 Last Restoration |
Los Angeles, CA → Blythe, CA → Los Angeles, CA 542.0 mi (872.3 km) |
 New Plaque! |
It’s restoration time, everyone!
No fancy tickets on planes or trains today, folks. The Bill Beaver Project is teaming up with the California Landmark Foundation (CLF) to restore a fourth (my third) historical landmark, #101: Giant Desert Figures! This plaque was stolen long before I visited on March 5, 2014, so it was well overdue for a replacement. Little did any of us realize know how much mayhem would go into replacing it!
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For starters, we really wanted to expand the plaque text, which originally said nothing about Native Americans or even George Palmer, the pilot who first spotted these huge intaglios in 1932! It was roadblock after roadblock from there, resistance from the Office of Historic Preservation about any changes, a real lack of contractors or masons in the city of Blythe, unreturned emails from the Quechuan Tribe, Colorado River Indian Tribes, Palo Verde Historical Museum, or Bureau of Land Management, and the insistence by E. Clampus Vitus that they would only help install the plaque if we made arrangements to feed, house, and permit a multi-day Doin’s of 800 Clampers! Add to the mix that the price of aluminum plaques had almost doubled since the last plaque dedication I attended, and well, rather than install in April of 2022, we finally got an approved plaque a whole year later!
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But the trouble didn’t stop there! Oh no! My friends from the CLF, Ray and Michael, had packed their car too snugly to fit a generator, so they asked me to pick one up at Home Depot in Palm Springs on the way. After waiting at the wrong counter for about half an hour, the fellow at the rental counter announced that the generator I was supposed to pick up had been stolen over a month ago! Argh, Riverside County! Anyway, with a little lifting help, I got the noisy generator to Blythe, where we had a doozy of a time activating it, and it started leaking gas all over the place! Then we found out that one of Michael’s drill bits was bent, which sent Ray and me back into town to find new bits, which still couldn’t go deeper than half an inch! We made it work, though, and even though we were out there for six hours installing this plaque, by the time we finished at 8:00 PM, it was in there solidly!
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After some celebratory shrimp tacos in town, we crashed and returned to the site for our 1:00 dedication. Three folks actually showed up, one adventurer and two locals! One of ’em was from the Quechuan tribe, who said they really don’t know much about the intaglios either, but that her aunt had made one once with a heart-shaped stone in the middle! We made some speeches, and Landmark #101 was officially restored!
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We parted ways (for now), but we’ll be back together in June with a brand new landmark dedication. I got stuck in some really awful traffic on the way back, not even from that weekend’s Coachella festivities but from an RV that smashed into a Jeep! But the other side of that traffic marked the last of the weekend’s mayhem. I returned the generator and headed back home, pretty proud to have supported California’s landmark program and ready to get to work on the next one!
I’ll be plaque!
Last Restoration |
Total Ground Covered: 542.0 mi (872.3 km) |
New Plaque! |