Framedlight

We had left the rather grim, just a car park really, Stovepipe Wells campsite after our one night there and had visited the Mesquite Flat dunes for dawn. So what next for this first Sunday in November? Why not Scotty's Castle! Just about an hours journey away. Perfect timing. This extraordinary edifice was built by Albert Johnson, a wealthy businessman from Chicago who had visited Death Valley as the result of a hoax. The perpetrator was one Walter E Scott or 'Death Valley Scotty' a rather unsuccessful prospector who hit on the idea that, as no investor from the north ever came down to check out a mine, why not make one up. This he did and with the 'mine' and several publicity stunts he hit the headlines and was feted throughout the US. Albert Johnson, who had been crippled from a back injury since youth, always wanted to be a cowboy so thought he would check out his investment in the wild west. He found no mine, and in fact Scotty staged a highway robbery to disc...