Great Drives - California

Before the early 1900s, this long, narrow valley east of the Sierra Nevada was home to the Paiute Indians&emdash;part of the Shoshoni people&emdash;and to pre-historic natives. The Paiutes were nomadic desert inhabitants who were hunters and harvesters. In the winter they lived in pit houses, covered with aspen branches, grass and shrubs. And during the hot summers, they built more simple shaded lean-tos. Jedediah Smith, and other mountain men discovered the valley in 1827 and white settlers soon followed. They brought their cattle and horses, started farms, irrigated the land from the Owens River, and drove the natives from their homelands. In the short space of 38 years, Indian life in the valley was extinguished.

Farms prospered throughout the valley and then the tentacles of a growing Los Angeles reached into the valley and its ravaging truly began. In 1904, Los Angeles began using the water of the Owens River for its water supply. By 1907, the first part of the aqueduct was completed, without too much effect on valley farming. However, Los Angeles needed even more water and in 1921, more water rights were needed and many more farms were bought up, more water was pumped into the aqueduct and farms quickly disappeared from the valley. Wells dried up and the desert reclaimed what the early settlers had made green. What used to be Owens Lake is now dry&emdash;hard-baked salt and sand. Yet even after this environmental calamity, the valley remains a treasure house of mountain beauty and is a superb recreation area.

Traveling up the 110 mile length of the Owens Valley is a vacation treat that everyone should undertake for historical and recreational enjoyment. Highway 395 is the main north/south route through the valley, passing through several distinctive towns including Lone Pine, Olancha, Independence, Big Pine and Bishop (the largest). Near Lone Pine are the Alabama Hills with unusual twisted rock formations, where many of the early western movies were shot including films starring William Boyd as Hopalong Cassidy, Roy Rogers and Gabby Hayes, Gene Autry, Gary Cooper and others.

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