Before there was Las Vegas, Nevada, there was Babylon, Utah

-

E1752XX

This the Babylon Road, now just a dusty desert trail, but the alleged location of wild misbehavior during the silver strike days.

 

--------------------oOo--------------------

The blog author almost never checks emails or comments.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Shivwits craft show

-
Image
CULTURAL LEARNINGS FOR MAKE BENFIT • Today, the second Monday of October is either Indigenous Peoples Day or Columbus Day, or both in some places. Like many things in these decentralized United States the choice to go with one, or the other, or both, varies by state and even by city. The State of Utah remains with Columbus Day. Salt Lake City (the Utah state capital in the north of the state) went with duality. St George (the largest city in the south of the state) remains with Columbus Day and the Stars and Stripes were ubiquitous. Yesterday, we passed on the Art in Kayenta  show and chose to visit the  Shivwits  fourth annual native American arts and crafts show, which is held on the Shivwits tribal lands beyond the well-heeled satellite towns to the northwest of St George. I chatted with two sisters who were continuing their mothers work with Navajo jewelry. One sister had stayed with traditional designs and the other sister had taken a more contempora...
Read more

The discrete arts of talking and walking

-
Image
These extra-terrestial visitors did not have much to say, but I had a long chinwag with the property owner. 'Pine Tree Corner' was in Technicolor this evening. I turned the color saturation down to 'CREDIBLE'. I also chinwagged with a fellow immigrant as this 'plane glinted briefly, then began its descent to the nearby airport community. " What's one of those? " I hear you ask. In this case it's an FAA approved night-lit landing strip with a collection of privately owned hangars that have houses attached. It's the kind of place that Charles-Édouard Jeanneret (1887-1965), better known as Le Corbusier, would probably have loved: " …the beauty of an airport is in the splendor of wide open spaces! " He eulogized in more detail: " …sky, grass, and concrete runways " ('Naked Airport: A Cultural History of the World's Most Revolutionary Structure' by Alastair Gordon). Well, two outta three ain't too shabby: ...
Read more

JBRW Repurposing the legacies of the Industrial Revolution

-
Image
The almost poetically sad expression 'disused railway'—10,000 miles is a lot of disused—once conjured up visions of neglect and abandonment. Heritage railways and the repurposing of some former stretches of 'permanent way' (a poor choice of words) have halted a small but significant part the decline. Before the 'Canal Walks' series (May 2011), which we featured recently , there were six episodes  of a 'Railway Walks' series (Oct-Nov 2008), both presented by Julia Bradbury. Neither series is available for online streaming via the BBC iPlayer, but check the linked pages for DVD availability via Amazon and the BBC Shop. We chanced upon a picture of Bradbury on the footplate of a heritage locomotive on the Ffestiniog railway—the fireman's side of a Double Fairlie for any trainspotters: the American English translation of 'railfan', 'rail buff' or 'train buff' fails to conjure up the anoraks and woolly bobble hats of the true pe...
Read more