A Long-Ago Adventure

Nearly sixty years ago, with great excitement, my husband and I planned a trip to Death Valley National Park to see its wondrous sights—the colorful clay and mudstone badlands, the vast salt flats and treacherous canyons, the stark, windblown sand dunes.

On our way to Death Valley from Los Angeles, we passed large groups of Hells Angels, and wondered where they were going. We soon found out when we reached the entrance to the park—the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club was having a convention of sorts in Death Valley, much to our surprise and that of the National Park Service.

Wherever we looked, there were Hells Angels—literally hundreds of them, roaring along the roads inside the park, gathered in tight little knots at sight-seeing spots such as Zabriski Point or Dante’s View. They loitered around the sparse gas stations, lounged about the grounds of the motels at Furnace Creek, Stovepipe Wells or Panamint Springs, and filled up restaurants.

They were like fleas on a dog, and in those days, Hells Angels were less than benign. While gassing up at one of the stations, several bikers had angry words with my husband, warning him not to fill our gas tank. Bikers also camped with disregard on the grounds of our motel, using the communal bathroom at will. Their licentious remarks frightened me, and I would not venture outside our room without my husband.

This was not a bike run to support a local charity like we see so often these days—it was the takeover of a national park for a weekend. Their menace hung in the air like the Death’s Head insignia on their leather jackets. They knew it, and so did the National Park Service who suffered for lack of personnel.

With the roar of Harleys in our ears, we tried to find some place within the park where silence reigned. Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes sounded sublime. It was late in the afternoon and the perfect time to climb to the top of the dunes, see the ripples in the sand highlighted by the angling sun, and feel alone at last.

Climbing the dunes was not an easy task. They did not seem as tall as they actually were, and it took a while to develop the hang of walking in deep sand. Finally, after much effort, we reached the top and looked around. There was no one in sight and the silence was crushing.

My husband motioned me to move to the tip top of the tallest dune so he could take a photograph. As he fiddled with the camera, I sat down. I felt something under my hand and when I looked to see what it was, I found a silver dollar sticking halfway out of the sand. It was an 1896 Morgan Dollar, half of it dark, tarnished from the sun, half of it shiny bright, that part of the coin hidden in the desert sand.

The find was so astonishing that we sat together on the dune and conjured images of how the silver dollar came to rest there. Could a lost traveler have dropped it from his pocket while searching for water? Had it actually been there since the turn of the century? Perhaps the legendary Death Valley Scotty lost it while exploring the valley.

I still have the dollar, its tantalizing story hidden in its half tarnished, half bright demeanor. The coin is the visible reminder of a trip long ago to Death Valley, frightening on one side, a silver strike on the other.