Juanita “Gravel Gertie” Inman lived in a shack off of the old Route 66 in the Cajon Pass at the southern edge of the Mojave Desert north of San Bernardino, California. “Gertie’s” shack wasn’t really a shack, it was a chicken coop, albeit a very nice chicken coop. There were plenty of windows to let in light and coverings and tarpaulins to cozy the place up in the wind and storms, and there was a stovepipe sticking out of the roof, indicating there was warmth available for the birds to keep them laying their eggs during the worst of times.
Plush quarters for the hens indeed. This shack, for looks and legal purposes, was a chicken coop–a hen house for pampered poultry.
During WWII, building materials were in short supply and available only for subsistence projects, such as watering troughs for hogs, horses, and milk cows. Structures for chickens, turkeys, and other such creatures were permitted.
So Gertie built her home under the auspices of creating a hen house. It was very nice inside with several rooms and a fireplace. The county would check on projects like these, but from a reasonable distance, it looked like chickens lived there. They didn’t, though. The chickens were kept outside in a wire coop.
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Juanita Inman Bowen, once known as Gravel Gertie in the Cajon Pass, came into the hills above Deep Creek with a life shaped by hard times and practical sense. Her chicken-coop home on old Route 66 had already proven she could make comfort out of almost nothing. When she married Joe Bowen after World War II, she stepped into a backcountry family whose roots in the desert foothills ran deep.
Joe Bowen was the best known of the Bowen brothers and the one most firmly tied to the Deep Creek country. Before he married Gertie, Joe worked wherever the desert offered a day’s pay. He trailed cattle through the broken ground between Stoddard Wells and Lucerne Valley, hauled supplies for ranchers and line camps, and fixed whatever needed fixing. He was steady, quiet, and dependable, the kind of man neighbors trusted.
Frank Bowen, one of Joe’s brothers, stayed closest to the cattle side of things. Old-timers remembered Frank as the hand who could take the rougher colts and bring them around. He spent time on the same range Joe did, drifting between ranch outfits in Lucerne Valley and the foothills south of Apple Valley. He knew the country, knew livestock, and stepped forward when there was work to be done.
George Bowen was another from the same generation. George helped keep the old roads, trails, and fencelines in shape. He was the most talkative of the brothers, a man who could turn a chore into a conversation without slowing his pace. Folks recalled him patching water lines or tightening wire while telling stories about the early ranchers or the storms that had washed out the road last winter. George bounced between jobs in the Victor Valley, always turning up where someone needed an extra hand.
There were likely one or two more Bowen brothers or cousins running the same hills, but Joe, Frank, and George are the names that come up most often. Together, they represented a kind of desert family seldom written about but long remembered by the people who lived out on the fringe.
After Joe and Gertie married, they moved from Cajon Pass to the north rim of Deep Creek. The Bowen Ranch, as it came to be known, sat on high ground where the old desert road dropped into the canyon. The place was not a sprawling ranch in the classic sense. It was a working homestead with water, some grazing ground, and a view that stretched across the floor of Apple Valley. What made it essential was its position. Anyone coming down toward Deep Creek passed by or near the Bowen place. Long before recreation crowds ever found the hot springs, the Bowens were tending their land, working their cattle, and helping neighbors who lived even farther out.
Gertie took to the ranch with the same grit she had shown in Cajon Pass. She made the house warm, kept the routines steady, and served as the anchor for Joe’s long days outside. She knew when the seasons were shifting, when storms were building over the mountains, and how to keep a home running without a complaint. She had already lived through rationing, shortages, and tight conditions. A foothill ranch was rough, but it was honest work and open country, and she understood both.
As the years passed, the ranch remained a quiet place. The Bowen brothers came and went, working the same vast backcountry they had known since boyhood. Joe and Gertie held the center. Then the world changed. Deep Creek, once mainly known to hunters and old ranch families, began to draw hikers, swimmers, and day-trippers. The Bowen Ranch, sitting at the natural gate to the canyon, became a point of interest. People stopped, asked questions, and left tracks behind them.
Even as outside attention grew, the place’s roots stayed the same. Joe’s steady hand, Gertie’s unbreakable thrift, Frank’s stock sense, and George’s easy stories were all part of the life of those hills. The Bowen Ranch was never meant to be a destination. It was a home, held together by people who worked with the land rather than against it.
Gertie Bowen lived out her years there with the same inner toughness that had earned her the name Gravel Gertie. She was one of the desert women who made life possible in a country that gave nothing for free. With Joe, she shaped a small piece of the Deep Creek rim and left behind a story remembered not for grand events, but for the quiet strength that kept a backcountry home standing year after year.
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