MARK WAITE / PVT Timbisha Shoshone tribe members Barbara Durham, Madelyn Esteves and Pauline Esteves look over the new community center. Advertisement

DEATH VALLEY, Calif. -- Timbisha Shoshone tribal leaders hope a new community center supposed to open in Furnace Creek next month will help the Indian reservation grow as well as serve as a focal point for functions.

The tribe received a $550,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to build a 3,500-square-foot community center, which includes two buildings. McGuinness Construction Co., from Lovelock, expects to finish construction in late September.

"We hope to have a grand opening, we're hoping in October. That's when we need to have our general council meeting down here," Tribal Administrator Barbara Durham said. A general council meeting could attract 50 tribal members, she said.

About 30 people still live on the 314 acres of tribal land at Furnace Creek, putting up with the punishing summer heat at the entrance to the Furnace Creek campgrounds and golf course, and probably invisible to the bus loads of tourists visiting Death Valley National Park.

There's no flashy Indian casino here.

The Timbisha Shoshone Tribe (pronounced Tim-BISH-a) received title to 7,240 acres during a ceremony marked by hoop dancers and numerous dignitaries the same day as the inauguration of President George W. Bush in January 2000. The holdings also include parcels at Death Valley Junction, near Lida in Esmeralda County and at Scotty's Junction on Highway 95. So far no development has taken place there.

Durham said 320 members of the tribe have scattered to towns in the Owens Valley of California, like Lone Pine and Bishop, or east to Beatty. The existing population in Furnace Creek is stable but aging.

Besides a multi-purpose room, the community center could have office space for examinations by a visiting doctor available through Indian health services, Durham said.

"There used to be a registered nurse stationed here all the time," Durham said. "There is a need to have a regular doctor here every month."

There's also a plan to apply for funds through a Native American housing program to build more homes in the community, she said.

"There are a few people who want to come back here and live, but without housing we can't offer them that opportunity," Durham said.

A handful of people living on the Furnace Creek reservation work for Death Valley National Park or Xanterra, the park concessionaire. A school bus drops off a few children who attend classes in Shoshone.

"Around here there's hardly any facility big enough to hold a general council. Sometimes it's kind of nice to have a building with all of the amenities that are available. Plus we'll have AC over there," Durham said.

Tribal leader Pauline Esteves, 82, said she lived at Furnace Creek all her life. The members of the tribe migrated in the old days to cooler climates, before the establishment of Death Valley National Park in 1933. Tribal members used to camp in places like Lone Pine, Fish Lake Valley, Beatty or Ash Meadows during the hot summer, she said.

"There were times when we had to leave in order to even get some sleep. I remember we went up to 3,000 feet, spent the night up in there," Esteves said. "We didn't have electricity here until '79, '78."

The tribe always had water, thanks to the area springs.

"But now the park service is saying they want to bore down deeper into the aquifer. What we're using is spring overflow, which requires a lot of maintenance," she said.

The reservation will be getting a new well, Esteves said she was promised it will be built next year.

While the tourists refer to it as Death Valley, Durham said tribal members refer to the valley as Timbisha, the same name as their tribal band, named after a red ocher rock visible from the Badwater Road.

Rick Reynolds, foreman for McGuinness Construction, said they only have to put the stucco onto the exterior of the proposed community center and get the water hooked up.

"We started at three this morning and we'll cut off around noon," Reynolds said. Earlier this summer, they worked at night under floodlights, he said

Esteves thought the community center could be a spotlight on Timbisha Shoshone culture. Right now the tribe's administrative offices are in Bishop, Calif., though they sometimes go to Lone Pine for functions, where Esteves got some ideas from their community center which opened in 2003.

"Within the front room where we go for different functions they had on the front wall pictures of their old elders," she said. "We were thinking we could have a small display case as to who we are because we're well known for our basket makers."

Esteves also had hopes for an adobe building, but that had to be scrapped due to the budget.

For now, tribal offices in Furnace Creek consists of a small trailer with a swamp cooler. A playground across the street sits deserted in the summer heat.

"With this new building up, it's quite apparent that the administration needs to come back to the land. Without land you don't have an identity. Land identifies who you are and that's important to Indian people to know where we come from," Durham said.