This is my story because it happened
to me and for no other reason. If it happened to someone else, it would
be someone else's story, not mine, and I wouldn't really be able to vouch
for it like I can vouch for this one.
My name is Bill Keys and I was born in Russia
in 1879. Took a whole 30 years for me to end up in 29 Palms, which was
the closest thing to a town in the area around Joshua Tree California.
Most of what I'm about to tell you took place there just a little after
the 1800s turned into the 1900s so you can't expect me to remember everything.
Pretty pitiful when you can't even remember your own life. People keep
telling me that I led an amazing life but it don't feel like I led nothin'.
All I did is react. If I had led this life, I surely would have led it
in some very different directions.
You
may remember me from that Johnny Lang business. It was 1925 and I did indeed
find his body right near what you now call Keys View at the top of Joshua
Tree. Looked like he just froze to death. There weren't no map on him nor
was there even no treasure as far as I'm concerned. I just wanted to give
him a decent burial, so that I did. Might as well call the place Lang's
View since he's the one that's actually buried there.
Right before he ate his burros, Johnny Lang
did the same thing I did, processed other people's ore, but the legend
had it that he was a crook who always kept a bit of each load for himself
and that somewhere in Joshua Tree there's a secret hidden lode of pilfered
gold, the location of which he took to his grave if you believe some people,
or whispered the secret in my ear before he died if you believe others.
I myself don't believe in rumors and found Johnny Lang to be as honest
as pie, which means there's no hidden treasure in Joshua Tree, so please
don't go digging up the place. I couldn't find any ore and I ran 30 mines.
If there were any more gold out there, I would have found it.
Yes, it's true, I was a gold miner for a while,
which is normal. I doubt that anybody is a gold miner their entire life.
Every vein runs out some time or another. You just hope you find enough
gold right now to get you through the dry period coming any day.
The first time I hit a vein was a dilly you
wouldn't believe, the ounces to tonnage ratio, thousands and thousands
of dollars from every load. Even though that mine wasn't mine, it still
made me think hoo boy, I'm gonna be rich, and I was for a while, at least
my version of it. Had a good time then, met my wife Frances in town, but
I couldn't live in town and work at the same time because sometimes you've
gotta work through the night to finish a load.
I asked Frances to marry me which was a wise
thing to do because she said yes. She knew that marrying me wouldn't be
no social affair. You marry a man who lives out in the middle of the desert
and you might as well be in a space station together. It's not like I got
a lot of visitors. All we had was each other, every second of every day,
which is the type of commitment marriages don't have much these days. There's
just the two of you every morning when you wake up and the two of you when
you go to bed at night. One sort of makes up for the other.
She
let me build a ranch out near the Desert Queen Mine that we called the
Desert Queen Ranch because we just thought it would be a good idea if our
ranch and our mine had the same name. I'll never forget the day I carried
her across the threshold of the Desert Queen. Or when she had my kids and
started the first school in the area. I still cannot believe that I found
such a woman and I wish she could take a bow but that's not how it works.
This is my view.
There are some bad things that happened, but
you shouldn't be surprised that they're not quite as painful in hindsight.
You're not gonna catch me crying just because I spent some time in prison.
I got through the rough spots and that's all that matters. Don't let it
distract you from the happy ending. You already know what it is. They made
a movie about me.
It wasn't till the 30s I made the newspapers,
but it was the turn of the century when my story really started. It was
sort of the end of the old west. I wanted to see it but I was like a hippie
who missed Woodstock, I somehow wasn't there during the defining moments
of my generation. Tried to get in Teddy's Roughriders but that didn't work
out. Wasn't anywhere near Tombstone when them Dalton boys were around.
Never met Wild Bill but I did meet my fair share of sheriffs and assorted
other rustlers. Never met one that was as interesting as the Indians.
Everyone wanted something from the Indians.
Ugly little white men with whiskers wanted their buffalo and sweaty guys
in suits wanted their land. I was sort of a cross between the two. I had
whiskers but I wore a suit when I applied for that job working a gold mine
in the west. That just sounded great to me. I think they hired me just
to see how I'd look mining in that suit.
Say what you will about manual labor, your
whole perspective changes when you're doing it for yourself. I found I
liked myself as a boss. I would give myself a day off whenever I liked,
and actually encouraged myself to pour a bucket of water over my head and
run around naked once in a while.
My mine was in a place so totally desolate,
so completely removed from society, that even the Indians didn't want anything
to do with it. They left me alone, I left them alone. They saw the way
I treated the ground, which was with respect. I always try to leave things
as I find them. Lots of other miners, they just don't have any taste. They
leave a terrible mess. I'm proud to say that I treaded lightly on the earth,
and showed my gratitude to the earth every day in some way or another.
The Indians didn't like people who claimed
to own the earth. Does an ant own those grains of sand he uses to clear
out his underground tunnels? He does till a foot comes along. Whenever
some Indian came by I just showed them my collection of stones from the
area and we were pals for life. I had quite a collection, and if this were
a live presentation I'd be showing them to you right now cause they were
something else. You never know what's in a rock till you smash it open,
and they are full of surprises. You wouldn't believe the variety of rockage
you can find if you just set your mind to it. I had shelf after shelf of
God's little masterpieces just twinkling away. Some of 'em even glowed
in the dark which was quite a sight, you might even say romantic.
Every
visitor, including Indians, would stand there and gape at my collection.
Sometimes I'd sell them, sometimes I'd trade, and then they'd start to
bring me stuff, stuff you wouldn't believe, a giant piece of petrified
wood that looked exactly like a duck and some pumice that you hold up to
the light and I swear to God it hums. I'd trade anything, especially stuff
yer not supposed to give Injuns.
I remember that first year when I was actually
living out in the center of Joshua Tree which was not a National Monument
nor even a Park at the time, just this really weird place in the middle
of nowhere. When people in Hollywood want to make a movie that takes place
on some distant planetary system, they come to Joshua Tree. Something must
have happened there that I surely can't explain. It looks like the earth
was ripped apart and put back together again by a three year old making
sand castles, only instead of washing away, the sand castles have turned
to solid rock. Most people wouldn't want to actually live there, so I guess
you could call me peculiar and you wouldn't be alone. A lot of people have
called me peculiar, including a couple of judges, but we'll get to that.
There was the first time the Indians came
by the ranch, not the regular Indians but this tribe from across the valley
I'd never seen before. There was Something Bear, I can never remember,
and he's got all these teenage Indians following him like shadows. They
don't look fierce or nothing. They were on a quest and they needed to get
there by sunset and they invited me to join them. My wife said go ahead,
leave your supper and join this group of Indians you've never met on some
quest you've never heard of. Do you believe me when I tell you that I loved
this woman?
These Indians, they led me up a hidden trail
to a spot above a cliff. I couldn't remember if I'd been to that exact
spot before, but it was truly a sight, the high point for miles around,
a clear view from the Salton Sea to the great San Jacinto and San Gorgonio,
all the way to a final golden shimmer of the Pacific in the horizon. It
was the very spot I would later find Johnny Lang.
Sometimes I think I actually understood the
religion of the Indians, but I know I didn't. It would fly out of my head
like a canary in a sandstorm. Basically they talked to the sky and the
clouds and the setting sun and I didn't know what they were talking about
so I just smiled like I do and they thought I got it. The sun finally disappeared
and we all headed home. I invited 'em in but they continued on as though
their quest had nothing to do with my wife's cooking. More's the pity.
The next year was a good one. I didn't strike
gold but a bunch of my neighbors did, and I made a living processing their
ore at a buck a ton. Made enough to fill the storeroom and buy the wife
one of those new sewing machines she'd been going on about.
After a while I somehow ended up owning a
whole lot of mines in the area, thirty to be exact, about 160 acres. Miners
would bring me their tonnage to process and if I didn't even find enough
gold to pay my own fee, they'd say the hell with this, head back home,
and leave their mine to me. I took advantage of all this land and got me
a lot of cattle that I grazed throughout the area. Built a dam that still
holds water most of the year. Started building a road to that spot the
Indians showed me. Raised kids and worked 30 mines.
The whole thing changed when President Franklin
Delano Roosevelt signed a bill making Joshua Tree a National Monument.
Turns out I was feeding my cattle on Federal land which was illegal. Suddenly
all former leases were null and void, not that I had the proper paperwork
on everything anyway. It was fine with me if the Federal Government wanted
to call the land theirs, and I was glad they was preserving it, being a
genuine fan of the area. But I did not take kindly to the Government's
suggestion that my very existence was contrary to Federal law, therefore
I should sell my cattle and my ranch and move the hell out of there. I
call that downright rude and all the miners that was left agreed with me.
Most just sold out and sought greener pastures.
I
wouldn't leave the Desert Queen. It's not like I was in anyone's way or
nothing. It was where I raised my kids and one was buried. There weren't
no roads or street signs. Tourists weren't all over the place like they
are now. It was a strange case where being ornery paid off. They saw I
wasn't going to just go quiet-like so they issued me a conditional use
permit that let me just stay there as long as I liked. It would have worked
out fine but for Worth Bagley.
It is beyond my comprehension what Worth Bagley's
parents were thinking when they named him Worth. Were they trying to create
the most worthless being imaginable? They did a mighty fine job for Worth
Bagley was indeed the most worthless human being I ever laid eyes on. He'd
bring his ore by and I'd find nothing and he'd blame me even though he
was watching me the whole time. He didn't like that they gave me that conditional
permit and he'd kill my cattle if they wandered towards his place. He was
just one of those guys who had to blame others for their own misfortune.
Worth had it in for me, that he did.
I right out and asked him if he was thinking
of charging me a toll and he said he'd think about it. I laughed because
I thought he was making some sort of joke but it turns out he wasn't. He
actually wanted me to drive around this fork in the road that crossed his
land.
One day in 1943 I was bringing back a load
of water for the ranch when I saw a Joshua Tree laying across my normal
path. It was no big deal to go around it but instead I stopped, which was
my first mistake. I felt a shot whiz past my ear and into the side of my
truck. That varmint was shooting at me. I went back around to the passenger
side, leaned in, and grabbed my hunting rifle. Another shot flew by. I
looked up and there was Worth Bagley, running back and forth between the
cactus like a damn fool dancing bear at a carnival shooting gallery, firing
off pot shots at me and crying "Get off my land."
I fired back which was my second mistake because
Worth just dropped from view. I walked up to him and called him a damn
fool for shooting at me like that but he didn't seem to hear me or to be
breathing. I didn't even bother to give him a kick.
I
know now what I should've done. I should have just buried him right there.
Ornery old cuss like Worth, nobody'd notice he was missing for years, if
ever. Instead I got in my truck and headed home where I filled our tank
with water from the well, then told Frances what happened. We agreed that
the next morning I'd go talk to the authorities.
The county sheriff was a good friend of mine
who had helped me out of some scrapes, but he'd never heard a story quite
like this one. After I told him exactly what I just told you, he went out
to Worth Bagley's place to take a look and sure enough Worth was still
there. The sheriff could see that there was a bullet in my car and a gun
in Worth's hand that had just been fired. Clearest case of self defense
you ever saw so I wasn't surprised when he didn't arrest me. He knew I
wasn't a murderer. Murderers don't just walk into the station and turn
themselves in.
The problem was when he got back to the office
and filed a report. Let me ask you something. Do you think it was a coincidence
that the Bureau of Land Management withdrew their conditional use permit
on the very day I turned myself in for shooting Worth Bagley? I don't think
so. They were looking for a way to get rid of me and they found it. It
was a publicity thing too. They wanted to show the world that the days
of the wild west were over, that you couldn't come out here, just shoot
somebody, and get away with it. They somehow convinced that coroner to
say that Worth Bagley was shot in the back so it couldn't be self defense.
Days later I got a visit from the Sheriff who apologized that he had to
arrest me for murder.
Yep, they found me guilty if you can believe
it. We appealed the decision but the court said that even though there
were problems with the way the judge handled the case, a reasonable jury
could have still found me guilty because Worth Bagley was shot in the back.
End of story. Beginning of sentence.
I've dealt with some varmints in my time so
I knew how to handle myself in prison. I did what I was told, never got
in any fights, which is a hell of a way to spend five years. Yep, that's
right, I only served five years because of the part of this story that
you really won't believe.
It was just like Perry Mason. You remember
that old television show where Raymond Burr played a lawyer who always
took the most loser cases but somehow ended up proving them innocent at
the last second? Good show. They were all based upon books by Erle Stanley
Gardner who was the best selling author in the world back then. I never
read them myself but he had hundreds of books that the public couldn't
get enough of. There were movies and two big hit television shows. This
guy was something else, the first great literary legal mind and the first
lawyer/best selling author. Good looking too. He was rich and famous and
all the things I wasn't.
Perry Mason was so popular that he also started
a series called The Court of Last Resort and that it was. Where
did he get all his ideas? Reality, of course. He actually found people
who were wrongly imprisoned and got them set free. One of my kids watched
this show and called the TV station who gave him the number of a production
office who gave him a number that got him the secretary of Mr. Gardner.
That secretary saved my life because they passed along my story to Mr.
Gardner. Turned out that Gardner's parents were gold miners. He was interested.
Once he set his teeth into my case, the jig was up.
Let me tell you what he did. He went out
and got Worth's body exhumed and he showed that the body of that bastard
was shot in the front, not the back. Then my sons took him out to Worth's
old shack and they searched the place. You won't believe what they found.
Love letters. There must have been something about Worth that I never saw
because it turned out that he had been married at least six times to women
who missed him so. Using those return addresses, Mr. Gardner found those
ex-wives, including the one he was married to last. Now she lived in Eagle
Rock so Mr. Gardner went to her place and taped her saying some very incriminating
things, like she actually heard Worth threaten to kill me and saw him take
pot shots at me every time I went to get water. Man, I never knew he had
a woman out there. Turns out she saw the whole thing then hightailed it
out. She didn't even know I'd been arrested.
Even with all this new stuff, Mr. Gardner
couldn't get me a new trial so, as a last resort, he tried to get me paroled.
That parole panel must have been mighty impressed to see the rich and famous
Erle Stanley Gardner in their room because they were not in the habit of
paroling convicted murderers but that's what they did. I was still officially
guilty of killing Worth Bagley but they set me free anyway.
Frances was staying in town with friends and
the kids were old enough to be out on their own, but they all got together
to throw me a party which was nice. I was still pretty angry that the ranch
was gone, at least as far as it being my personal property was concerned.
Frances had sold it to someone who sold it to someone who finally sold
it to the Park Service.
One day we went out to visit the Desert Queen.
The park service might have gotten what they wanted but they sure as hell
weren't doing anything with it. It's not like they patched the roof or
re-tiled the kitchen. So hell, we just moved back in. Weren't too hard
to get the water pump working again, especially since I didn't have to
worry about old Worth Bagley blowing my brains out. Gave him a nice resting
place too, a plaque, made by me, memorializing the last shoot-up round
these parts.
My parole officer came to visit one day, and
they seemed happy that there weren't any neighbors around I could potentially
shoot.
Weren't long before the sheriff showed up
looking
none too pleased. He sure didn't expect to see my lousy face again. Glad
to say I didn't have to pull my gun on him or nothing like that because
the news he brought was good. It seemed that the United States Government,
who stole this land from the redskins and me, weren't too bothered about
a crazy old coot living out the rest of his days in a lousy old ranch nobody
really wanted in the first place.
So I finished the Barker dam and finally
completed that road to what they now call Keys View. Some tourist family
came by and that's when I first heard someone call me colorful. Whenever
them damn tour guides would come across some tourists who got it in their
heads that they wanted to see a genuine gold miner working a genuine mine,
they'd bring 'em around the old Desert Queen to get a look at Bill Keys.
I thought they were a damn nuisance till one
of them turned out to be a scout from the Disney Company. They thought
I was just perfect for this desert series they was doing, so they up and
made me a movie star on the Wonderful World of Color. There I was, still
working my ancient equipment around the new National Monument. They filmed
the story of some fool coyote over at the dam, then they stuck me in this
cockamamie thing about a burro. It got me a lot of visitors, so my last
days weren't lonely. Not that I've ever had a problem being alone. Me and
everyone else who chooses to live in the desert.
Though I was free from San Quentin, I was
still a convicted felon until one day my kids arrived with the mail, including
one big envelope from the state capital. In it was a complete pardon and
personal apology from the governor so now it was official. I never killed
nobody. Thank you Mr. Gardner for staying on the case.
My wife and kids died first, strangely enough,
so I found a new occupation, carving tombstones for my family, who are
decently buried out behind the ranch.
After I died it took a while for them to find
me. I mean I got visitors, but not daily, especially in the summer. You
should have seen the faces on the tourists who brought their kids to see
the gold mine and ended up seeing their first dead body. That was a Kodak
moment I assure you.
Of course once they found my earthly remains,
they didn't know what to do with me. You'da thought they would've had the
whole thing planned out. After all, the original idea was that I could
stay at the Desert Queen till I died. Someone should've seen it coming.
Anyway, I must have stunk up the place so it's a surprise the coyotes didn't
get me. They just buried me out behind the house next to my wife, the only
problem being I just hadn't gotten around to making a tombstone for myself.
That's right, I was in an unmarked grave for
a while. You know what that's like. Stuck between heaven and earth. That's
when the movie of my life turns into a ghost story. That's the part Disney
didn't shoot. I had quite a time as the spook of the desert. A lot of those
grisly stories you heard about haunted gold mines, that was me. There's
so little to do out here that I ended up just scaring tourists for the
hell of it.
Finally these gawkers come along and they
searched the ranch and they found something I wrote that everyone had forgotten
about including me. If you can believe it, the Park Service, the very people
who put me through all that hassle in the first place, they paid to have
my poem turned into a tombstone which they placed above my grave. Now I'm
a
bonafide eternal tourist attraction, but it's a small price to pay for
having my soul released from eternal bondage to the earth, even earth as
pretty as Joshua Tree.
I guess the moral of the story could be that
you should never let them take your home and turn it into a National Monument.
What happened to me could have happened to anyone who chose somewhere glorious
to live. Now they call it Keys View, as if I owned it. If you take away
anything from my story, it's got to be that I never owned it. It wasn't
mine and it wasn't the Indians or the government's either. It was nobody's
and it still is. Nobody can own the earth and that's a fact, we just get
to sit on it for a while. This particular spot in the center of the Joshua
Tree National Monument, it's a good one to sit at and they named it after
me. I could not be more honored. Where I am they treat you better when
you've got a place on earth named after you.
Keys Mural at 29 Palms
If you have Quicktime, go here
for an incredible 360 degree photo from Keys View
Photos courtesy of Walter Feller, Chuck Caplinger, and Philip Greenspun
Click on photos to go to their sites
