2006 05 Nevada, California

2006 05 18 Bartlett CA

One of the places I definitely wanted to get into and shoot this trip is an old soda ash plant on the shore of Owens Lake, just south of Lone Pine. I was able to track down the current owner of the plant and get permission to go in and poke around.

Owens Lake is now almost completely dry, as a result of centuries of change, but also as a result of diversion by the LA Department of Water and Power. There are now large dust storms on the lake bed, and the LA DWP is working to mitigate them. Interesting that DWP seems to minimize their own role in the death of the lake.

The movie Chinatown is a somewhat fictionalized telling of this story. (Great movie.)

While in the area I stayed in Lone Pine, a small town in the Owens Valley right at the base of Mt. Whitney. It's a nice little town, and every year is host to the Lone Pine Film Festival. In between Lone Pine and the Sierra Nevada is a range called the Alabama Hills. It's likely that anyone that has seen a western movie or television show has seen these hills, since hundreds of movies and television shows have been filmed here. (Here is some photography of film industry related sites.) A film museum is being established and there was a lot of activity around the site while I was in town. (The M, U, S, and E on the large sign are done..)

So, here's the soda ash plant I shot. I believe it was built by PPG and it's output went into glass production. It was sold to US Gypsum, who operated it for a while and (I believe) shut it down. It is now in private hands and has not been operated since the 60s. You can see that it is about 1/4 mile from the lake bed, where the raw material was gathered.

The photos above were taken fairly late in the day I arrived. There were some cool clouds at sunset, and I spent some time with them. The Owens Valley is known for exotic cloud formations cause by the high winds that get pushed up and over the Sierra Nevada.