Ash Springs 0580a

Usta be a famous (if that's the word) brothel here, too.

David: thanks...it is a pretty spot, particularly in the winter

slgwv: The brothel building is still there on the main road, but looks deserted.

It's possibly an urban legend, but makes a good story: some years back (60s?) a rather naive Inyo County road supervisor wondered why there was all this traffic--and demand for road improvements--on a road that just headed out in the desert.

Of course, it went to the Nevada line--and Ash Meadows.

And of course, it was all that traffic headed to see the pupfish....

Actually, the FWS site for it talks about the brothel and other insanities in the area:
www.fws.gov/refuge/Ash_Meadows/History_of_Ash_Meadows.html

Thanks for that link! I'll have to check out Zanjani's book on Longstreet. She was a history prof at UNR (now retired, I believe) who wrote a number of books on Nevada history. Another is "A Mine of Her Own", on women prospectors. Turns out the town of Mina is named after one of them--

A bit of a followup you might find interesting...this irrigation ditch has to be part of the ag development that was halted when the groundwater overdrafts were curtailed:
www.ipernity.com/doc/289859/23646421
Dunno if it's still there (this was nearly 30 years ago!), but at the time there was a definite post-apocalyptic flavor with all the abandoned waterworks.