Within the valley were the great silver mines of Cerro Gordo and Darwin, and the vast water shed of the eastern slopes of the Sierras, which did so much to make Los Angeles the giant metropolis of today.

So it is no surpise that the valley is the stuff of stories. Almost everyone is familiar with Humphrey Bogart in "High Sierra" and Jack Nicholson in "Chinatown" but many, many stories are still untold.

One concerns both railroads and water;

The barons who financed the Los Angeles Aqueduct were all railroad and land tycoons. They were all interested in money, of course, but they also realized the magnitude of what they had conceived and built, that they had exceeded the ancients, that the aqueduct was certainly one of the great wonders of the modern world...or any world. And at least one of them greatly appreciated technology in general and railroad technology in particular.

During WWI the Germans had employed rail guns - huge guns mounted on railcars

- and the Russians armoured trains.

After the war and subsequent revolutions ended neither power had need of these weapons but they did need money badly. So around 1922 or 3 this baron was able to aquire 2 rail guns and a complete armoured train (not what I've pictured. no one knows just what he bought) which he ran around his estates and on his rail lines for the amusement of himself and his guests.

But in 1927 or 28 events took an unexpected turn. Los Angeles grew far faster than expected and drought conditions ruled Southern California. Mulholland decided that he had to take ALL of the Owens Valley water. Naturally the remaining farmers and ranchers objected - and some did so violently. They began dynamiting the aqueduct, and took possession of, and opened, the Alabama Gates releasing the Owens river into its ancient channel.

It is a documented fact that Mulholland responded by dispaching carloads of city detectives, armed to the teeth with sawed-off shotguns and Thompson sub-machines guns, with orders to shoot to kill. What is not generally known is that the land baron sent, with great secrecy, his armoured train and at least one rail gun up to the valley. He was prepared to destroy the rebels, the Alabama Gates, and the town of Lone Pine rather than submit to threats and blackmail without end.

Luckily, the rebels decided that a picnic was a better way to deal with the City than armed resistance. After they finished eating they relinquished control and everyone went home.

But the bitterness remained and soon the Great Depression magnified hatred of the rich. The baron decided that returning the train to L.A. posed too great a danger to him, that discovery of his plans might lead to a trial or worse. So he left the train, parked in a specially constructed shed convered with stone and dirt, in one of the canyons south of Haiwee which had been used during the construction of the aqueduct. Then he died, WWII commenced, and his heirs, who did not share his passions, had other things to think about.

So the train was left in place and forgotten. It is still there.

update June 2008

A few days ago we received the following e-mail

I used to work with an old desert rat who told tales of he and his daughter, who is a geologist, coming across a cave in the desert. When they looked through a vent hole in the roof, they could see a train and a large gun. They would or could not say where it was, but wanted to go back and lower a camera into the cave to photograph it. He has since passed away.