Archaeological Vignettes Related to the Arrest of Wyatt Earp for Claim Jumping at Slate Range City, San Bernardino County, California in 1912 by Russ Kaldenberg.

A Dispatch From the Newcastle News Journal, Newcastle, Wyoming.

Newcastle News-Journal, December 26, 1912 "Big Battle is Imminent" Fight Expected at Searles Lake, Cal, When Rival Claimants for Potash Deposits Meet. A pitched battle on the desert that probably will rank as the most spectacular in the history of the southwest is looked for when the forces of the California Trona company and those of Henry E. Lee, a San Francisco Lawyer, meet at Searles Lake, the greatest potash deposit in all the world, to dispute ownership of certain claims. The Lee party consisting of a dozen automobiles filled with the pick of the old gun fighters of the southwest and the Burns security are drawing close to the guarded lake district where Lee holds that he has claims to the lake bottom which is also claimed by the Trona company. The forty thousand acres comprising the lake, in the center of the Mojave desert, have unlimited deposits of potash, borax and soda ash valued at $20,000,000.?

One of the old western gunfighters mentioned above was Wyatt Berry Stapp; Wyatt Berry Stapp Earp was his full name.

The presentation discusses Wyatt Earp and his arrest for claim jumping at Slate Range City, in the Searles Valley, immediately west of Death Valley, California.   The presentation will include photographs of archaeological sites in the Mojave Desert where Wyatt lived and where he worked during the early 1900s and discuss a little known episode in the history of the mineral development of trona and potash. 

Cheyenne resident, Russell Kaldenberg, RPA, former State Archaeologist for the BLM in California, and who received the Lifetime Acheviement Award from The California Society of Archaeology (2009) presented this program September 22, 2009 at the Larimie County Public Library for the Cheyenne Chapter of the Wyoming Archaeological Society.

Please note, "Click here for the movie" has been disabled do to the large file size.

Contact information:
Russ Kaldenberg, RPA
ASM Affiliates
www.asmaffiliates.com
453 Vandehie Ave., Suite 140
Cheyenne, Wyoming 82009
307-772-9317
E-mail: rkaldenberg[at]asmaffiliates.com

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