The News from Death Valley

National Park Service Shuts Abandoned Mine

The National Park Service has closed one of Death Valley's most well-known abandoned mines because of mounting safety concerns.

The Keane Wonder Mine and the ruins surrounding it will remain off limits to all vehicle and foot traffic until safety concerns can be addressed, park officials said.

National Park Service Shuts Abandoned Mine

The National Park Service has closed one of Death Valley's most well-known abandoned mines because of mounting safety concerns.

The Keane Wonder Mine and the ruins surrounding it will remain off limits to all vehicle and foot traffic until safety concerns can be addressed, park officials said.

‘It was life-changing'

He was in church, listening to Psalm 23, when Roger Homrich was inspired to hike across Death Valley.

"Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death…''

So the 26-year-old Dundee graduate began planning a backpacking trip. Not just a few miles. He wanted to walk 225 miles in Death Valley National Park.

Part of the hike would take him through Death Valley, one of the hottest, most desolate places on earth, home to rattlesnakes, scorpions and black widow spiders. Even the park's sites suggest hardship: Starvation Canyon, Coffin Peak, Hell's Gate, the Funeral Mountains.

No human remains found at Manson ranch

Inyo County sheriff's investigators Wednesday ended their search for human remains at a remote Death Valley National Park ranch used in 1969 as a hide-out by Charles Manson and his followers.

"One bullet casing was found in the site," Inyo County Sheriff's Lt. Jim Jones said, "but forensic testing indicates that there were no human remains in or around that site."

Excavation of a second potentially promising site yielded only remnants of ash and small animal bones. That spot was turned over to the National Park Service to be handled as an archaeological site.

Way cool: Death Valley National Park charms families

About 300 miles northeast of Los Angeles, vast Death Valley National Park is a place of extremes: hottest, driest, lowest. Amid its timeless quietude, visitors may hear the wind traveling across the desert floor or the echo of a raven's caw off a distant mountain. Families might enjoy visiting a few of the ghost towns throughout the park, seeing the unparalleled springtime wildflowers, exploring the otherworldly sand dunes or spotting desert coyotes.

Age appropriate : The heat and long drives (as the crow flies, the park is more than 100 miles north to south) might prove too much for little ones, but tweens and teens will likely enjoy the edginess of it all.

Strange -- but fun: Rhyolite, which boomed with the Bullfrog gold mine, was once a town of about 10,000, but now it's just for tourists and ghosts. There's an open-air museum along the road, where Modernist sculptures -- among them, a ghost climbing on a bike -- are scattered in the creosote, bizarrely juxtaposed with the moldering shells of Rhyolite's banks, stores and homes. These include the handsome Spanish mission-style Las Vegas & Tonopah Railroad Station and an odd house made of bottles. Good-natured volunteer guides provide tours.