Keys Ranch, Joshua Tree National Park

It wasn’t a park or a monument yet, but a rough and desolate place to make a living. Yet this man was not deterred. No, this Russian-born immigrant would make the desert his home until his death.

This is a story of a man who built something in an extremely hostile environment; one which most of us only venture into via an air-conditioned vehicle and very little time outside of that air-conditioned vehicle. 1910, a hard working man moved from Nebraska and took up residence in what would later be known as Joshua Tree National Park.

This is also a story of a man convicted of murder in 1943, and pardoned for five years later.

This is a story about Bill Keys.

According to Ranger Dave, “Bill was an industrious man. As you will see on this tour, he never let anything go to waste and built a home for his family in this often tough desert landscape.”

Ranger Dave at Keys Ranch

I generally don’t attend tours. Not that there's anything wrong with tours, but I like to wander here and there on my own and do my own research.

Sometimes I even get the research correct. When I don’t, my readers let me know.

During my recent visit to Joshua Tree National Park, I took the Desert Queen Ranch Tour - the ranch that Bill Keys created among the Joshua trees and towering boulders on the northwestern section of the park not far from Hidden Valley.

Keys Ranch in Joshua Tree National Park

To reach the ranch, down about a half mile single dirt trail, a guided ranger tour was the only way to view this abode in the middle of nowhere.

Only way in to Keys Ranch is by a dirt road

There was a locked gate. I didn’t have a key and broke two paper-clips before Ranger Dave showed up.

"I have the key,” he announced.

“I was trying to paper-clip some papers,” I replied. “But I forgot the papers.”

Ranger Dave was a friendly sort of fellow who greeted the tourists individually. The tour is limited in size and I think there may have been a dozen visitors at this early morning gathering.

Though, I was worried my paper clip may have jammed the lock.

“Okay,” he said to the tour group. “I will drive and all of you will follow me to the ranch. Please, do not take any items from the ranch or surrounding area since this is a historical site.”

Looked like I would have to stop by a gift shop to buy Laureen, my wonderful wife, a memento of my trip to Joshua Tree National Park.

A coffee mug or a rusty door knob from Bill Keys ranch - I know what I would desire.

The road was sandy, a bit rough but any vehicle could make the short trip to the ranch without any issues.

In 1910, Bill Keys arrived in the area of Twenty-Nine Palms and found work as a custodian and assayer at the Desert Queen Mine, east of where he would later build his home. It was tough work but something Keys fell in love with.

He oversaw the mine until 1917, when the owner passed away and Keys obtained the property due to not being paid for years. The back wages came in the form of a working mine.

Some mining equipment to view

That same year, he filed for 80 acres under the Homestead Act and started his ranch, built by hand from nearby rocks, adobe bricks, and wood shipped in from Banning and other locations.

“Funny story about Bill,” Ranger Dave said. “After years of living in this area alone, he met Frances May Lawton who happened to come from a very comfortable lifestyle near Los Angeles.. They fell in love, got married and Bill drove her out here to their, her new home.”

The home was a small wooden built structure boasting a living room, dining room and a bedroom located in not the green area Frances was used to, but instead a seemingly barren desert.

The Keys main residence

“What do you think her first words were when Bill stopped his old truck and showed his young bride her new home?”

Since this is a family blog - I will not say what words may have come out of Frances in my mind.

“We will never know,” Ranger Dave quipped. “What we understand is she smiled and accepted this is where she would reside with her husband. Within a short time, she loved this alcove in the desert as much as her husband did.”

Bill expanded the house, as well as the out-buildings as his family grew.  The couple had seven children, with four reaching adulthood.

It was a tough life day to day, but as Ranger Dave stated during the tour, they were a close-knit family and loved the rough and tumble life they led here.

As Ranger Dave was stopping here and there at this or that location during the tour, I wandered a bit and snapped some photos, stared into the canyon walls surrounding the property, gazed at the house, the horse corrals, the hand dug well in front of the house, and the rest of the site.

Hardy folks to say the least. Not just for a man and woman who fell in love and decided to make their life in the middle of a desert but to raise and educate children here was something special.

These were tough folks - honest folks - determined folks - and resilient folks.

I gazed over the round arrasta used to break up huge pieces of quartz in the search of gold and wondered if Keys hoped to find his fortune in the nearby hills.

The arrasta at Keys Ranch in Joshua Tree National Park

He had a small crushing mill at the ranch plus a larger one not far away for local miners to use, at a small fee, to crush what they had pulled out of the earth each day.

At one time, Keys had nearly 200 cattle on his ranch, along with pigs, burros, and a very large garden which grew both vegetables and fruit.

Horse corrals and livestock pens

This family knew how to make a buck and did it honestly with hard daily work.

Frances and Bill even built a one-room schoolhouse at the front of their property and other families in the area would bring the children there for daily lessons. The county provided a school teacher who resided in a home in which Bill had built for that purpose.

Another quarter on the ranch

During the tour, Ranger Dave told anecdotes about life here for the Keys family.

“One day, the children asked their father, since they were getting older, if it was their time to have a mine of their own.”

Ranger Dave smiled. “So, Bill told his kids to dig in a certain spot and that was to be their own mine. Well, they dug and dug and when the pit was deep and wide enough, Bill moved the outhouse over the hole.”

But, in 1943 the fortunes of the Keys family would change. With a dispute with a neighbor, Worth Bagley, there was a shootout and Keys was arrested for murder after killing Bagley.

According to a book written by Art Kidwell, Ambush, The Story of Bill Keys, the case against Keys seemed rather weak.

It was proven through the court records, or at least what I took from them, that Bagley shot at Keys without provocation first and Keys returned fire, killing him.

A trial was conducted and somehow the jury found Keys guilty of manslaughter.

Steve, a fellow visitor and recently retired California Highway Patrol Officer, looked at me - “Yeah, no issues there. A solid case of self-defense.”

I nodded in agreement.

Two former cops hearing what Ranger Dave said about the case put a lot of questions in our minds.

Rumors were that Bagley may have had friends in high places who did not like Keys.

Of course, those are just rumors.

After serving five years in state prison for the murder, Keys was pardoned by the governor of California, and instead of being a bitter man,  Keys went right back to work on his ranch and mining operations.

Frances died in 1963 and Bill six years later.

A romantic story of a couple who built a home out of nearly nothing, even with all the hardships and obstacles, their love endured till the end.

A visit to the Keys Ranch must be on the list when visiting Joshua Tree National Park - the Keys story of endurance is enough for the journey itself.

 

San Bernardino County Museum

John R Beyer at the county museum 

 According to David Myers, Chief Deputy of the San Bernardino County Museum, nearly eighty thousand people wander the hallways, admiring the exhibits. Heads twisting this way and that way, gaining as much knowledge as they can during their visit.

“That’s a lot of people visiting a county museum,” I stated, while Laureen was sipping on her morning coffee.

“Shall we visit, then?”

“Oh, we shall,” I responded. 

So, one sunny Saturday morning, we headed south on the I-15 for a day of exploring what the museum had in store for us.

“We might get hungry walking around the museum, since we didn’t eat breakfast,” Laureen said.

“Taken care of.”

DJ Coffee shop on 40th Street in San Bernardino did the trick. The place was rocking, as it usually is on our visits. We like the old establishment – great people working there, food is always good, and it’s been a mainstay in the neighborhood for decades. 

One motto of mine is to dine before exploring. It’s sort of like never go grocery shopping on an empty stomach.

“Why did you buy twelve boxes of Twinkies?”

There is no good reply to that question.

Before leaving, I did some research on the museums core values. Not sure why, but I thought it would make me sound more academic.

‘Through the lens of the region’s dynamic cultural and natural history, the San Bernardino County Museum develops visitors’ appreciation of our diverse identity to spark their curiosity, to stimulate inquiry, to challenge their assumptions, and to invite them to contribute to our common future.’

That is one heavy mission statement. I am exhausted just typing it.

Once we reached the museum, we noticed it is set up in a logical sequence. As though the hosts wanted the guests to flow easily and rationally through the halls.

“Many of our exhibit components are designed to be explored in chronological order which aids in adding context to the exhibit story,” Myers noted. “However, other exhibits may be organized thematically or even geographically. It all depends on the exhibit and how the visitor chooses to explore it.”

Chronological order? Thematically? Geographically?

“I say we just follow the map; the nice lady gave us as we paid our fee at the entrance,” I stated.

“Of course,” Laureen replied. But I knew that of course was really a rolling of her eyes. I like things simple, she’s the brains in the family and likes the chronological, thematically and geographically concepts.

As we entered, we started through the Hall of Earth Sciences which features a life-size mastodon and her calf. There were other ancient fossils, a redundancy there, allowing the visitor a glimpse into the past of the marvelous living animals who once roamed the county of San Bernardino.

Mama and baby

An extinct Giant Sloth

“I guess the theme here is big animals,” I stated.

No reply. But I think I actually heard her eyes roll that time.

Wolves stared down at us from a rock faced overlook as we made our way through this exhibit hall and moved onto the Hall of History. I didn’t want to guess their theme.

Here we learned how the first people in what would become California referred to the land as the Sacred Earth. How the locals made baskets, pottery, tools from the native plants and soil. How they lived off the land and prospered.

I suggested that Laureen try making sandals from the Joshua Tree; she is very crafty. But when I looked around to see her reaction, I found myself standing alone as she was moving away from me and my comment, toward the ascending ramp. No sandals in the Beyer home, I guess.

We moved to the second level where more and more awesome sights were awaiting us.

The Hall of Biodiversity had an incredible collection of wildlife commonly found in and around San Bernardino County. There were birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, and I believe a model of a space alien found in the High Desert. Then again, it could have just been the model of the Old Woman meteorite. 

Everywhere we looked were in depth descriptions of how the climate and geography of the region personally effects all living things, be that animal or plant.

A great place for school fieldtrips, I would assume. And correct I was.

Myers stated, “As the pandemic ends, we expect fieldtrips to return, and we look forward to welcoming students back.”

Speaking of schools, (and who isn’t nowadays?), all the ‘hands-on’ exhibits were temporarily closed to nasty and germ ridden hands of humans.

“We believe hands-on interactive exhibits extend the learning experience and increase engagement, and we look forward to bringing them back when it is safe to do so.”

Well, there was one hands-on experience Laureen found near the new exhibit, ‘Here comes the sun: solar science and spirituality.’

I caught up with Laureen at a large plasma ball. The ones if you put a hand on the globe, arcs of light magically go from the center of the ball to the touching hand. I’d go into greater detail but, I don’t have a clue how it works. It was developed by Nikola Tesla. Enough said.

Laureen was there with two cute and very curious young boys who were showing and explaining to her how to hold her hand on the globe. The boy’s mother was taking photographs with her phone as the boys continued their lesson. I think Laureen learned a lot.

I loved it. This mom had taken her two very young boys to the museum and allowed them to wander, with her right there alongside, and investigate all there was to investigate in that museum.

We parted ways and I knew I had just watched two future scientists in the making.

This exhibit also featured a substantial space with threes huge screens immersing the visitor in dramatic and colorful footage from NASA’s solar dynamic observatory.

Dramatic is really an understatement. The sun’s surface changed colors constantly but slowly, allowing us a chance to marvel at the intensity of that natural fusion reactor we wake to each morning.

Yes, where stellar nucleosynthesis transforms lighter elements into heavier elements with the release of energy. Binding energy for different atomic nuclei.

In all modesty, I Googled that.

This exhibit was so dramatic, that we spent several minutes posing in front of the burning suns surface. It was fun and silly.

According to Myers, “One of our newest and most visited exhibits is the solar one. It helps to tell the story of how the sun has shaped the culture of Southern California.”

I didn’t need an exhibit to tell me that. Smell the sunscreen at any Southern California beach during the summer and we know how the sun has affected us all.

“I think you’ve laid out long enough in the sun.”

“No, I want to be lobster red tonight. It’s such a great look with my white shorts.”

We found all the exhibits well laid out, explained perfectly, and positioned just right for visitors.

“Different exhibits appeal to different visitors,” Myers said. “Some people love the immersive cave and giant ground sloth in our Sculptured by Time exhibit, while others enjoy a more relaxing stroll through our new outdoor Ethnobotany Garden space where they can learn about traditional ecological knowledge of the areas indigenous peoples.”

Okay, this David Myers is one smart guy. All I know is that when going outdoors of the museum, there are lots of cool looking plants to stroll through in a relaxed fashion.

According to Barb Williams, bellevuebotantical.org, ‘Ethnobotany is the study of how people of a particular culture and region make use of indigenous (native) plants.’

It is fascinating how humans looked at all the different varieties of plants growing nearby and determined what needs could be taken care of by these plants.

“Hey, this tree bark may stop the pounding in my head.”

“This river reed may make a snazzy pair of sandals.”

“And maybe this green plant may, wow, is that Jimmie Hendrix?”

We wandered here and there and thoroughly enjoyed our trip through the halls of the museum. It’s open and the place was packed while we were there. Seemed to us that most guests were families with young children.

That was a great sight. After a year of pandemic lock down, parents were taking their children out an about. And one of those places was the museum.

Myers seemed excited about so many visitors once again. “We’ve missed our visitors and are thrilled to welcome them back with two new exhibits. In addition to Here Comes the Sun, in June we are opening Super Monster City, a traveling exhibit that explores the social and political context of superheroes and villains through toys and posters.”

The San Bernardino County Museum, located at 2024 Orange Tree Lane, Redlands, is a wonderful experience for all ages. Plenty of activities, displays, photographs, exhibits, and all the rest that make this place worthwhile for anyone who wants to learn the history of San Bernardino County.

And who wouldn’t want to learn all they could?

Laureen Beyer beneath the large welcome sign

A personal note: this blog was written during the ending of the Corona-virus pandemic. As of now, everything is open to enjoy.