Old Rock Bath House

 

Awesome rock formations near the Old Rock Bath House

I was recently in Apple Valley on an errand doing this and doing that, when I found that I had some time to kill.

So, I pulled over, safely, on Outer Highway 18, and asked Mr. Google what historical places I might find in the area.

I’ve been all over Apple Valley. In fact, I lived there once upon another time, and knew that Jedediah Smith traveled through the region. 

“Jed,” I said to the bearded, unkempt explorer.

“John,” he replied.

We parted ways then, me to my apple orchard and Jedediah south along the Mojave River.

Men did not talk much in 1826.

But there is so much to learn about the places in which we reside or may have resided.

A couple of hits came up on my search, Roy Rogers old residence, the Fairhope house, the Adobe House, and a few other famous houses in the area. I didn’t choose any of them. I wasn’t too sure the owners would like a stranger wandering their front yards snapping a photo here and there.

Then, as I scrolled down to places to visit, the Old Rock Bath House seemed like an interesting destination.

After entering the location into my vehicle's GPS, I was on my way and soon was lost.

Directions seemed quite simple. The Old Rock Bath House is near Fairview Valley, not far from Zuni Road, not far from Laguna Seca Drive, east of Fairview Valley Road, along Keator Road, and not far southeast of Drip Ranch.

After bouncing a while on the dirt Keator Road and passing by the same remote house in the area with a very nice man waving at me each time I bounced pass, I decided to stop.

“Looks like you are lost,” he said.

“Was it my expression or the fact I passed your house seven times in the past half hour?”

“And I waved each time,” he replied.

Our man-talk over, he pointed out another narrower dirt trail that led to a canyon deep into some very rocky canyons to the southeast of his property.

The kind stranger told me the road up to the site was too rough for my vehicle and meant for four-wheelers, and also that I should have taken the wide dirt road off of Cahuilla Road. It would have made the trip a lot easier.

Pretty rough route to the site

My truck is pretty good in rough areas, but I decided that the gentleman had been correct, not only did the path get pretty narrow but it was very difficult to traverse over boulder-sized boulders. My Toyota FJ, no problem - but that stead was back in the barn, so I hoofed it.

Getting on to summer-like temperatures, I of course remembered the rules of desert hiking; bring water (I didn’t), have sturdy hiking shoes (I had on a fashionable pair of Sketchers), make sure people knew where I was (I wondered if that included the stranger I had just met), and know your personal limits (I know when it is time to leave a bar).

A half -mile hike uphill into an unknown canyon looking for something I hadn’t known existed wouldn’t be a problem.

It wasn’t.

A little thirsty, a bit out of breath (time to work-out more), and I found myself staring at large stone and concrete structures where the canyon, known as Hidden Canyon, narrows into the hills to the south of it.

Trail leading into Hidden Canyon

According to Rick Schmidt, Director of the Mohave Historical Society, the place has some pretty interesting and tragic history. The canyon, located in the Granite Mountains of eastern Apple Valley conjured up stories of the tough old pioneers who ventured where many would not, to make a new life for themselves.

There had been natural springs in the nearby hills and one such place was here where I was standing.

In an article written by Schmidt in 2018 for the Mohave Muse, it is rumored that Pegleg Smith and Bill Williams used to water their stolen horses in the canyons, while eluding the owners of those stolen horses.

In 1862, the United States Congress enacted the Homestead Act, giving free land to those willing to move west.

It worked and millions of once vacant acres were developed by those willing to take a chance and head to the unknown to better their lives.

It was also here in this hidden cove with water that Warren Hair decided to homestead 25 acres of land in 1919. He began construction on several structures in the hopes of creating a family oasis.

As I strode about the buildings, one thing stuck me, and it was the finely made rock stairway leading away from the largest of the structures to what appeared to be a creek at the bottom of the stairs.

Beautiful stairs leading to seasonal stream

No water was running, but I could imagine at certain times of the year, the creek would be flowing well from its steep grade through the canyon. If someone built a dam, or a reservoir, then water could be contained possibly through drier parts of the year.

The remoteness of the canyon would surely be an advantage in keeping the water a secret from others who may take advantage.

According to an article from the San Bernardino Sun, dated November 13, 1949, a permit to divert water was issued to a Clifford Hair, the son of Warren, to use for the family’s homestead. 

Looking over the remains of the structures, a heck of a lot of work was put in by both Warren and Clifford through the decades to build the various rock and cement buildings. It was rather eerie walking about the place.

Some of the remains that are still visible

A slight warm breeze seemed to assist the dragon flies in gaining altitude, as I walked from building-to-building wondering what it must have been like to take on such a project.

In my many travels, I have encountered places like the Old Rock Bath House, but it never tends to diminish the feeling of awe I have for such folks who invested such labor and time into their dreams.

It always seems to be an honor to walk where they once tread.

Clifford may have had a dream to create a holiday resort at the location. A hidden cove where an abundance of cool water flowed from above. What a great idea for a desert and those who may have wanted a chance to wash away the dust.

But, from the early 1900s, cattlemen in the area had been using the water which flowed from the Isabelle Spring, now part of the Hair’s claim, to water their livestock.

It was easy to take a herd of cattle to the canyon, water them and head back to the ranch, but the cattle would tear up the trails leading to the springs. 

A solution was needed to keep the property pristine. Clifford decided to fence the property off. 

Apple Valley, being a small and close-knit community at the time, Clifford ran into numerous disagreements with the ranchers about fencing off such an easy access to water.

But he stuck to his guns and continued with the building project.

Great construction by Hair

In reading a brief article written in the San Bernardino Sun on July 30th, 1956, I learned of the mysterious death of Clifford Hair.

It seems, Clifford had gone into the canyon to work and had not been heard from for nearly a week. When investigated by his family, his body was found lying at the bottom of the creek near one of the structures he had been working on.

A single bullet hole through the heart was the cause of death.

It was known that he carried a revolver for protection against rattlesnakes. The police investigation concluded the gun had dropped and accidentally discharged, killing him.

Right through the back and into his heart.

I do not believe in conspiracy theories, but I do love a good conspiracy. 

A man suddenly gates off a popular watering hole for ranchers and a later is found shot through the back.

Hmmm?

In all transparency, I have not been privy to the actual police or coroner’s report and have not read if the bullet which killed Hair was the same caliber as the gun Hair carried with him.

I’m sure a thorough job was completed to get to the bottom of the death at the time though.

Wandering about the property, I wondered what Clifford’s last thoughts may have been on that fatal day.

Possibly ‘I should have holstered my gun better’ or ‘perhaps I should not have fenced off the water.’

We will never know, but one thing is for certain, Clifford Hair had a dream and continued with it to his last day in that hidden canyon, building his rock bath house. 

Hair's dream and hard work almost came to fruition

Monterey and Stevenson

Laureen in front of where Stevenson once lived

In the latter part of 1879, a young unknown writer lived in a small Oceanside village called Monterey. He would be there only a short period, but the impact of that village would stay with him the rest of his life and influence what he would go on to write.

Robert Louis Stevenson was so little known, that most people just called him Bob.

He truly would not be the Robert Louis Stevenson of writing fame until the publication of his bestseller, Treasure Island, in January of 1882. 

Laureen and I love the city of Monterey. In fact, we try to get there at least once a year. There is something about walking the waterfront, driving beneath tall billowing trees, walking shoeless across the sandy beaches – the same sand that may have been there during Stevenson’s stay.

The entire Carmel Valley, where Monterey is located, is gorgeous.

Not many folks realize the man who penned such literary classics as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, resided there in a modest boarding house.

Robert Lewis Stevenson's old abode

The writer would wander the hills, valleys, riverbanks, and streets soaking everything in.

‘The town, when I was there, was a place of two or three streets, economically paved with sea-sand, and two or three lanes, which were watercourses in the rainy season, and were, at all times, rent up by fissures four or five feet deep. There were no streetlights. Short sections of wooden sidewalk only added to the dangers of the night, for they were often high above the level of the roadway, and no one could tell where they would be likely to begin or end,’ he wrote of the village of Monterey in his work entitled, Across the Plains with Other Memories and Essays, in 1892.

Today, that image of Monterey seems so out of date – well, I guess it is, since it was written 131 years ago.

Nearly 30,000 residents now make this charming old California town home.

“I love Monterey,” Laureen said, as we turned onto Pacific Street from Highway 1.

I nodded. “We better, since this time of year seems to include large amounts of rain.”

It was raining as we drove near the Monterey Historic Park. There was a promise of some sun later in the day as the clouds kept teasing us by tearing apart and then sticking back together like a kid eating cotton candy.

Some of the beautiful natural sites to be seen in Monterey

In all the times we had been to the city by the bay, we had never visited the Robert Louis Stevenson’s Museum on Houston Street.

“Why haven’t we visited it before?” I asked Laureen, slowing at a red light.

I bet during Stevenson’s stay there hadn’t been any red lights. Nope, just big wide sandy based paths going here and there across Monterey.

They knew how to lay out streets in 1879, no traffic lights and probably no stop signs either. 

“Whoa, Nelly,” a farmer may have said. “We have to stop at the stop light and let Bob cross the street before us.”

“It’s Robert.”

“Sure, it is, Bob.”

A romantic story is the basis for Stevenson’s stay in Monterey, and that deals with a woman by the name of Fanny Osbourne.

She was married to Samuel Osbourne, but their marriage was a rocky one since he was not faithful to her. In fact, so unfaithful was he that she finally left the cheating Sammy in 1875 and moved to Paris. In April of 1876, her young son, Hervey passed away from tuberculosis and she had him buried at Pere Lachaise Cemetery.

That’s the same graveyard where Oscar Wilde, Sarah Bernhardt, Marcel Marceau, Jim Morrison, and many other well-known artists, writers, and musicians are buried today.

Soon after her son’s death, Fanny moved to Grez-sur-Loing, where she met Robert Louis Stevenson, though he was probably still known as Bob back then.

She was a successful artist and magazine short-story writer, able to support both her and her remaining children, Isobel, and Lloyd in good stead.

Fanny became friends with Stevenson in 1876. The young man, ten years her junior, showed promise as a writer and she encouraged and inspired him with the talent she believed he had.  

They became very close when she suddenly jetted back to the United States, to California to be exact.

Actually, she did not really jet since such transportation was still more than six decades away, but rather boated back from France.

In two years, Fanny notified Stevenson that she was finally divorcing the cheating-dog Sammy.

Stevenson was thrilled with the news and planned to join her, but he didn’t have the funds for the trip and his parents refused to pay.

“Wait until you write Treasure Island, then you can afford passage,” his mother may have said.

“What’s a treasure island?” Stevenson may have replied.

Anyway, he saved up his money for the following three years and moved to Monterey in 1879 to be with Fanny who was suffering from an emotional breakdown dealing with the personal trauma over the divorce.

It was during this short stay in Monterey that Stevenson found his writing voice, which would lead to his long list of literary successes; Treasure Island in 1882, A Child’s Garden of Verses in 1885, Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in 1886, Kidnapped in 1893, and other books, poems, and essays.

He and Fanny married in May of 1880. 

After the publication of Treasure Island, he and Fanny found it difficult to travel anywhere without throngs of folks wanting his autograph.

I know the feeling.

He would die on December 3rd, 1894, at the young age of 44 from a stroke while they were living in Samoa.

But it is his short say in Monterey that had brought Laureen and I back to this beloved town.

In his essays, he wrote about the woods surrounding the village at that time and mentioned how during the winter, with all the fog and rain coming off the coast the land would blossom into nothing but green.

And, then in the hot summers those very same forests would ignite into infernos. 

From, The Old Pacific Capitol – 1880, ‘These fires are one of the great dangers in California. I have seen from Monterey as many as three at the same time, by day a cloud of smoke, by night a red coal of conflagration in the distance. A little think will start them, and, if the wind be favourable, they gallop over miles of country faster than a horse. The inhabitants must turn out and work like demons, for it is not only the pleasant groves that are destroyed; the climate and the soil are equally at stake, and these fires prevent the rains of the next winter and dry up perennial fountains. California has been a land of promise in its time, like Palestine; but if the wood continue so swiftly to perish, it may become, like Palestine, a land of desolation.’

Some things never seem to change with California. Large forest fires during Stevenson’s time and large forest fires in the present.

The Stevenson House, where the museum is located, is a two-story adobe building that has existed since the earliest days of Monterey.

It has been used to house government officials, families, artists, writers, and fishermen from the Mexican Era. It was even a rooming house called the ‘French Hotel.’

When Stevenson arrived back in 1879, he was very ill from his long and arduous journey across the United States. He wrote about these travels in his book, The Amateur Emigrant, published in 1895. 

Friends at the French Hotel nursed him back to health so he could court Fanny Osbourne.

“You have to be well, Bob, if you want a woman to fancy you,” a friend may have said.

“It’s Robert.”

The Stevenson House is a must-see when visiting Monterey, with several rooms dedicated to the author. 

This particular area of the house is actually referred to as the Stevensonia rooms.

A fireplace to warm your toes

Artifacts dating to the time Stevenson stayed there are to be seen, and since donated by his family, along with information concerning his life as a writer and his bohemian adventures.

One photograph intrigued me. Stevenson and a large group of people spread around a large dining table filled with all sorts of food. It gave me a sense that this historic figure of a writer was just a man. A man enjoying time with family and friends possibly. Of course, it turns out that the dinner was a luau, and his friends included one of the last monarchs of Hawaii, King Kalakaua.

His lucky black velveteen writing jacket is prominently displayed along with other mementos of Stevenson and Fanny’s life together as they traveled the world, including an old steamer trunk emblazoned with his name and destination: Samoa. The whole place just gave a sense of humanness. 

Items on display concerning Stevenson's personal life

It is rumored that the setting for the novel Treasure Island was based on Monterey, and that this story may have been the driving force for the film, Pirates of the Caribbean.

Now, that is something to ponder while stretching one’s toes in the sands near Monterey Bay.

Happy Independence Day

The British Colonies located in those new and developing lands, which would be later known as the United States, voted on July 2nd, 1776, to declare independence from King George III and the British Empire.

The representatives meeting at the Continental Congress had decided they, and the majority of the citizens in the colonies, had had enough of the overbearing King way back across the pond.

Two days later, all 13 Colonies had signed on and the war for independence was on.

And that is why we celebrate the 4th of July on the 4th of July. 

Now, John Adams, one of the original signers, believed the annual celebration should be held on the 2nd of July, since that was the day, the declaration had been approved by the majority of the members of the Continental Congress.

In fact, it is rumored that Adams refused future events that landed on the 4th and not held on the 2nd.

He was a stubborn man.

An interesting tidbit is that the drafter of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams both died on July 4th, 1826.

At his last, did John Adams finally come to accept his demise on the day the country would celebrate its independence yearly?

We will never know – but here at J and L Research and Development, we just want to shout out to this most wonderful country and say – 

                            Happy Independence Day