At our campsite, hidden under some brush, is this sign.
Within a few years, this sign will be completely buried in brush, and no one will see it again. Does this matter?
So, who was Frederick Rice, and why does he have a sign where he was raised and I don't?
After doing some research, it appears Frederick Rice ranched in this area in the early 1900s.
We decided that we would spend part of our hiking day hunting for any structures that might remain from his ranch. Unfortunately, where he was "raised" was at a spring, so that in the years since he was here, a huge amount of underbrush has grown up. We fought our way through a lot of it, finding some old tin and old fence, and a place where some short retaining walls look to have been built to perhaps make a garden area?
Or maybe this was the foundation of the home. Could it be?
We also found a large water storage tank (above photo), but no corrals or remains of any home-like structures.
As far as we know, though, other structures could remain here, buried in deep thickets that we cannot penetrate.
We have read that a lot of original structures were destroyed in the 1930s when Big Bend became a national park. From what we have read regarding these structures, probably most should have been preserved. At the time, it appears the priority was on returning area to its natural state, but the amount of history that was lost is a bit sad.
When Bill and Kathy were out with us a week ago, we visited some of the historical structures that remain. Unfortunately historical places like the Nails Ranch and the Sublett farm are rapidly wasting away. Many of these structures were made of Adobe, which is just glorified mud. One could see where the rains were washing them away like a tide washes away a sand castle.
Sublett farm:
Windmill at the Nails Ranch, showing how overgrown the farm has become.
Last year at Joshua Tree National Park we found an old and historical mill high on a mountain trail. It was fascinating, but one could not get to most of it because of the growth of bushes around it. It some point in the future, no one will be able to get to it or see it. And it will disappear until in a few centuries it becomes absorbed into the desert. Is this right?
Should these historical areas be allowed to become overgrown, inaccessible, and eventually destroyed by nature, or should they be preserved? And who decides?
A book by Frederick Rice is for sale in the bookstore of the Visitor's Center here, but yet his ranch is being allowed to waste away and be overgrown, including a sign indicating this spot where we are camping was once a home where he was raised.
Tough decisions the Park Service has to make. Unfortunately, it is one of those situations where one person's decision, say to destroy a structure, can outweigh 20 other Park Superintendents who would have voted to keep and preserve it.
We spent the rest of today's hike exploring the huge wash beneath what we believe to have been the Frederick Rice ranch.
One unexpected discovery, out in the middle of the wash, was two bundles of wire. These would have been worth something at the time they were abandoned. We wondered what their stories were. If only fence wire could talk.
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