered two-thirds full. The price I paid for old technology that morning was to inhale exhaust gasses at my otherwise pristine desert campsite.

In order to avoid the exhaust, I explored the bounds of my rustic campsite, including the bed of my pickup truck. There, in a crate that carried my unused four-by-fours was half an inch of solid ice. Since my indoor/outdoor thermometer went missing, I can only assume that it got down to about 25-degrees overnight. Still, as the sun rose and the wind abated, the air warmed to about 45-degrees. Upon further inspection, my trailer tires were showing unusual wear, so I needed to buy new ones before returning home.

After two eventful nights at my desert camp, I headed for Needles, about fifty miles away. On my first trip to the Hole in the Wall Campground, eleven years ago, I had experienced a slow leak in one of my tires. After pumping it up above normal pressure, I hoped to get fifty-miles of travel before it deflated. Then, I had the choice of traveling cross-country on dirt roads to the town of Baker or heading to Needles and purchase new tires there. Good sense prevailed, so I had navigated paved roads and Interstate I-40 to Desert View Mobil, located on the old Needles Highway. Back then, I assumed that buying trailer tires in the desert would be akin to throwing money down a rat hole. Were they not just waiting for a desperate soul like me to fall into their money trap?

As it occurred, that first visit and twice since, the people at Desert View Mobil have treated me to free refreshments while I waited for a refit with new tires on each successive rig. Having bought three sets of tires at Desert View Mobil, I knew they could do the job. As I rolled to a halt, the manager approached me saying, "You know your tires are shredding?" I said, "That's why I'm here". Before he mounted the new tires, I asked him to check my suspension links, which felt loose and wobbly on the road. No, the tires and suspension components I purchased that day were not free, but my new tires were higher quality than I could buy at any local tire store.

Soon, I had all new bolts, links and bushings on the suspension, plus four new eight-ply tires. Each new “wet-bolt” features a grease fitting and unlike the original nylon bushings, the new ones were solid bronze. In the future, I can lubricate the whole suspension system, mitigating excess tire wear and the loose handling I had previously experienced. Longtime Desert View Mobil mechanic, Ricky Wallace and his compatriot had me back on the road in less than three hours. Before I departed, they provided a free grease-job on my wheel bearings. As I headed for I-40, it felt like I was driving a brand new rig.

While writing this article, I researched “Desert View Mobil” on the internet. One image led me to Yelp, which features mostly negative reviews of millions of businesses. The reviews for Desert View Mobil were true to form. Most Yelp reviewers seem to hate all small businesses. Eighty-percent of the Yelp reviews I read were extremely negative. How could my experience with this particular business be so good while many customers felt swindled, overcharged or defrauded?

As I said, Yelp is a “complainer’s paradise”, so do not expect to see any good news there. Also, remember that you are in the town of Needles, in the middle of the Mojave Desert. Nothing is cheaper in the desert. Next door, at the Dairy Queen, I bought the most expensive milkshake of my life. Desert travel is hard on vehicles, whether they are trailers, motor homes or automobiles. Why else would Desert View Mobil stock tires of almost every size? If you limp in on three wheels, as one vintage Savoy trailer did, do not expect a bargain, but do expect to be back safely on the road in short order. As they say, time is money.

Interstate I-40 has more elevation changes than a roller-coaster. If a tire is going to fail, you can expect it to break apart somewhere near Needles. If you travel at high speed and have neglected routine maintenance, you will require help somewhere near High Desert Mobil. When the staff there points out that your tires are bare and your suspension is shot, do not blame them. Blame yourself for not fixing the problem before leaving home. Besides, they offer a two-year written warranty on parts and labor. Just keep the receipt in your glove box and stop in for a safety check each time you pass by.

When I was rolling again, it was too late to drive the 300-miles home. Instead, I headed down the long grade to Park Moabi, along the Colorado River. Although the County of San Bernardino owns Moabi Regional Park, its concessionaire has renamed it “Pirate’s Cove”. Adjacent to old Route-66 and the Colorado River, the park began life in the 1930s as an itinerant travel camp for Dust Bowl escapees. In prime season, the restaurant now serves around 3000 meals each day. Boats from up and down the river flock to its lagoon. After anchoring, boaters can take a water taxi to the restaurant. If you have the time and money, you can take a float-plane ride, a speedboat ride or connect your RV to a full hookup next to the river.

Not wanting to spend the extra ten dollars for a full hookup, I elected to go with “water and power only”. That meant I would have to access the RV dump in the morning. Still, with the outrageous price of $55 for a full hookup near the Colorado River, saving money seemed appropriate. My decision turned out to be a mistake. Instead of spending the night in quiet seclusion by the river, I ended up camping amidst the biggest, loudest party ever. I camped in an area occupied by hard-drinking party-people, all of whom drove high-powered “quad” off-road vehicles. Once I hooked up the water and power, I retreated to my coach. The “Quiet Hour” of 10 PM came and went. Without fail, every ten minutes, someone would fire up his ORV, just to hear the engine rev.

Are you a hard-drinking, “hoot & holler” pirate-type, enamored of high-powered off-road vehicles? If so, Pirate's Cove is the place for you. They tout 3200-miles of off-road trails to drive. With high-revving engines all around and a complete lack of respect for "quiet hours", you will experience a freewheeling atmosphere of loud music, engine fumes and smoky campfires. If you enjoy peace, quiet and have respect for your neighbors, stay as far away from Pirate’s Cove as you can. When you check in, they copy your driver’s license, your vehicle insurance certificate and take your credit card for payment. I do not know who can access all that information, but the potential for identity theft is ever-present. For the reasons stated above, I give Pirate’s Cove management a "no stars" review.

Overnight, some prankster opened both the black-water and gray-water valves on my coach. Only the outside cap retained the effluent. The next morning, when I opened the cap at the RV dump, one-hundred gallons of effluent poured out on the desert soil and on me. Someone had already dumped a bucket-load of horse droppings by the Pirate's Cove RV dump, so I did not feel bad about leaving the area as soon as possible. By the time I cleaned up and departed the scene, it was raining.

For the next 300-miles, the rain did not let up. Near sundown, I caught a glimpse of Simi Valley from the pass at Rocky Peak. Upon arrival at my destination, the rain had stopped and my winter camping experience in the desert was complete.

That was how I spent Inauguration Weekend 2017. Do we have a new president? Was there a protest march the next day? Is there an unconstitutional immigrant ban in effect? Is my Medicare heading for a voucher system? Will Congress slash my Social Security benefits? Apparently, a lot can change when one spends a few nights at a "Hole In The Wall" in the Mojave National Preserve.

Email James McGillis

Ride the D&RGW Narrow Gauge Rails with Twentieth Century Railroading Legend, Engineer Steve Connor

In 1965, my father, Dr. Loron N. McGillis and I visited Durango, Colorado. There we rode on the old Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad (D&RGW) to Silverton and back. No longer a freight or ore hauler of any distinction, the narrow gauge steam trains were quaint, yet powerful. During our stopover at Silverton, my father and I photographed the waiting train and visited with its engineer.

In December 2013, while writing about our 1965 excursion, I included an image of our engineer in one of my articles. In the original photo caption, I referred to him as “our unnamed engineer”. When I published his picture, I thought, “Someone must surely know who this man is and will contact me with his name”.

In October 2014, I received an email from Mr. Paul Connor, who is the grandson of our 1965 locomotive engineer, Mr. Steve Connor. Over the course of several emails, I learned more about the Connor name in D&RGW history.

As Paul wrote to me, “I am Steve Connor’s oldest grandson. My father, George Connor worked as a brakeman/conductor for the D&RGW. I spent the first twenty-one years of my career working for the D&RGW and Southern Pacific Railroad. After hiring out at Durango in 1974, I began there as a mechanical laborer/coach cleaner. In 1976, I started as fireman at Durango, and later worked out of Pueblo, Minturn, Alamosa and Grand Junction as a locomotive engineer/fireman. In 1995 I was promoted to Road Foreman of Engines and have held the same job since. After the Union Pacific merger with Southern Pacific, my title became Manager of Operating Practices, working out of Grand Junction.

All told, the Connor family currently has somewhere around one hundred and twenty years of railroading history in western Colorado. I say this because I am not certain of my great grandfather, Richard Connor's hire date. We think he started in the 1800's when the tracks were being laid into Durango.

The youngest of seven siblings, for many years of his career Richard Connor was the section foreman at Hermosa. His oldest brother, Jim, retired as a locomotive engineer at Durango. His brother John was a fireman and was killed in a train wreck in the Animas Canyon in 1921.”

Regarding his grandfather, Paul Connor wrote, “Steve Connor was born in the section house at Hermosa, just north of Durango to Richard and Julia Connor. He hired out around 1923 and retired in 1971 with forty-eight years, but was furloughed for many years during the Great Depression. At times, when they were short of manpower, he made trips on the Rio Grande Southern. As the narrow gauge dried up, he would work at Durango in the summers and work out of Alamosa in the winters. The Alamosa/Durango seniority rosters were combined during those years. I always joked that by the time he was number one in seniority, there would be only one job left on the narrow gauge.

As you might expect, there are a lot of photographs of Steve Connor around but few that are this good. Your father really captured a great deal of his personality and a nice moment in time for me.”

Regarding Steve Connor’s experience, Paul wrote, “The locomotive 478 was my grandfather's favorite of the three used on the Silverton Branch in those years. I am not sure why, but if I had to guess it is because it rode the best, the whistle was not as shrill, and it was then equipped with power reverse (long since removed). Steam engines possess personality in the way they fire, steam, and run. For lack of a better word, I would call them quirks. In the years I worked there, I had no particular favorite of the three. As a fireman or engineer you had to work around each of their personalities.”

Each October 15 for the past three years, I have closed the season while staying at the United Campgrounds of Durango RV Park. In cooperation with the campground, I operate a live webcam that features the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad. If a webcam viewer is lucky, they may see the steam train running either north or south through the RV Park.

By October, the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad runs only one round-trip train to Silverton each day. During the fall season, the railroad uses mostly their larger 480 Series or K-36 locomotives, so that they can operate a longer single train. By October, it is rare to see a smaller 470 Series or K-28 locomotive, with its lesser tractive power.

Still, if you visit Durango during the summer season, you might have the opportunity to see or ride behind locomotive 478, which was the favorite of twentieth century railroading legend and D&RGW Engineer, the late Steve Connor (d.1974).

Email James McGillis