DEATH VALLEY, Calif. — Scotty’s Castle, a top Death Valley National Park attraction, stands as a magnificent monument to an unlikely friendship between a pair of evangelical Christians and a notorious conman, gold prospector and former stunt rider in Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show.
But popular public tours of the castle ended after the night of Oct. 18, 2015, when a powerful storm dumped nearly a year’s worth of rain on Death Valley’s Grapevine Canyon in five hours.
A ranger who witnessed the flash flood described it as a wall of water 20 feet across and 4 feet high traveling at 10 feet per second barreling down on the property. Damage to Scotty’s Castle itself, though significant, was nothing compared with the destruction wrought on outlying structures, and on water, plumbing, electrical, and HVAC infrastructures. The former garage, which had been repurposed as a visitor center, was filled with 4 feet of mud.
Bonnie Claire Road, which provides access to Scotty’s Castle, was destroyed in both directions, for a total of about 8 miles.
The storm was estimated to have caused some $66 million in damage, according to Gia Ponce, a National Park Service ranger who also conducts tours of Scotty’s Castle.
The National Park Service, with help from other agencies, including the Federal Highway Administration, has been working since the flood to restore the property.
The nonprofit Death Valley Natural History Association has helped with funding for the preservation or replication of historic curtains in the main house and with the repair and restoration of the music room’s pipe organ, which had been functioning well until the power went out. Unlike during the period that Scotty’s Castle was open for tours, the association was able to take the organ apart, ship for repairs and reassemble it in the same condition as when it was originally installed years ago.
Restoration delays
Projected completion dates have been pushed back again and again by unexpected setbacks.
One hindrance to the work was the unprecedented frequency of major flooding events in the park. The October 2015 storm was categorized as a “1,000-year storm” by the National Weather Service, something that statistically has a 0.1 percent chance of occurring in any year, and yet two more have occurred since then.
A deluge on Aug. 5, 2022, marked the “rainiest day” ever recorded at the Furnace Creek weather station. The storm dropped 1.7 inches of rain in one day, an amount three-quarters of Death Valley’s 2.2 inch average annual rainfall, according to a 2022 release from the National Park Service in which the National Weather Service confirmed the official total.
A year later, remnants of Hurricane Hillary caused major road damage throughout the park. Bonnie Claire Road, which has been repaired and bolstered against similar future damage, and Death Valley Ranch, with its previously added flood-control berms and walls, survived those events, but resources reportedly had to be diverted to make parkwide repairs.
And when COVID-19 arrived, people weren’t traveling, which meant less money from visitor fees slated to provide one-third of the recovery funds. Supply chains were interrupted, causing shipment delays of parts and hardware. Inflation increased.
Then, while Scotty’s Castle was closed, mice moved in to nest and nibble, one of the reasons why some 100,000 items were removed from the castle and put into climate-controlled storage.
Among all this, the visitor center caught fire and burned to the ground on April 22, 2021.
“It has just been one thing after another,” Ponce lamented while conducting a tour for employees from Death Valley’s Stovepipe Wells Village. Crossing her fingers on both hands, she said, “We are hoping to have it back open by late 2026.”
A November update from the National Park Service corroborates that time frame, saying Scotty’s Castle is expected to be fully reopened in fall 2026.
Con man
Scotty’s Castle’s name alludes to Walter E. Scott, also known as Death Valley Scotty, who was a colorful public figure and a notorious conman at the time.
Scotty ran away as an 11-year-old boy, taking on early work as a cowhand and other jobs, including a reported short stint as a “swamper” for the 20-mule teams of Harmony Borax Works, riding as an assistant to work the hand brake while crossing the hilly downslopes of Death Valley, according to the book, The Man and the Myth: Death Valley Scotty” by author Hank Johnston.
As a teenager, Scotty was recruited as a stunt rider cowboy in Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show, where he may possibly have learned the art of promotion from Cody’s publicist, “Major” John Burke, over the course of 12 seasons.
Before Scotty was fired by Cody for failing to show up for rehearsals and a parade, he and his new wife, Ella, spent the last two off-seasons in Colorado, where Scotty worked in mining. It was there that Ella was given a couple of rich ore samples that Scotty later used to convince his first con victim that he had a gold mine in Death Valley and needed a grubstake partner to finance its development, according to Johnston’s book.
Scotty worked the myth of his gold mine for years, and one of the people he conned was a Chicago insurance magnate named Albert Mussey Johnson.
Johnson asked Scotty many times to show him the mine, and after Scotty ran out of excuses, Johnson traveled west and soon discovered that he was healthier and happier having desert adventures than being in his office in Chicago, so he built a vacation home that he named Death Valley Ranch, according to Johnston’s book.
Castle construction
The Johnsons, who had become close friends with Scotty, included him in the plans for their desert home. They built a bedroom for Scotty in the castle, but the castle was too fancy for Scotty’s cowboy taste, so they built a more modest residence for him a few miles away, Ponce said.
Opening the castle to visitors, the Johnsons were happy to have Scotty entertain guests with his wild tales, going along with Scotty talking about “his” castle, with him dressing like a millionaire and the Johnsons dressing like hired help, Ponce said. “When visitors asked Albert who he was, he’d say he was Scotty’s accountant,” she said.
They built some phony props into the castle to go along with Scotty’s story that his gold mine was under the Castle, and that the entrance to the mine was under his bed, Ponce said.
One such prop was in the kitchen, a fancy pulley wheel above a well-like tiled structure near the sink. Scotty reportedly told visitors that he used the pulley to hoist gold from the mine below. In reality, the opening was used to drop garbage into an incinerator in the basement. When visitors asked about clanging noises coming from below, Scotty would say that it was his miners at work, but, Ponce said, “it was only ranch hands beating on pots and pans.”
Another example of Scotty’s showmanship was his so-called “shot splitter” located next to his bedroom door. This was supposedly to take down pairs of robbers trying to get his gold. He claimed he could shoot his shotgun into the splitter and the shot would hit both the robber at the door and the one at the window.
Scotty reportedly slept in his bedroom at the castle during his last days. He died in 1954 at age 81. Both of the Johnsons had already died, with Albert Johnson leaving the estate to the Gospel Foundation, a nonprofit he formed that, among other things, was charged with taking care of Scotty.
Death Valley Scotty is buried atop a hill behind the castle that bears his name. On his memorial are four things he claimed to live by: “Don’t say nothin’ that will hurt anybody. Don’t give advice — nobody will take it anyway. Don’t complain. Don’t explain.”
A hopeful future
David Blacker, Death Valley Natural History Association executive director, said he feels more certain than ever that the fall 2026 reopening is in sight.
“One of the things we’re most looking forward to is hearing the organ played at the grand reopening in a way it hasn’t been since it was originally installed,” he said.
The history association’s flood recovery tours are sold out, thanks to heightened interest. Ticket sale money from the tours is used to help fund the ongoing recovery work.
“Whenever the Park Service launches a long project like this, the finished product is always better than what we originally had,” Blacker said.
For more information, check out the association’s website at DVNHA.org.
Richard Stephens is a freelance reporter living in Beatty.
A deluge of destruction
Oct. 18, 2015: storm dumps nearly 3 inches of rain in 5 hours
April 22, 2021: visitor center burns
Aug. 5, 2022: rainiest day ever recorded at Furnace Creek weather station
Aug. 22, 2023: remnants of Hurricane Hillary cause major road damage throughout the park