Palen Pass

Yesterday, I rode along with Ed, Gardner, Scott and Pat on a Jeep exploration of Palen Pass. My complete set of photos can be seen here. We started at Camp Coxcomb which was one of Patton's camps in the Desert Training Center in World War II. It isn't as well preserved as Camp Iron Mountain, but there are rock-lined roads and walkways and the remains of another relief map.

As part of their training some soldiers would defend Palen Pass from an attack launched from Camp Coxcomb. Many tank tracks are visible on both sides of Palen Pass Road and guidebooks warn of the possibility of unexploded ordnance still lying in the desert. Scott didn't let me go exploring. When we got into the pass itself we found remains of some stone structures built by the soldiers. We also saw old tracks going up hillsides that I think are tank tracks.

We took our lunch break at Arlington and Black Jack mines. We don't know what they mined there, but here's what we observed: with only one exception all the mines in the area were short, shallow and mostly open-topped. Googling around I can't find any info on what was mined there, but I did discover that "black jack" can refer to sphalerite, a sulfide of zinc. However, checking out photos of minerals, the rocks we saw in the mine looked much more like pitchblende than sphalerite. Pitchblende is where you find uranium, of course, which is much more exciting than zinc. Unfortunately, nothing I can find via Google suggests there's ever been a going uranium mine in Riverside County. I would so like to be able to say I ate lunch sitting in a uranium mine. It was about 10 degrees cooler than outside.

Some of the photos:

Standing along Palen Pass Road looking west toward Camp Coxcomb.

Panoramic view from Black Jack mine.

Our route, sort of.

A map of the area on a BLM information kiosk.

Looking east from Camp Coxcomb at Palen Pass Road. The road dips slightly as it crosses "Palen Lake," an area with a lot of tank tracks. We were warned of unexploded ordnance in the area.

Historical marker for Camp Coxcomb.

We finished the day with cobbler and iced tea at this restaurant in Blythe.

A decaying railroad facility called "Inca."

Tracks on hillsides. At first I thought these were tank tracks. They're old and the desert has healed them a little bit. But we also saw several close to the Black Jack mine, so maybe it's a way of prospecting that I haven't seen before. Scrape off the top layer and examine the results - maybe with a geiger counter?

More tracks, very very close to where Patton's tanks maneuvered.

Claim papers for Black Jack mine.

The view from inside Black Jack mine. The mine had a huge entrance (20 or 30 feet high) but penetrated the hillside only 100 to 150 feet.

Stone structures that were defended in war games.

Scott's photos are here.