Death Valley Junction Amargosa hotel & opera house (#1058)

The Amargosa hotel & opera house at Death Valley Junction. The complex dates back almost 100 years, having been constructed in 1923-25 as part of a company town for a large borax mine; the architecture is defined as Spanish Colonial Revival, the buildings are adobe. I could not determine when the borax mine closed, but the railroad that served the mine was removed in 1942.

In the late 1960’s the former recreation hall in the complex was discovered by Marta Becket who remodeled it, named it the Amargosa Opera House, and performed (very often as a one-woman show) for many years.

I’ve been stopping in Death Valley Junction whenever possible, since 2004. During those years, the building other than the Opera House has gone through various iterations of being almost abandoned to being a small hotel and store. On this most recent trip, there was a small operating hotel and cafe.

A note on why it is so barren – in an older picture (link below), you see quite a bit of tree growth. I’m fairly certain those trees were tamarisk which were intentionally removed. Tamarisk (salt cedar) is an invasive species that is particularly damaging in the desert – it has very deep roots that result in it consuming large amounts of scarce water, and it sheds salt on to the surrounding desert blocking out other native vegetation. (see Wikipedia link).

Wikipedia Amargosa hotel/opera: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amargosa_Opera_House_and_Hotel
Wikipedia Tamarisk: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamarix
Flickr 2004 photo: www.flickr.com/photos/donbrr/3155155893