AI – Notes

The Use of AI in Developing the Mojave Desert and Digital Desert Projects

by Walter Feller

I treat AI as a tool, not a miracle or a menace. That outlook fits the older way of doing things, where a person picks up whatever instrument helps the job move forward and sets it aside when it gets in the way. I do not lean on it for authority. I lean on it for labor.

This photo has nothing to do with this article.

The project has three clear traits.

Uses AI to sort, organize, and store large bodies of knowledge.
This echoes the long tradition of keeping field notes, clipping newspaper files, building card catalogs, and arranging maps and texts in cross-referenced bundles. The scale has grown, but the intent remains the same: make a vast desert of information readable. AI handles the heavy lifting that once took long nights with a pencil and a pile of notes. The desk is still a mess.
I keep authorship and judgment in my own hands.
AI can draft, stitch together relationships, and help grind through syntactic chores. But the voice, the research discipline, and the final word remain mine. This follows the older belief that a craftsman knows his trade better than any machine. The tool may speed up the work, but it does not replace the worker.
I use AI to expose errors, not to hide them.
I ask if the output is correct. That is the same question historians, surveyors, and editors have always wondered about their sources. AI becomes one more reference check, one more way to test the grain of a story or the shape of a fact. This fits the long-standing practice of comparing accounts, spotting contradictions, and tightening a narrative until it rings true.

In short, my use of AI follows the same plain pattern found across older desert work: learn the landscape, use the tools at hand, question everything, and keep the story straight. AI is simply a new implement added to the kit, no more mysterious than a typewriter was when it first arrived on a ranch desk.

I have treated AI as a tool, not a miracle, and not a menace. That outlook fits the older way of doing things, where a person picks up whatever instrument helps the job move forward and sets it aside when it gets in the way. I do not lean on it for authority. I lean on it for labor.

Disclaimer: Some portions of this project were developed with assistance from AI tools to help reconstruct historical contexts and fill informational gaps. All materials have been reviewed and fact-checked to ensure accuracy and reliability, though complete precision cannot be guaranteed. The aim is to provide dependable starting points and distinctive perspectives for further study, exploration, and research.

These materials are historical in nature and intended for educational use only; they are not designed as travel guides or planning resources.
Copyright – Walter Feller. 1995-2025. All rights reserved.

The Bowans

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.

Juanita Inman (Gravel Gertie)

Stoddard Wells

Lucerne Valley

Deep Creek

Deep Creek Hot Springs

Cajon Pass

Route 66

Synthetic Harper Lake

Introduction
This synthetic history offers a short, integrated view of how a place or event may have developed over time. It draws on known facts, adds reasonable connections, and presents a straightforward narrative that helps the reader see the larger pattern behind the details.

Harper Lake began as a shallow Pleistocene basin fed by the changing Mojave River system. As the climate shifted and Lake Manix drained, water reached the Harper basin only in rare pulses, leaving broad mudflats and signs of older shorelines. Early travelers used the dry lake as an open landmark between Barstow and the Fremont Valley. Ranchers later crossed it while moving stock between seasonal ranges. In the twentieth century, power lines, ranch roads, and the airfield at Lockhart marked its edges, but the basin itself stayed quiet. What began as an ancient lake became a wide, dependable reference point in the western Mojave.

Diagram version

Pleistocene Basin
(formed during wetter Mojave River phases)
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          v
Lake Manix Drainage
(water reaches basin in rare pulses)
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          v
Broad Mudflats
(old shorelines, dry lake surface)
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          v
Travel Landmark
(open guide between Barstow and Fremont Valley)
          |
          v
Ranch Use
(stock crossings, seasonal routes)
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          v
Modern Markers
(power lines, Lockhart airfield, access roads)
          |
          v
Present Basin
(dry, stable landmark in the western Mojave)

Essay
Harper Lake is one of those quiet western Mojave basins that tells a long story without saying much. Its history begins in the late Pleistocene, when the Mojave River behaved differently, and water sometimes pushed farther west than it does today. After Lake Manix drained, the river wandered across its basin system in unpredictable pulses. During the wetter periods, some of that water reached the Harper basin, leaving layers of fine silt and clay, smoothing the floor, and marking low shoreline benches on the basin walls. These old lake margins still sit a few feet above the flats, showing where storms, climate, and river pathways once made a shallow lake in a place that is now dry most of the year.

As the climate warmed and dried, Harper Lake shifted into a different role. Its connection to the Mojave River became rare and temporary. Water arrived only through heavy storms, brief pooling, or scattered sheetflow that vanished as fast as it came. By the Holocene, the basin had settled into the pattern we recognize today: a vast playa surrounded by creosote scrub, saltbush patches on the margins, and a wind-polished surface that reflects the sky when it is dry and mirrors it when it is briefly wet.

This kind of history fits perfectly with the synthetic examples we started building. In those early models, we traced how simple features in desert country begin as natural formations and slowly take on meaning as people start using them. Harper Lake followed that path. Long before written history, Native travelers crossed its edges as they moved between springs and gathering places. The lake itself offered little water, but its openness made it a dependable marker between the Mojave River corridor and the Fremont Valley routes.

When ranching spread into the region, the basin became part of seasonal stock drives. The flat surface offered a straight line across the land, and the margins gave access to scattered grazing after rare rains. Later, freighters and early motorists used the dry lake the same way: as a clear, recognizable point in a vast landscape where a person needed all the help they could get to stay oriented. The open horizon, the straight edges, and the bare floor served as practical signs that they were on the right course.

By the twentieth century, modern structures began to appear around the basin. Power lines crossed the margins. Utility roads threaded across the flats. The airfield at Lockhart took advantage of the open terrain. Yet even with these additions, Harper Lake retained its quiet identity. It stayed dry most years, it kept its old shorelines in place, and it remained a stable reference point for anyone who knew the western Mojave.

This is the same pattern our first synthetic histories described: a natural feature shaped by water and climate becomes a guide for travel, a minor stage in ranching and settlement, and finally a fixed part of the regional map. Harper Lake shows that a place does not need deep water or dramatic cliffs to play a long role in desert history. Sometimes a broad, silent basin does the work, carrying its past in its shape and offering direction to anyone crossing the land.

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Synthetic history disclaimer
This synthetic history blends facts with interpretive narrative to show how events, places, and processes may have unfolded. It is not a primary source and does not replace direct historical records, archaeological findings, or scientific studies. Details drawn from known evidence are kept as accurate as possible, while connecting material is written to provide continuity and context. Readers should treat this as an interpretive aid, not as a definitive account, and consult documented sources for precise dates, data, and citations. This is a learning engine rather than a teaching engine.

Harper Lake Ecology

High Desert Plains & Hills

Example of Synthetic History

Here is a plain-text example of synthetic history, written the way you tend to shape your Mojave work: it blends geology, hydrology, culture, and local narrative into a single, coherent account: no fancy formatting, no bold, no unicode, no fuss.

Synthetic History Example
The Mojave River corridor tells a story that never fits in a single box. The river itself is an underground system shaped by ancient lakes, tectonic shifts, and climate cycles. At the same time, it formed a natural route for Native foot travel, Spanish traders, emigrant wagons, miners, and railroads. A synthetic history examines all these layers simultaneously, not as parallel tracks but as parts of a single, long pattern.

Take the stretch from Afton Canyon to Soda Lake. Geology indicates that Lake Manix drained through the canyon approximately 25,000 years ago, carving the gorge and generating a flood wave that flowed into the Soda and Silver basins. Archaeology reveals that early travelers used the high benches long after the lake had dried. Later, Paiute and Mojave groups navigated the corridor for seasonal movement and exchange. In the 1770s, Garces followed traces of those routes; in the 1820s and 1830s, Armijo and later caravan leaders adapted the same path into the Old Spanish Trail. By the 1860s, the Mojave Road followed the exact alignment of the land itself, as the ancient lake systems had been established by nature, leaving no better option. In the 1880s, railroad surveyors obeyed the same logic of terrain. Even modern I-15 reflects it.

A synthetic history pulls the pieces together, showing that the river, the road, the lake basins, and the people were never separate stories. The same ground shaped them, inherited the same constraints, and left marks that reinforce one another across thousands of years.

Does the 25,000 years ago match other references to when the Lake Manix shoreline was breached?

Yes — the “~25,000 years ago” estimate for the breach of Lake Manix at Afton Canyon does match many modern references — but with important caveats, and some variation in the literature. Here is a breakdown suitable for your core-block indexing.

Chronology and Breach Timing

The USGS mapping and stratigraphic summary (in SIM 3312) states that Lake Manix was the terminus of the Mojave River until “approximately 25,000 years ago”. U.S. Geological Survey+2U.S. Geological Survey+2
Other sources similarly say that Lake Manix “lasted until 25,000–13,800 years ago, when Afton Canyon formed, either through slow down-cutting or a large outburst flood.” desertmoon.net+1
Some detailed studies indicate multiple high stands between ~45,000 and 25,000 calendar years before present (cal ka) for Lake Manix, and suggest that the final spill/overturning/breach event could have occurred at ~25 cal ka BP. Cambridge University Press & Assessment+1
Another source indicates that the incision of Afton Canyon occurred after 14,230 ± 1,325 yr BP (i.e., ~14.2 ka) in one interpretation. Astrophysics Data System

Interpretive Summary
Given your focus on the Mojave corridor system, the key point is that the “~25,000 years ago” figure is well-supported and is, in fact, used by the USGS map text and several summaries of Lake Manix chronology. However, some earlier or later timing alternatives exist, and the precise mode of breach (catastrophic vs gradual) remains under discussion.

For your narrative, you could safely retain “~25,000 years ago” as a working date for the breach/spill event of Lake Manix into Afton Canyon, while adding a note that some authors propose a slightly younger (14 ka) timing and that multiple lake highstands preceded the final drainage.

If you’d like, I can check for the most recent (post-2020) research on the timing of Afton Canyon incision to see if there has been a revised date. Would you like me to pull that in?

~25,000 years ago, does it have its own synthetic history?

Yes. A moment like roughly 25,000 years ago can absolutely support its own synthetic history, because it sits at the intersection of geology, climate, hydrology, ecology, and later human travel patterns. Here is an example of what that would look like in your Mojave River core style, in plain text, with no bold and no special characters.

Synthetic History at ~25,000 Years Ago
Around twenty-five thousand years ago, the Mojave region was in the late Pleistocene, a cooler, wetter climate that supported higher lake levels, expanded river flow, and a distinct plant and animal community compared to today. Lake Manix stood near one of its final high positions, filling the Manix Basin and feeding a chain of wetlands along the Mojave River corridor. The breach at Afton Canyon occurred near this time, releasing the lake and carving the gorge that still controls the river path. The floodwater pushed into Soda and Silver basins, reshaping the playa margins and setting the template for later dune fields.

This physical event intersects the biological world. The cooler climate supported juniper and pinyon at lower elevations, and mule deer, antelope, and Pleistocene megafauna moved along the basin edges. Tufa shelves, freshwater mollusks, and shoreline soils record this broader landscape. Although direct cultural evidence is sparse at this early stage, the landform inheritance proved significant later. The breach fixed the Mojave River course, hardened corridor alignments, and created benches, saddles, and travel lines that Native groups, Spanish traders, emigrants, and the US Army would eventually follow. Long before people used the canyon as a road, the land itself made it one.

This is how a single date becomes a synthetic history. It gathers climate, water, basin evolution, landform creation, early ecology, and later human use into one continuous story. The breach is not just a geological moment; it becomes the structural hinge that shapes thousands of years of Mojave River travel, settlement, and narrative.

The Archive and the Conversation

A Living Record

The Mojave Desert is the central thread, but the archive is more than just a storehouse of facts about the land. It’s a layered record, part historical survey, part natural history guide, and part personal journal. The archive contains thousands of entries, ranging from carefully produced histories of ghost towns to quick, almost casual notes about desert wildflowers. It also includes the memory of conversations, some technical, some reflective, all contributing to a living body of knowledge.

The current archive carries these notes forward. They do not simply add new entries; they revisit and renew older ones. When you ask about Scotty’s Castle, it’s not only a summary of a landmark in Death Valley but also a chance to look again at Walter Scott’s fabricated gold mine, his staged shootout at Wingate Pass, and the way his friendship with Albert Johnson turned into one of the strangest desert partnerships. That reflects the way your archive works: history is never sealed off, but constantly connected to other stories. Scotty’s fake mine ties to mining history, con men, railroad investors, and the enduring myths of the desert.

Other chats anchor themselves in place. Marl Springs, for example, appears not just as a dot along the Mojave Road but as a critical water source, garrisoned by soldiers in 1867 and attacked in the same year. The description in your archive emphasizes its clay-like soil and its dependable, if limited, water supply. The chat adds motion to that entry by pulling the soldiers into view, by describing how isolated Marl Springs was from Soda Springs to the west, and by noting how wildlife still depend on its water. Here, the archive preserves detail, while the conversation reanimates it.

Afton Canyon is another recurring subject. The archive refers to it as the Grand Canyon of the Mojave, formed approximately 15,000 years ago when Lake Manix drained catastrophically. The chats bring it alive with more than geology. They highlight the Mojave River flowing above ground, the slot canyons and caves, the risks of flash floods, and the chance to hike and watch wildlife. The personal tone slips in here: Afton is not just an entry on a map; it is a place walked, seen, and photographed. This blend of technical and personal is one of the hallmarks of your work.

Rainbow Basin provides another good example. In the archive, it is a geologic site featuring badlands and folded rock, as well as paleontological finds and fragile soils. In conversation, it becomes a vivid picture of color bands, rattlesnakes, and the eerie feel of hiking through formations shaped by time and water. The description is simplified for younger readers when needed, but the detail remains. It is both a science lesson and a story about walking through the basin yourself.

The archive also gives weight to local communities and their histories. Cajon Pass, for instance, is not simply a route. It is a crossroads layered with stories: Rancho Muscupiabe, Mormon pioneers, the Santa Fe and Southern Pacific railroads, the old wagon roads, the geology of Lost Lake and Blue Cut. Chats about Cajon Pass often focus on its function as a gateway, a place where history, geology, and transportation come together. They show how the archive not only stores information but also draws connections, creating a network of meaning.

The same goes for Old Woman Springs. The archive notes its name, given by surveyors who saw Indian women there. It records Albert Swarthout’s ranching operation, the cattle drives through Rattlesnake Canyon, and the later disputes with J. Dale Gentry. In chat, the place becomes more than history. It becomes a story of how ranching shaped the Mojave, how land ownership shifted, and how the desert landscape still carries those traces.

Other places appear again and again, sometimes as historical notes, sometimes as subjects for simplified explanations. Shea’s Castle in the Antelope Valley, built by Richard Shea in hopes of curing his wife’s illness, ruined by the stock market crash, later a film set. Hotel Beale in Kingman is tied to Andy Devine, the actor whose name became linked to Route 66. Oasis of Mara in Twentynine Palms is a site of Native planting, early settlement, and eventual park development. Each of these places carries weight in the archive, but they come alive in conversation, as the details are retold, refined, and made accessible.

Ecology is just as present as history. Pinyon pines and junipers, Fremont cottonwoods, brittlebush, desert sunflowers, bees sleeping in flowers, and ‘horny toads’ explained to children — all of these details show how the archive ranges across subjects. A glossary entry on igneous rocks can sit beside a playful description of bees tucked into golden blossoms for the night. A technical note on pinyon-juniper woodland succession can be followed by a casual story about antelope ground squirrels darting through camp. These shifts in tone are part of the richness of the record.

The archive also holds larger arcs. The history of Owens Valley runs through it: the water conflicts with Los Angeles, the aqueduct, the treaties with Native peoples, the battles fought during the Owens Valley Indian War. Panamint City and Greenwater appear as examples of boom and bust, with detailed accounts of stagecoach robbers, Nevada senators, mining camps, and the short-lived hopes of investors. The Tonopah and Tidewater Railroad, Remi Nadeau’s freight road, and the Atlantic and Pacific’s push across the Mojave all weave together into the bigger story of transportation. These arcs show how your archive is not just about single places but about the way places link into broader regional histories.

The present chats extend these arcs. A question about Owenyo might focus on its railroad history, but in doing so, it links back into Owens Valley and forward into the decline of rail in the desert. A question about Llano del Rio touches both the socialist dreams of Job Harriman and the modern ruin that still draws visitors. Each chat is both a piece in itself and a way of extending the larger web.

Throughout, there is an awareness of presentation. The archive is not simply a private notebook. It is shaped to be shared: titles, descriptions, metadata, glossaries, indexes. Chats often focus on how best to present this material to readers, whether as timelines, simplified summaries, or relational indexes. The act of shaping the material for public use is part of the archive itself.

The combination of archive and chat also reflects a deeper concern: preservation. The desert is full of forgotten places, and people who once told their stories are no longer around. By recording these histories, revisiting them, and reshaping them for new audiences, the archive resists that loss. The chats show the urgency of this work, as you reflect on volunteers thinning out, museums struggling, and the need to keep the desert’s stories alive.

The archive is a landscape in itself. Its mesas are the long, detailed histories. Its washes are the short, playful notes. Its valleys are the connections between subjects. The chats are the weather moving across that landscape, stirring it, reshaping it, sometimes eroding, sometimes depositing. Over time, the whole thing grows richer, more interconnected, more alive.

This is why the archive and chats cannot be separated. The archive preserves. The chats enliven. Together they form a record of both the desert and of the act of remembering. The Mojave is the subject, but the deeper theme is persistence: the persistence of asking, recording, and shaping knowledge into something that lasts.

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‘Gravel Gertie’

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.

Gertie & the scarecrow – courtesy John Hockaday

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