2005 05 13 Delta
About 30 miles north of Delta there is a ver large dune field, the Little Sahara National Recreation Area. This is a very large dune field, much larger than I thought. It's also a dune field that is for the most part open to ATVs. I'll go back here sometime early morning in the middle of a week.
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And to the west of Delta is what remains of the Topaz "Relocation" Camp. This is one of 10 camps that were set up in the days immediately following Pearl Harbor. Japanese Americans (many or most of whom were citizens) were relocated to these camps and lived in them until the war was over. The remains of another one of these camps, Manzanar, are located in the Owens Valley in California. I don't know what remains of the camps I have not seen, but there is very little left at Topaz and Manzanar. I am not surprised. They are a reminder of a shameful period of our history.
It's too bad I would not have been in the area on June 11 for the 60th anniversary of the closing of the camp. I am sure that would be fascinating.
Here is the text of the order that was signed by President Roosevelt. There is a lot of material at this site. Look at the photographs. Read the documents. Look at the other material.Here is a list of the other camps as well as links to many more documents and photographs.
In the middle photograph in the top row (below) you can see that someone has spelled out "Topaz" in barbed wire in the chain link fence, and a couple of others have left small Origami cranes. There really is nothing left here but a few foundations, a lot of broken glass, some dried up timber from the barracks and other buildings, and a million nails.
There is a very nice little museum in Delta. The beryllium mill in Delta used to process ore from an open pit that is about 40 miles northwest of Delta. That pit is now shut down, and the ore being processed is from South America. I'd like to go back and see if I could get into the pit to photograph.
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In Delta itself is the remains of some sort of mill. I can't tell if this was part of a mine someplace, or was agriculture related. My guess is the latter, but I don't know enough to tell from what remains.
Because this is right on the outskirts of town it has been thoroughly trashed. If you compare the graffiti here to the graffiti in the Belmont Courthouse that I photographed last month you can tell it was visited and trashed out in "our times" and not the more polite times of 50-80 years ago. No long hand, no "Mr. and Mrs were here", no pencil. All spraypaint, mostly obscene, and a lot of that mispelled.
This mill is also used as a paintball "scene". There are a million paintball pops everywhere and that adds to the general aura of decline. I also counted about two dozen empty cans of spray whiiped cream before I stopped counting. You can bet that the local kids aren't out here with takeout apple pie..
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At the end of the day here I thought about driving back to the access point for Sevier Lake. But the sky was not very interesting and it is a 45 mile one way drive, so I didn't. Another time.