Folklife Festival and the Artisans

The White House - summer of 2025

“People are often curious about what it’s like to be different in the trade, but honestly, once you’re on site, it all comes down to what gets the job done,” Brianna said. “The stone doesn’t care who you are, as long as you show up, care about what you’re doing, and put in the effort.”

To be honest, I had no idea there were still stone masons in existence. I was under the mistaken belief that they had been phased out during the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century. But here I was being schooled by a modern-day stone mason.

Actually, Brianna Castelli is known as a Restoration and Conservation Mason or Heritage Stonemason, and she is very good at her trade.

Brianna Castelli taking questions from the audience

These are the craftsmen who focus their attention on repairing, preserving, and restoring historic or damaged stone structures. Their knowledge and expertise are not just in handling the various tools needed in stone masonry, but they have to understand the original construction techniques and methods used during the time of the structure they are repairing. It is as though they have to utilize their equipment as if that building were being built in the present day to exact specifications.

Lots of hands-on activities for guests at the Folklife Festival

My lovely wife, Laureen, and I had been walking through the Folklife Festival on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., during the week-long 4th of July celebration when we entered an area featuring the Building Trades. There were large exhibits discussing the history and current state of various hands-on trades, and it was fascinating.

Brianna was busy discussing her trade with a group of visitors. With a gentle nudge of a wooden mallet, she easily and cleanly chipped off a rough edge from a large piece of granite with a medium-sized chisel. The cut was perfect, and she talked the entire time.

Brianna Castelli showing off her skills at the Folklife Festival

I can’t talk while I shave, or Laureen may have to phone for the paramedics.

Not only did we find Brianna a very talented artist, but also an inspiration for anyone looking to go into the building trades.

It turns out that Brianna had never thought of going into a construction trade. No, her focus was on going to college.

“I was always told to go to college,” Brianna said. “I had no idea what I wanted as a career, but I knew college was the way to go.”

That did not turn out the way this young lady had planned. She moved to Philadelphia, where her brother was living, and took a job as a barista at a coffee shop. Then she learned that because she was from out of state, the college tuition was going to be based on that fact.

“When I found out that my tuition was going to be more expensive because I was not a resident of Pennsylvania, college was not a possibility,” she said. “Though I still had no idea what I wanted to do for a career.”

Working as a barista, Brianna came into a myriad of customers, and one day a fellow told her she should contact the Bricklayers and Allied Craftworkers union. She did and learned they had openings for an earn as you learn apprenticeship.

“Stone masonry,” Brianna said, “I never even heard of such a thing, but once I got into the union, which they paid for all my training, minus dues, I knew I was hooked. Forty-five hundred hours of internship taught me everything I needed to know about this wonderful craft of maintaining and repairing historical structures here and around the country.”

Turns out that the union that took Brianna on as an apprentice may not have known at the time that their pupil would soon be working on restoring the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., after the devastating earthquake that shook the nation’s capital to its knees in 2011.

National Cathedral currently under reconstruction

“I have a five-year job here,” Brianna said. “What an honor to assist in repairing such an iconic structure. It is a privilege just to be climbing the scaffolds on a daily basis and using the skills I learned from my instructors to ensure this building will be here for many generations in the future.”

Scaffolds? I asked her about that.

“I have no fear of heights, and when I’m on top overlooking the gorgeous scenery surrounding our capital, I feel as though I have the best job in the world.”

Brianna, along with all the rest of the craftsmen working on the National Cathedral, deserves our respect and admiration.

There are a lot of various crafts on display at the Folklife Festival

It is these artists who will allow the rest of us to enjoy for decades what was built in the far past to remind us of our present.

For more information:

https://www.si.edu/250

https://nwfolklife.org/programs/

John can be contacted at: beyersbyways@gmail.com

Mrs. Orcutt's looong Driveway

 I have driven Interstate 40 east of Barstow more times than I can count, even using all my toes and fingers, but I had never heard of the longest personal driveway in the United States being just a few hundred feet north of the roadway.

Just a short section of the longest driveway in America 

While attending an event at Roy’s Hotel and Cafe in Amboy a few months ago, a gentleman asked me if I had ever visited Mrs. Orcutt’s driveway. I thought it was a personal question, but since I did not know any Mrs. Orcutt, I told him no.

He then went on to explain that in Newberry Springs, there is a four-mile-long driveway that runs parallel to Interstate 40 all the way to the remains of Mrs. Orcutt’s home.

This sounded intriguing, and I knew that it was a place to investigate - I like finding places to investigate.

According to author C.V. Wooster’s book, Mrs. Orcutt’s Driveway, recently published in June of 2025, Margaret ‘Bonnie’ Orcutt was not a woman to mess around with.

Born on September 7th, 1909, in Boone County, Indiana, to Wolford and Fern McMains, Bonnie would stay there until she was three years old and then moved with her family to Indianapolis, where her father owned a car dealership. In 1927, the family moved again to Richmond, Indiana, where her father’s new dealership was really taking off. This era was the true birth of America’s love affair with the automobile.

Watching her father’s work ethic made Bonnie realize that to be successful, she had to search out and go after things of interest for her. She was eclectic in those areas - botany, music, faith, science, and many other avenues.

In fact, she attended numerous schools of higher learning, including Earlham College, Butler University, DePauw University, and the Arthur Jordan Conservatory of Music. She was such a dedicated student of music that it was said she had reached a concert-level proficiency as a harpist.

And it was that harp playing in 1948 that introduced Bonnie to her future husband, Kenneth Orcutt.

He heard her play, and it was all over for him except for the church bells. Their courtship lasted just a short time, and they were married.

This research was going along well until I read that Kenneth had been killed in an air crash in 1953 in the state of Iowa at the young age of 33.

Margaret ‘Bonnie’ Orcutt was now a widow. And she moved west all the way to Newberry Springs the same year her husband had died.

She purchased a hundred acres just northeast of Newberry Springs, built a small but comfortable adobe home, and even hand-dug a 14-foot-deep, quarter-mile pond with a small island in the middle and filled it with fish.

A section of the adobe wall of Mrs. Orcutt's home

It was a quiet life, and that was the way she wanted it. Time to learn all the desert had to offer her.

Then, in 1964, government surveyors - yeah, the government - started putting boundary stakes across the southern end of her property.

“Interstate 40 is coming, Bonnie, and you'd better get out of the way,” one of the surveyors may have said.

So, Bonnie had a conundrum; the stakes for the new highway indicated that the road she used to drive into Newberry Springs would no longer be there. Lanes of newly poured asphalt would block her only exit from her home.

She did not want to sell, and she said so, but the stakes kept getting pounded into her beloved desert soil.

A typewriter seemed to always be clicking away inside Bonnie’s house, as she contacted this person and that person, demanding that the interstate not cut through her property. She wrote letter after letter and supposedly even wrote to President Lyndon Johnson and then Mrs. President Lady Bird Johnson - a rumor is she sent a few to Santa Claus.

It paid off, and the government agreed to pay $100,000 to build a four-mile private driveway from the new offramp at National’s Trails Highway to her house. Of course, the government men insisted that it was actually their driveway, but since Bonnie’s home was the only one at the end of the long black asphalt, she only nodded and smiled.

It was such a straight and wide road, and still is, that people started coming out and drag-racing on it - in the 1970s and 1980s, the magazine, Car and Driver, wrote about this driveway and folks started using it to test for speed.

In 1984, the magazine conducted the last test on the roadway with a modified Pontiac Trans Am, which reached the speed of 204 mph.

That is fast.

In 1986, Bonnie Orcutt passed away, and the property has fallen onto some pretty hard times with the sun beating down, and the winds blowing through sometimes with nearly hurricane force.

What is left of Mrs. Orcutt's home in Newberry Springs

After learning of the history of the property and the feisty, government-fighting woman, I knew a trip was needed to check things out.

No GPS is needed - head east on Interstate 40, take the National Trails Highway exit for Newberry Springs, make a stop at the end of the ramp, turn left, go around the Chevron Station to Pioneer Road, and there you are. Opposite if you are heading west, obviously.

The road, no matter the reports, is in pretty good shape and straight as an arrow for the whole four miles.

At the end is a large circular cul-de-sac, and to the right is what remains of Mrs. Orcutt’s adobe home. Not much, but with imagination, as you walk about the property, images of better days come to mind.

The end of the driveway in front of Mrs. Orcutt's home

It must have been a comfortable home with sidewalks, what looks like the possible remains of a front yard fountain, a couple of outbuildings, and, of course, the huge empty pool in the back yard.

As cars and trucks streaked by on Interstate 40 less than a hundred yards away, I wondered what it must have been like for this strong woman to live alone in what could be referred to as a pretty desolate stretch of desert.

Remains of Mrs. Orcutt's home showing the rear yard

Did she still play the harp? Did she write letters on her typewriter to friends and family back east? Did she have a fulfilling social life in the Mojave Desert?

I wandered and pondered - and hoped she had.

For further information:

https://www.amazon.com/Mrs-Orcutts-Driveway-Legendary-Unstoppable-ebook/dp/B0DN9R8KVN

John can be reached at beyersbyways@gmail.com

              

Amargosa Opera House

According to Fred Conboy, the Amargosa Opera House located in Death Valley Junction, there is a lot to see in this little berg besides open desert.

“When guests arrive to the opera house, they are amazed by the miracle of seeing Marta’s murals in the legendary Amargosa Opera House which took six years to paint. They were competed by Marta herself.”

I would say that endeavor took patience. Patience is not one of my best virtues. Even if patience is supposed to be a virtue. That concept was probably made up by someone with a lot of patience.

“Marta was a ceaseless fountain of creativity,” Conboy continued. “With her dancing, composing, and painting, which in itself was astonishing.”

Marta performing at the opera house - Getty Image

So, who is this Marta whom Conboy was speaking about with such reverence?

Well, just so happens Laureen and I met her in Death Valley Junction, in the very Amargosa Opera House nearly two decades ago.

Marta Becket was born in New York City in 1924, and at the age of fourteen began ballet lessons. In a documentary entitled, Dust Devil, Marta stated that even before that age, she wanted to dance. And dance she did.

Performing at the Radio City Music Hall and on Broadway, she soon found fame and fortune. She appeared in such famous plays and musicals as Show Boat, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, and Wonderful Town.

She had it all in the Big Apple – but it was not what she wanted. She desired to do what she wanted to on stage without being directed about what she would do.

“I wanted the freedom to express myself,” Marta explained in Dust Devil.

Just one of many of Marta's dresses

If that wasn’t a direct quote, then I am blaming my editor – sorry, Jim.

Marta started touring the United States with her one-woman show. Performing all the great ballets in small theatres across this great country.

In 1962, she met the man who would become her husband, Thomas Williams. Five years later, on the way to a ballet gig, the travel trailer they were towing blew a tire out in Death Valley, and the only place where it could be repaired was in Death Valley Junction.

Turns out, while Thomas was seeing to the repair, Marta wandered – and don’t we love wandering – saw a bunch of buildings, which included a hotel built in the 1920s by the Pacific Coast Borax mining company, and a large structure which miners had used as a gathering place called Corkhill Hall.

It was love at first sight.

“By now I had forgotten the tire,” she wrote in her autobiography, To Dance on Sands: The Life and Art of Death Valley’s Marta Becket, published in 2006. “I walked over to the building, afraid to take my eyes off it, lest it should disappear.”

Marta working on her beloved Armargosa Opera house - Getty Image

It did not disappear. She and her husband bought the property and put the small community of Death Valley Junction on the map as a destination for those wanting to witness beautiful and creative performances delivered by a masterful ballerina.

John R Beyer in Death Valley Junction

Many years ago, when Laureen and I met Marta, we were cruising into Death Valley and stopped by the iconic Opera House for a looky-loo.

We like to do that – to see what we can see.

The doors to the Opera House were open and we took that as a sign we were supposed to enter. It was hot outside, the month of May can be like that so close to Death Valley, and we enjoyed the coolness of the interior.

When our eyes adjusted to the dimness inside, we were amazed by the marvelous murals on the interior walls. I mean all the interior walls of the theatre. Brightly colored creations of folks from the past looking down on us and toward the center stage at the front of the theatre.

“You folks traveling?” I recall this woman, who later introduced herself as Marta, asking. 

We explained our current journey and spent the next twenty minutes or so, visiting with Marta, as she told us of her past, her present, and her future.

She was graceful and polite. A few questions and a lot of interesting answers. What we took away from that brief encounter was she was one wonderfully strong woman who knew what she wanted out of life.

Simply, to perform her art without dictation by anyone but herself. She ruled in her Opera House. The plays, the music, the costumes, and the times of performances. She was in charge.

Museum across the street with some of Marta's costumes

Unfortunately, there were no shows for Laureen and me to witness that trip. Marta smiled and said perhaps the next time we drove through we could see her perform.

We smiled and said that would be great.

“I should write a story about her,” I told Laureen, as we left Death Valley Junction and headed into Death Valley.

“Perhaps you should in the future,” Laureen replied.

Marta passed away at the age of ninety-two, on January thirtieth, 2017.

We never did see her perform.

Death Valley Junction came into being in 1907, when the Tonopah and Tidewater Railroad was built through the Amargosa Valley. The rails were used to transport borax from nearby mines.

Originally owned by Robert Tubb, the town boasted a saloon, a store and one of those adult entertainment centers. The local miners loved the place, and it grew.

In 1914, the Death Valley Railroad started using the spot to move borax from the valley up into Amargosa Valley for shipment. Business was booming, to the point that a few years later the Pacific Coast Borax Company constructed Spanish Colonial Revival buildings in the town.

I am not sure exactly what that is, but the architect Alexander Hamilton McCulloch did and that is what Marta Becket fell in love with.

The motel and opera house are beautiful. 

The opera house and adjoining hotel

A year after Marta and her husband bought the property, the name of the locale was changed to Death Valley Junction.

In 1980, the town was placed on the National Register of Historic Places, as the Death Valley Junction Historic District.

Though, Marta is no longer with us, thousands of visitors still visit Death Valley Junction yearly.

According to Conboy, “We get at least one hundred and fifty to two hundred people per week stopping by. Many spend a night or two in the motel.”

Since there are no longer performances, the opera house is used for special events or for private venues, then what would make someone want to stop at this path to Death Valley?

“Guests frequently say they love stepping back in time by spending time walking around the historical complex, staying in the hotel and enjoying Marta’s painted guest rooms, or enjoying her tromp l’oeil painting in the dining room or lobby.”

I had no idea what a l’oeil painting is, I could have asked Laureen but didn’t want to sound ignorant in front of my wife.

“We have no TVs or phones in the motel rooms. In this stillness, you can hear your own heartbeat, and be awed by the total silence which the desert has to offer.”

No internet to check emails, Instagram, Facebook, play video games or listen to the latest music on Spotify. How gauche!

Conboy was not done. “Many of our guests remark how much they enjoy spending time having conversations and interactions with the children, their spouse, or friends instead of sitting together in isolation staring at their devices. Imagine that humans having interpersonal communication with each other.”

Was this guy from the twenty-first century?

Guests are often greeted by wild horses who scamper, if horses scamper, into their own personal bar behind the hotel, where hay and water are available year-round.

“I’ll take a bale of hay and a glass of cool water, if you don’t mind,” one wild Mustang was once heard ordering at the horse bar.

“Why certainly, Mr. Ed,” replied the horse bartender.

Death Valley Junction is also known for its dark skies. That is scientific lingo which means at night there are billions and billions of stars to take a gander at instead of the three which lurk about in a city. And one of those is probably a streetlamp.

Is there a lot to see at Death Valley Junction? Yes, there is. It is not a place to drive through on the way to some other place, but a locale to stop, breathe the clean air, and marvel at what one person can do who had the gumption to do it.

That was who Marta Becket was.

We only wish we could have seen her perform on stage, just once.

For further information: http://amargosaoperahouse.org/