BOB MCCRACKEN Nye County History Advertisement

When I drive over Mountain Springs Pass on Highway 160 and descend into the Pahrump Valley, the rugged silhouette of the mountain range to the west always draws my attention. It's the Kingston Range (Kingston Peak, its highest point, is 7,323 feet above sea level). And for reasons I'll explain here, it never fails to remind me of my friend Deke Lowe.

I interviewed Deke back in 1987. He was extremely knowledgeable about Amargosa-Pahrump area history and proved a gold mine of information on the region's colorful past.

He had lived through much of the area's 20th century history and knew well the local characters, some of whom had been active as far back as the 1880s.

Deke was born in Oklahoma in 1913. His father was a railroad man. In 1922, his dad got a job with the Union Pacific Railroad at Crucero, Calif., where the Tonopah and Tidewater (T&T) Railroad tracks crossed the Union Pacific tracks. Not long after that, he got a job with the T&T at Tecopa, Calif., and the family moved there.

The T&T was built by borax-mining magnate F.M. "Borax" Smith, who had wanted to construct a line linking the Tonopah-Goldfield boomtowns with the new railroad town of Las Vegas. Denied a Las Vegas connection, he took his tracks south from the Amargosa Valley to Ludlow, California.

The first T&T tracks were laid at Ludlow in November 1905. Pullman service between Beatty and Los Angeles was inaugurated in December 1907.

In 1931, when he was 17, Deke went to work for the T&T as a clerk in the station at Death Valley Junction. He worked for the railroad in various capacities until it shut down in 1940 -- Deke was the T&T's agent at Shoshone when it closed.

At one point, Deke milked cows on the T&T Ranch, located in what is now the Amargosa Farm area. Milk went to the Amargosa Hotel in Death Valley Junction and the Furnace Creek Inn in Death Valley.

In 1935, Deke married Celesta Lisle. Celesta had deep roots in the Amargosa area. Her maternal grandfather was Ralph Jacobus "Dad" Fairbanks, a pioneer community builder in the Amargosa region.

Celesta was born in Ludlow. Her parents were then living in Shoshone and, because there was no doctor there at that time, her mother took the train to Ludlow when Celesta was due. The first school Celesta attended was at Clay Camp in Ash Meadows.

After the T&T shut down, Deke and his family moved out of the area, but his heart was in the desert and it wasn't long before he returned. After that, he worked for the railroad in Las Vegas, mined, and operated the hotel in Goodsprings.

Deke and Celesta had a natural love of history and they both told me wonderful stories about the characters they had known -- people such as Death Valley Scotty, Shorty Harris and all the Lee family at Resting Springs, including Dick and Bob Lee, sons of the pioneering figure Phi Lee.

Deke could give a history of practically every mine in the area, any hole that anyone had ever stuck a pick in. In the 1960s, Deke turned to photojournalism and published articles on the area.

Deke told me of a time he was at Shoshone. The Fairbanks family was gathered there, including Dad Fairbanks, his wife Celestia "Grandma" Fairbanks and Dad's brother Brooks. They were all talking one evening and Grandma said, "Now, when I die, I want to be buried in Utah."

Dad said, "Oh, hell. When I die, you can throw me out in the wash and let the coyotes have me."

Brooks piped in, "Hell, I ain't going to die."

Deke told me, "None of them got their wish. Old Brooks died and both Grandma and Grandpa were buried in Santa Paula [California]."

Back to the Kingston Range. There is a spring in the Kingston Range known as Horse Thief Springs. In his magnificent book on the area's history, "Death Valley and the Amargosa: A Land of Illusions" (1986), Richard E. Lingenfelter suggests how the spring might have gotten its name.

There was a lot of traffic on the Spanish Trail between Pahrump Valley and Resting Springs and points east and west in the 1840s. Travel was by horseback and the local Paiutes, who had acquired a taste for horseflesh, took to stealing travelers' horses -- sometimes large herds of them.

In 1844, John C. Fremont and his exploration party happened upon a man and a boy who said their group and a large herd of horses had been resting at Bitter Spring and were attacked by Paiutes. All members of the group were killed except the man and boy.

Kit Carson and Alex Godey, who were with Fremont, volunteered to attempt to retrieve the horses and they took off in hot pursuit. At the south end of Death Valley, the Indians' tracks left the Spanish Trail and headed up low hills to the east, up Beck Spring Canyon in the Kingston Range to the Paiute Village of Moqua.

There Carson and Godey attacked the Indians, scalping two of them and recovering 17 horses. The site of the Paiute Village is now known as Horse Thief Springs.

After I had known Deke about four years, he told me he had written a novel some years before that featured the Amargosa area -- with the climactic scene set at Horse Thief Springs.

He said the villains in his novel were fictitious but the "good guys" were named after real people who had lived in the area more than 50 years earlier.

He said he had the story in mind and rented a cabin in a remote mountain area in Mexico to do the writing. I asked him if I could read his manuscript. "Of course," he replied.

I liked it. Deke had real writing talent. I thought he could have been anther Max Brand or Louis L'Amour.

"Why don't we publish it, get it out there?" I asked.

"Oh," he said, "publishing is a big deal. How could we do that?"

I assured him, "I know how to do it. The only expense would be some out-of-pocket cash."

Showing that old can-do Nevada attitude, Deke said, "Then let's go."

By then, Deke was in failing health. I explained the situation to the people I work with--typists, editors, artists, and book designers--and we gave the project top priority. Even the printer rushed the printing and binding of the book, completing what was normally a two- or three-month job in a few short weeks.

Deke was so happy when he received the first copies of his book, beautifully printed and bound.

We sent a copy to a columnist at the Las Vegas Review-Journal, hoping he would comment on it. He wrote a lovely column on Deke's book, "Shootout at Horsethief Springs" (1992), and the orders poured in. I think most of the print run quickly sold out.

That's why, when I look out and see the Kingston Range -- you can see it from Pahrump -- I always think of Horse Thief Springs and Deke.