The Yeager Mesa

The Yeager Mesa is one of the most difficult to reach places
in the Santa Ana Mountains.

The Yeager Mesa are two meadows high up the walls of Trabuco Canyon, in the heart of the Santa Ana Mountains. These twin meadows are nestled below a dense forest of Bigcone Spruce and oak woodland. The canyon below is chocked with alder, sycamore, maple, and scraggly oaks. The trail to this high oasis begins at the end of the Trabuco Canyon Road, starting east on West Horsethief Trail, ascending the floor of this incredible canyon. From time to time a trickle of water surfaces to form the segmented Trabuco Creek, babbling through the trees. After some time of easy hiking the bottom of a steep slope appears, with obvious signs of use ascending its face. The path up the front face of Yeager Mesa is only a quarter mile in distance, but over 400 feet in elevation gain. It's slippery, steep, and often muddy. It is very treacherous. The reward at the end, however, has surpassed almost everything I've seen before. The meadow plastered with small Bracken ferns, and the spruce forest behind towering above. The area burned in the 70s, but the larger, old growth trees are charred but still grow. The pictures you're about to see were taken on two trips, the first was in October, the second on the shortest day of the year after a week of drizzle. The conditions on both trips were some of the finest hiking conditions I've witnessed.

Striped Butte Fossils and Spring Flora

Striped Butte is the dominant landform of Butte Valley, and is, as the name implies, striated with different colors of rock. When I was here the spring bloom was on its tail end, but still made for some nice macro pictures. All of the visible fossils are marine organisms, mostly sponges and coral, so apologies if the title misled you to massive jurassic bones and skulls. Other formations in the park, including the Lost Burro formation and the Tin Mountain Limestone include larger corals and sponges, also pleistocene lake deposits include Mastodons and other larger fossils.

Greene Denner Drake Mill

1946 Pontiac Streamliner

Up in the Panamint Mountains on the slopes of Pinto Mountain is a small,  very well preserved mill camp with a cabin and what remains of a mill. Small, remote, and quiet, it sits at the end of a long-closed road in a small canyon among the sagebrush awaiting the next visitor.

First view of the camp from down canyon.

The history of the location is partially lost to history, and only a small amount of its history is known for certain.

The Gnome's Workshop

The salt stream

This fanciful small canyon is a wonder of salt sculptures and tiny waterfalls. The small path hugs the top of the canyon and sometimes drops down into the gully to see the salt up close. There are many whimsical spires and the small waterfalls in the canyon are rather photogenic. The water is highly briny, and the area is marked on topo maps as "Salt Springs." These small waterfalls cascade over small clay ledges and form grottos. On one of the falls, the high salinity has caused salt to form an overhang. As small as this canyon is, it is one of the most fun places to visit on the valley floor.

Robber's Roost

Robber's Roost. Walls have crumbled

While Death Valley is not known for its abundane of bandits and outlaws, one legend still remains. The Robber's Roost as is was known is a small rock overhang overlooking Butte Valley near Quail Spring with dry stacked rock walls protecting it from the elements. Lore goes on to say that robbers lived here and raided mines. Unfortunately, this is nothing more than an interesting anecdote. The history has been lost to time, but it was probably built to house the workers for a lead mine just up the hill from Robber's Roost.

Warm Springs Camp and the Gold Hill Mill

The famous swimming pool was clearly built by a
professional firm.

 The Warm Springs Camp is one of Death Valley's most well known and most well preserved ghost towns. It truly is a ghost town, with empty buildings and complete silence. The ghostly wind in the cottonwoods and the willows makes the atmosphere a perfect setting for ghosts. Warm Springs is also home to Death Valley's famous pool, filled seasonally with rainwater.

The Warm Springs camp dates back seventy-five years, back to the 1880s when water rights were first issued for this dependable water source. It was first permanently settled in the early 1930s when it appeared as Indian Ranch on USGS maps. Louise Grantham, to be the owner until the closure in the 1980s, patented a claim here in February 1933 to build a small gold mill to process gold ore from nearby Gold Hill and its associated mines. It was at this time the Gold Hill Mill was built; a stranger amalgamation of equipment is hard to come by. More on this later.

Trabuco Canyon Tin

Santa Ana Tin Mining Co. Mill as it was.
(Historic pictures from USC Library)

Unknown to most, Trabuco Canyon in the Santa Ana Mountains was a hotbed for underground activity.

Just in the backyard of suburban Orange County, the Santa Ana Mountains are a haven for those wishing to escape the concrete jungle into something a bit more concrete free.

Trabuco canyon is one of the major canyons of the San Juan Creek watershed and holds a natural stream that flows almost all the time in certain places. All through this canyon are remnants of the past; be they old fences, historic cabins, or ancient oak trees. While many people visit this canyon with its dirt road and numerous hiking opportunities each day, most are not aware of the history that lay just off the road.