FRASHER FOTO POSTCARD COLLECTION — Page 4

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Page 4

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The Westerners Brand Book this: out of San Bernardino over the Cajon Pass to Barstow, and beyond. This far in those days on those roads was itself a day's drive. From there the route was north through the Silver Lake area to Jubilee Pass, through that passage into the lower end of Death Valley proper and up through that gritty wasteland to Furnace Creek. It was on this trip, Frasher recalls, that his father's party started running low on gasoline. They drove the touring car from Furnace Creek to Ryan and from there a call was placed to Death Valley Junction. Frasher waited at Ryan until the little train brought the tins of gasoline over from the Junction. Frasher and his group returned to Furnace Creek, drove north up through the Valley, crossing over the mountains finally to ruined Rhyolite. And such a Rhyolite it was. Burton Frasher, Jr. recalls it from a later trip. "All the wooden buildings were still standing. We spent the night in one of the town's best preserved buildings, an old church. We had to sweep the whisky bottles off the church pulpit to put down our bed rolls. In the old newspaper office the files of the paper were still in place. There were hundreds of Rhyolite and Bullfrog stock certificates scattered across the floor of the bank. I was a great collector, or wanted to be in those days. I wanted to take it all with me. But my Dad was opposed to it. 'Leave some for the next man' was his motto. I took a few things. The next time we were there it was all gone. From the first visit the wooden buildings started to vanish at Rhyolite and the collector's items had vanished" If Burton Frasher was bearish on collecting curios, he did like to put everything worth seeing on film. There are pictures in the Frasher collection of Rhyolite of that day. Subsequently Frasher's excursions -- almost always with his wife and child -- took them and the cars of the day into the lonesome desert region. There are some wonderful pictures in the Frasher collection of old Pierce Arrows and Hupmobiles. As a rule Frasher drove new cars or nearly new cars into the desert on his trips. He knew the dangers of a breakdown in remote places, and Frasher sought out the remote places. Titus Canyon -- and this was before C. C. Julian built his road from Rhyolite into the swindle town of Leadfield -- was a place that Frasher sought out. He drove to the north end of the Valley and got to know that 50