Edward Abbey loved to make word songs from map names. One chapter in Desert Solitaire comes to mind in particular partly because Abbey titled the chapter "Tukuhnikivats," which became a mantra for me during rough times, but which at this date also resonates because that area around the Sierra La Sal contains many of the gas and oil leases the Bush Administration will auction off as it gives the finger to us all in its waning days. Abbey's desert is the red rock of Arches and Canyonlands National Parks where the human habitation is the biblically referenced Moab.Abbey gives attribution and credit to the folk poetry of the pioneers and then goes on for 17 paragraphs of assigned names, the imprimatur of the newest conquerors, the labels of ownership like those new names given to Israelites by the conquering Babylonian Nebuchadnezzar in the third year of the reign of King Jehoiakim of Judah. Like Nebuchadnezzar, the pioneers were renaming, not naming; claiming ownership from a soon-to-be-displaced population.
And so it is for the landforms of Nevada. Maps of Elko county hold precious few of the ancient names and of the pioneer replacements, too many are bland cliches: Fivemile Gulch, Cedar Mountain, Bald Mountain, Rocky Peak. So when your searching fingertip traces its way across Deadline Ridge your eyes swing up from the map and out onto the landscape. The ridge is a noticeable 400 foot uptick from the surrounding scrubland desert. It runs more-or-less north and south with one or two draws cleaving its flank. The California Trail swings to the south of it, probably more in deference to the water of Goose Creek than to its elevation. Why Deadline Ridge?
It could be a knot on the map string of trail progress, a point to reach by a certain time. Failure to do so might signal coming trouble in the high passes of the Sierras ahead, a backward-looking waymark to future Donner Party candidates? Something to look into.
Some part of the ridge's story is tied to the 1890's, after the railroad made wagon travel on the California Trail unneccesary. Deadline Ridge, it turns out, was the boundary between sheep herders and cattle ranchers. Sheep to the east, cattle to the west of the ridge was the gentleman's agreement between the two factions, and at least one infamous western "character" was hired to make sure the agreement was kept. Diamondfield Jack Davis unfortunately bragged about earning $150 a month shooting sheep herders around the time a double murder was being investigated involving just that. He was eventually caught, tried and convicted of those murders, but his story doesn't end there.
Diamondfield Jack was tried in 1897 in the courthouse in Albion, Idaho, a borderland town near where I went to high school. He watched his gallows being built there but the day before he was slated to be hung he was granted a reprieve on the basis of confessions from two other men who had confessed to the murders but were found innocent of the charges. Then the Idaho Legislature said all executions had to be performed in Boise at the State Penitentiary, so Jack, still under a death sentence, was transferred to Boise. That was in February 1899. By December the Idaho State Supreme Court overruled the legislature and returned Jack for execution on July 3, 1901. But Jack had friends in high places. That death sentence was delayed and the sheriff only found out three hours before the execution was scheduled.
Jack was shipped back to the state pen to serve a life sentence but received a pardon in 1902, moved back to Nevada, made a fortune there in mining and lost it. He finally was killed, in Las Vegas in 1949 - by a taxi cab. Part of Diamondfield Jack's story was featured in season 12, episode four of Death Valley Days on October 1, 1963. He was played by Frank Sutton, the actor who played the nemesis sergeant of Gomer Pyle.
Jack also was remembered by the USGS. Diamond Field Jack Wash quad is a topographic map in Nevada, located at latitude - longitude/GPS coordinates N 39.18742 and W -118.56347 to the north of the Walker River Indian Reservation and quite a ways south and west of where I'm looking at Deadline Ridge.
David Grover wrote a book about Jack subtitled, A Study in Frontier Justice, and has a little different take on Jack's innocence. He also brings in the anti-Mormon and the cattle v. sheep sentiments of the times.
Deadline Ridge. I'll leave the connections to you.
