Millionairess Palace In Great Mojave Desert

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 834, 30 November 1929, Page 18

Millionairess Palace In Great Mojave Desert

“Death Valley Scotty Va Secret

“Death Valley Scotty/* might be called the millionaire without means. Although he has command of illimitable wealth he has none of the appurtenances of it, so he is building himself a mansion m Vie desert. None knows where, or how, tie makes his money. It is sufficient tha.t any bank will honour his signature for any sum.

H MAGNIFICENT castle which, before it is finished, will have cost at least a million pounds is being reared in one of

the most sinister and inaccessible spots of the Great Mojave Desert lying between Nevada and California, by “Death Valley Scotty,” an ex-miner cowboy, who for years past has been pouring out money like water and has now startled the world by putting up this "little shack,” as he calls it, at the entrance to Death Valley, where many gold seekers have lost their lives.

The thing which has created the greatest curiosity is how "Sco.tty” has managed to acquire the wealth he squanders so liberally, and from whence comes the illimitable money with which he is financing his building operations. That same question has been agitating the minds of those who knew him for years past, and it is a question to which no answer has been found. So far as is known the total holding of “Death Valley Scotty,” as he is known far and wide, consists in a ranch at Grapevine 'Canyon, some tew hundred acres in*extent.

He has never been known to have any other property, nor to have been engaged in any sort of business, aud yet some years ago he distributed fiftydollar bills by the handful, like so many handbills. He can go into any bank in the United States and on his signature alone, without cheque or letter of credit, obtain any amount of money he desires. He has some secret source of wealth. Is there, somewhere on that ranch of his, a rich gold mine, or is it that he holds the secre o some buried treasure hidden in the neighbourhood of the ranch? Over and over again these questions have been put to him, and he has simply laughed. Over and over again he has been followed by desert rats, ever on the-look-out for some means of getting rich quick. They have followed him secretly to his ranch lair, they have spied upon-him unseen at all hours of the day and night in an effort to get at the secret of the source of his fabulous wealth, but to no avail. True, they have discovered that he possesses a stable o£ mules nigh a hundred in number, but they have never come across a single nugget of gold or indeed anything which might give them the least clue of the secret they crave; and the building of his castle goes on undisturbed. "Ask Albert” From the top of Tin Mountain, some miles away, zealous workmen, well paid for their labour, are constructing canals which will bring down the water into the waterless valley in which the palace is pitched. There are to he gorgeous Venetian lakes on which will glide Venetian gondolas which are already in process ot construction, and which, with other things, will have to be transhipped from the Continent. There are hundreds of bleached bones in the vicinity of the castle, bones of the men who have tried to wrest fortune from the valley which has thus earned its sinister name. Now and again a rough monument with a name scratched upon it mark 3 the grave of one more fortunate, in so far .as he was accorded a burial, and one of these, that of James Dayton, bears a date which is as comparatively recent as 190 S.

One thing and one thing only has Scotty admitted when questioned as to where he is getting the money from to build his wonder castle. “Guess you'd better ask Albert Johnson, my partner,” he said with a cryptic smile. "He’s going shaves with me.” What for? “Well, guess you had better ask him some more, or else Mrs. Johnson, for she's in it, too. Knows all about it, she does, and she might tell you something.” The Albert Johnson referred to is none other than the multi-millionaire ex-president of the National Insurance Company of New York* and when fie was questioned about the venture he gave the same sort of smile as Scotty, and replied: “Sure we are in it together on a 50-50 basis, and let me tell you that the first one to die leaves it to the other. What are we building it for? A sanatorium for tired business folk? God bless you, no. We are just building it —that’s all. “Where does Scotty get his money for his share? Well—you just go right along and ask him. He's full of information on that score. Tell you what, though. He’s never had a hank account in his life and never drawn a cheque. He’s never known what it is to hold a bond and keeps no accounts. But there isn't a bank which would not honour his signature on any bit of paper for any amount he liked to ask them, and just you think that over, too.” St-ory of a Loan Surely there never was a stranger association between two people than that of Mr. Johnson and Scotty, or to give him liis more dignified name, Walter Scott. It began back in the ’nineties, when Scotty went to Chicago on one of his wild bursts. There he lent a stranger a trifle of £SO, a mere flea bite to the man who staked as much ou a single hand j)f cards, or gave it away in tips to the people who waited on him. He had lent hundreds of such amounts in his life to people who never intended to pay back, but what did he care. “Easy come and easy go.” So that when he parted with this £SO to a perfect stranger who said he was stuck for a gamble, he never expected to hear any more about it. But lo! the next morning he received a cheque for the amount ajid could not call it to mind. This was a new experience. This man was soma new creature he did not know. So he made it his business to go round and see this Mr. Johnson who paid his debts, and thus began the strange friendship which is building this Arabian Nights castle. There is some evidence that a lost mine does exist somewhere in the region ot Death Valley, for in 1906 two men. William Webber and Walter Wells, of Nevada, went , to try to get the rights of the lost mine, to which they declared they were the heirs. They said it had belonged to an uncle named Breyfogel, who long before, in 1868, had come out of the valley with some £4,000 worth of*gold nuggets, which he declared he had got from a mine. He died before he revealed the situation of the mine, and both Webber and Wells insisted that it was from their possessions that Seottv got his fabulous wealth. Scotty was approached, but again smiled his slow, inscrutable smile. "A mine?” he echoed blankly. “What mine? Oh, no, brothers, you sure are wrong!