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Mining sands of time
One man's obsession yields valuable nuggets of Mojave Desert history
| Tuesday, Jul 24 2007 9:05 PM
Last Updated: Tuesday, Jul 24 2007 9:08 PM
Joe de Kehoe is relentless about history. A retired geologist in Bakersfield, de Kehoe loves nothing more than to hang out with ghosts for days at a stretch in the mind-melting Mojave Desert of eastern San Berardino County.
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Joe de Kehoe near the former community of Bagdad in the Mojave Desert.
He yearns to take pictures of mining communities, settlements and towns that no longer exist.
He has driven thousands of miles to hunt down the sons and daughters of the Great Depression who once lived in these now-dead towns.
"He's a weekend desert rat," said Roger Hatheway, an expert on Route 66 in California. "And I mean that in a good way."
Hatheway and de Kehoe appreciate the barren but powerful beauty of the desert.
"You become infected by the desert," Hatheway said.
For de Kehoe, to stumble across a crunched-up tricycle amid the dusty ruins of yesteryear inflames his passions. Now, he must find out about the child who rode the bike, his family, their neighbors, their railroad-tie homes, their lives and loves and gripes.
"It's like doing your family history," de Kehoe said. "It's not over until you get to Adam and Eve."
Take into consideration the countless people who drive across the desert every year and see nothing but wasteland mile after mile without a tree to spare.
Joe de Kehoe finds that hard to imagine. After thousands of hikes and hundreds of interviews and an untold numbers of photographs, he has built a stout bridge to the Mojave past.
The desert is alive
Where some see time-whipped, jutting rock formations in the Old Woman mountains, de Kehoe spots a portal into a bustling gold mine with men and children digging for instant wealth.
"I love the sense of discovery," he said. "It puts a smile on my face until Thursday."
Joe de Kehoe, who has lived all over the world as a geologist, considers himself a resident of rock and wind in the desert. He hopes to publish a book about his Mojave adventures this fall.
Book designer Ron McKinley of Apple Valley never heard of Joe de Kehoe until a couple of years ago when his desert pals kept asking, "You know Joe de Kehoe? He's asking a lot of questions."
Well, no, he did not know de Kehoe, but they crossed paths, exchanged a ton of e-mails and phone calls.
McKinley decided to design and edit de Kehoe's book.
"Once a month," McKinley said, "we get together, whether we need to or not."
So, let de Kehoe tell you about John Steinbeck's Mother Road, the famed, even mythic Route 66.
Even though Route 66, also called the Main Street of America and Will Rogers Highway, was decommissioned more than 30 years ago, de Kehoe envisions those unending Dust Bowl caravans of railroad trains and cars and trucks packed with thin, ragged men hell-bent on finding work.
In a nutshell, de Kehoe said, "Route 66 was the symbol of the western migration of people coming to California."
The life of Schofield
These men lived hard. They liked their whiskey. A mean sun rose fast like a bloodshot eye on the horizon.
Some ended up in towns de Kehoe exhumed: Siberia and Bagdad, Chubbuck, Cadiz and Siam.
He stirred up the ghost of Tom Schofield, who found a gold mine ages ago, then lost it and spent the rest of his life looking for it. He died at about 100 years old.
Along the road of discovery, de Kehoe bumped into a gent named John Piper, who, at the age of 9, met Tom Schofield.
As de Kehoe tells it, Schofield bragged to the boy that he would get him a car.
Fat chance, right? Not so. Soon, Schofield towed a Model A pickup in front of the boy's house. Piper's father was not pleased.
By this time in his research, de Kehoe had contracted a severe case of Schofield fever. He had to find out what happened to the old man.
When the thought came to mind, wherever he traveled, he'd ask about Tom Schofield.
Later, while tramping through a cemetery in Barstow on a different mission, de Kehoe just happened to ask someone about Schofield.
Why, yeah ...
Then de Kehoe found himself standing over the unmarked grave of the man who spent most of his life searching for a lost gold mine.
Joe de Kehoe called Piper, who decided to honor Schofield with a grave marker. It reads:
Thomas Schofield
1854-1954
The search is over