Moment in Oddity - 40 Acre Bog Island
In the state of Wisconsin, there is a beautiful lake called Lake Chippewa. This is an artificial lake created by the hydroelectric Winter Dam in northwest Wisconsin. The dam was completed in 1923, and over time, unusual islands were created due to the damming. The largest of these islands is called the Forty Acre Bog. When Winter Dam became part of the landscape of the Chippewa River and the Chippewa Lake was created, a large area of submerged peat beds and decaying plant matter detached from the lake bed floor and floated to the water's surface. Over decades, seeds deposited by the wind and birds germinated on the floating blankets of peat. Gradually, grasses, shrubs and even trees took root, interlocking together, bit by bit, growing larger and larger and stronger and stronger. Some bog islands are home to 40 foot Tamarack trees. The creation of these islands is strange enough but these floating masses have another unique feature. Because the Bog Islands are not attached to the bottom of the lake, they drift around Lake Chippewa. The large mature trees act as sails catching the wind. Due to the mobility of the islands, there are times when they block boating navigational routes, especially near a bridge that connects the lake's east and west sides. The community needed a solution and they came up with 'bog pushers'. The islands are protected ecological habitats, so when an island impedes waterways, multiple boaters known as 'bog pushers' gather to join forces and relocate the islands to less interruptive positions. The 40 Acre Bog is the most commonly moved, due to its size. The task requires coordinated efforts by multiple boaters using their engines and favorable wind currents to push the bog islands to their preferred locations. The job can take anywhere from 25 to 50 boats, working in unison. Islands that float around a lake like bumper cars and that can be moved by boats, certainly is odd.
Amargosa Hotel and Opera House (Suggested by: Anna Frias)
Out among the bleached bones of Death Valley National Park sits a quirky little building known as the Amargosa Hotel and Opera House. Death Valley features salt flats and ancient lakes with jagged rock formations and several ghost towns. It really resembles a place where things go to die. And thus, it is a haunted landscape. Join us as we explore the haunted Amargosa Hotel and landscape of Death Valley.
Death Valley National Park fosters intense feelings of isolation. The landscape is very silent and unforgiving. Hundreds of people flocked to the region with dreams of fortunes found in mines. Death Valley Junction is a tiny unincorporated town and as Editor-at-Large of the SFGate, Andrew Chamings, put it in 2022, "is both the lowest land in America and the hottest place on Earth." Long before the town was founded, the Timbisha Shoshone were here and they called it Tumpisa, meaning rock paint. A 19th century gold rush brought prospectors and by 1849, people were calling the foreboding landscape Death Valley. Some gold and silver was found, but the most long-term thing of value would be borax. Borax was mostly harvested as a surface crust in Death Valley and is technically known as sodium borate. Surely the listeners have heard of Borax, which is a commercial cleaning agent. Borax is also used in the manufacture of glass fibers and as an antiseptic. Throughout the 1880s, 20-Mule Teams would transport the borax to Mojave, California. The borax was originally found by prospectors Aaron and Rosie Winters in 1881 and William Tell Coleman founded the Harmony Borax Works. He is the one who devised the mule team transports, which consisted of two box wagons and a water wagon that were pulled by 18 mules and 2 horses. Coleman's business collapsed in 1888, but Frank M. "Borax" Smith acquired Coleman's holdings in 1890 and he formed a new company named Pacific Coast Borax Company. Frank became the Borax King and he had major holdings in California where he would move most of his efforts after the Death Valley borax was gone. One of the mines in Death Valley was the Lila C. and when the railroad came to the area it built a spur to the mine.
This inspired the founding of a town, which Robert Tubb and his wife Shotgun Kitty did in 1907. The Tubbs opened a saloon, store and brothel in the town they called Death Valley Junction. Kitty's real name was Kathryn and she found herself married to Robert after placing an ad for herself about being a mail order bride. Robert saw the ad and took her up on it. She was 16 and he was 34. Kitty helped Robert run everything about their little business. She served food in the saloon, ran the grocery store and was the madame for the brothel. Kitty's nickname came from the fact that she never went anywhere without her shotgun. It is said that she was a crack shot.
Hattie Cook and Nel Hoff opened another saloon in town in 1909 and this one was scandalous because women were allowed - obviously, since it was run by women. Hattie tended the bar. Their liquor license was eventually revoked later that year. Women continued to contribute to Death Valley Junction through the years with a widowed Abbie Pierce opening a store, hotel and restaurant in 1916 and Winnie Corkill - for whom the Corkill Hall was named - came to town with her Borax Company executive husband in 1915 and she brought her piano, which she happily played at all social events. The Death Valley Railroad started operating between Daeth Valley Junction and Ryan, California, which helped it to grow. The Pacific Coast Borax Company decided to start building in the town and architect Alexander Hamilton McCulloch was tasked with designing a civic center. McCulloch came up with a U-shaped design that would put the three sides of the building around the town square. This was done in the Spanish Colonial style and the building was made from adobe. Inside the civic center there was a store, an employee dorm, offices, a hotel with 23 rooms, a dining room, a gymnasium, ice cream parlor and billiard room. There also was an opera house added at the northeast corner that was called Corkill Hall. This became a town center for meetings, church services, dances and movies.
Pacific Coast would eventually merge with another company to become US Borax and today, it is known as Rio Tinto Borax. In 1927, borax mining moved from Death Valley to Boron, California and the miner's living quarters were converted into a hotel. Railroad operations ceased in 1928 and the town went into decline.
The former civic center now sat mostly empty and a woman named Ettie Lee purchased Death Valley Junction with the hope of opening the hotel as a retirement home. The property was in a terrible condition. She had owed $170,000 on the property, so she went to court to fight to bring that amount down because the property wasn't worth that and she won, having to just fork over $7,000 to pay off the debt on the town. And then came the final woman who would leave an indelible mark on this place, Marta Becket. Marta was born in 1924 in New York City where she took ballet lessons as a teenager. She loved it and decided to make dance her life and she was accepted on the corps de ballet at Radio City Music Hall. Becket also performed several times on Broadway and she started a one-woman show that she took on a nationwide tour. This wasn't a grand tour, she performed at school auditoriums and at small theaters. In 1967, she and her husband were traveling for one of these tours when one of the worst things that could happen while driving through Death Valley happened. They got a flat tire. They were fortunate that they were just outside Death Valley Junction and that it had a gas station. They limped the car into town and Becket's husband started repairing the tire. Marta wasn't much for working on cars, so she decided to explore this little rundown town. She spied Corkill Hall and took a peek inside. The building was abandoned and pretty decrepit, but Marta's little heart went pitter pat. In her mind's eye she saw her own private theater. She immediately fell in love with the place and told her husband that she wanted to make this their home. He agreed and so she hunted down the owner and asked if she could rent the hall. He agreed and charged her $45 a month and told her she needed to take care of any repairs.
Now, the reason Marta's heart went pitter pat wasn't just because she wanted her own theater and private stage, but she had visited a fortune teller in Manhattan and she told Becket, "You will be leaving New York and move to a very rural place. And you're going to do the best work of your life."
Becket and her husband moved and soon got ownership of the hall. They renamed it the Amargosa Opera House in honor of the nearby Amargosa Valley. They set to making repairs and renovating and prepared for Marta's first performance. And then a terrible flood came through and the newly painted white walls were ruined. So Marta decided to paint an audience on the walls. She knew this might be the only audience she would ever have. It would take her 6 years to complete painting the walls from floor to ceiling with a variety of people seated as if in box seats. She started with a queen and king in the top center and added nuns, monks, ladies of the evening and a variety of other people, as well as two of her cats. Sixteen ladies on the ceiling play antique instruments. Even with the walls unfinished, Becket decided to schedule her first performance there in 1968 and twelve people showed up. There must have been some intrigue about this woman and her opera house because in 1970 two of the attendees to a play were from the National Geographic. So Marta got some free coverage and she was off and running.
The opera house was a popular stop in the desert and even famous people like Ray Brabury and Red Skelton popped in to watch a performance. And even if there was no audience, Marta still went on - she always had her wall audience. Marta would say, "While you have time left, find a place where you can live out your dreams. Even if it is on top of a mountain or in the middle of a desert." She performed at her theater for 40 years.
A Las Vegas Sun article from 2005 reads, "The first glimpse audiences have of Marta Becket is that of the 81-year-old entertainer walking onstage wearing a black dress with a red feather boa. With her face painted, her eyes intense and her dark hair pulled back, her mere presence is theatrical. Immediately, she breaks into song. She moves in a circle, then grabs a tambourine and introduces 'Masquerade,' a show she wrote, produced and choreographed. 'I've always felt that I should be someone other than me,' she sings. 'I need to escape for a day.' The lyrics are a perfect reflection of the tireless artist, who has lived for nearly 40 years in Death Valley Junction." Becket gave her final show on February 12, 2012 at the age of 87. The theater still had performances and Marta would watch from the same seat every night. She passed away at her home in Death Valley Junction in 2017 at the age of 92. She had formed Amargosa Opera House, Inc. in 1974 as a non-profit and it continues to run the opera house today. Her dress and flowers now permanently sit on that chair that she sat in to watch performances. The hotel also rented out rooms during Marta's tenure and still does today, featuring 16 rooms with no phones or TVs. Marta painted murals throughout the hotel too that remain. The guest dining room is painted in trompe l'oeil (tromp ah loy) style depicting a Spanish courtyard. Room 22 was Red Skelton's room when he would come and there is a mural of a ballerina dancing on a ball while acrobats perform. They use BORAX in their laundry, of course. There is a campground across from the hotel for RVs and tents, but there are no hook-ups and the toilets are port-a-potties.
There are many hauntings connected to the hotel and opera house. Marta had two husbands, both named Tom. The first Tom eventually left her after they moved to Death Valley Junction. Her second husband was Tom Willet, a comedian who joined her on stage until his death from a stroke. His spirit has been seen in the theater, usually sitting in a seat watching performances. A cat spirit also haunts the theater and it used to interrupt Marta's performances. People have seen this ghost cat wandering around. Shadow figures are seen dancing across the stage.
There is one area of the hotel that has been left unrenovated and everyone calls it Spooky Hollow. Many strange things happen in this area and that is probably because it was once used as a hospital and morgue. The dining room harbors audible voices of a group of people. There is also the high pitched voice of a woman. A story claims that a young girl drowned in a bathtub in Room 24 in 1967. People staying in this room claim to hear a child crying, even when no child is staying at the hotel. These cries are usually heard at night. A malevolent spirit hangs out in Room 32. This had been the mine bosses room and he wasn't a nice guy apparently. The most haunted room is said to be Room 9. The doorknob will often turn on its own and people claim to wake up in the middle of the night and feel something holding down their legs and feet. The sounds of a child giggling and running down the hall are heard outside this room too and when guests look out, they see nothing. Several guests have been so spooked by activity that they have packed their bags in the middle of the night and left. The scent of lilacs is smelled in the hallways on occasion. Ghost Adventures investigated here in 2010. Aaron claimed in the middle of the day that while in spooky hollow, he saw a full bodied apparition of a painter. The crew heard strange noises like screaming, banging, doors Creaking, moaning and doors slamming. They caught the following EVPs: "Do We Have To?", "All The Lights Are Off", "Behind You", "It Was Fun", "I Seek Help", "Dammit", "Need Some Help", "No One Cares!" The thermal camera captured a red figure in the doorframe leaving a room. There was a distinct nose, chin and lips. Room 9 mysteriously became locked and they checked both doors, and both were locked, when they came out, the main room 9 door was unlocked. Zak also claimed to get possessed here. *eye roll*
AliceInBondageLand wrote on reddit last year, " I was having trouble sleeping, while being the only guest at the hotel (the staff goes home at night). It was feeling spooky but relatively safe, because I have a huge dog. At midnight, I had the strange feeling that I should go "wish Marta goodnight" in the main lobby (where her portrait hangs). I was hoping that would help me finally be able to go to sleep. When I got there, I heard a very strange series of noises coming from somewhere inside the building. I followed the noises into the the public women's bathroom of the lobby. All of the lights were off but the HOT WATER tap in the left sink was on FULL BLAST. The plumbing in the building is very very very old and you can literally hear it when someone turns on the water anywhere, if you are paying attention. There is no way there could have been that much water flowing without being noticed. I was the only living person in the building since 8pm. I was the only guest and I didn't use the public bathroom at any time during my stay. I fully believe that the tap was turned off until I reached the lobby and said goodnight to the "artist in residence". Should I have left the hot water on to steam up the windows and wait for a message, like in the movie Ghost? I also had several dreams that night, which turned out to be true. For example, I had a nightmare that a stray cat came into my house and beat up my cats... when I returned home from vacation, there was an extra cat that had snuck into my house! The catsitter didn't know it wasn't my cat, so she just kept feeding him."
Nevada Jack made a great video about the place last year and he said, "After packing the car using the exterior door and filming the outro, I returned to the room to double check that I had everything before dropping the key off at the front desk. As I stepped inside, I heard faint voice mumbling sounds on the other side of the door in the hallway. Assuming it was other guests, I thought nothing of it. But just in case, I turned on the camera." He stuck the camera out in the hall and there was no one. Then he walked down the hall, both ways. He's the only person in the hotel. There was nobody outside either.
Death Valley National Park was established as a National Monument in 1933 and became a National Park in 1994. It measures 1.3 million acres. Parts of the Harmony Borax Works are here today. Death Valley is said to harbor "interdimensional beings" and Native Americans say there are skinwalkers here. There are many ghost towns that dot the land. One is Skidoo Ghost Town. The site was active from 1906 to 1917 and produced 75,000 ounces of gold. The name was inspired by the slang phrase "23 skidoo" which meant that a gold rush was fast. Today, it is just crumbling ruins and mine shafts. The town was famous for being the site of the only hanging in Death Valley and this man was hanged twice for the benefit of photographers. His name was Hooch Simpson and he killed a banker during a robbery. After the town hanged him and buried him, the photographers came along and were bummed they didn't get pictures. The town folk dug him up and hanged him again. Then, the town doctor cut Hooch’s head off because he wanted to see if he had syphilis because the man had once been a respectable member of society who seemed to lose his mind. Now the headless ghost of Hooch Simpson supposedly still wanders the area, probably looking for his head.
Death Valley has a creepy name. Is it a creepy place? The Amargosa Hotel and Opera House has such an interesting look and history. Is it haunted? That is for you to decide!
