amargosa opera house to gold point ghost town

We nearly collided with a magnificent wild pony and were grateful that it was only a close call. As we drove along the road in deep darkness, a black beast loomed suddenly at the edge of the road.

It was intimate, silent, and overwhelming. When night fell, we drive to Zabriskie Point to experience a true “dark sky,” full of stars, a tiny sliver of moon, and no other light.

The very first building, at the right of the entry guardhouse, was home of the “Manzanar Free Press,”a newspaper that also operated a general store and a barber shop. Some 11,070 Japanese-Americans came to live in Manzanar, in rough barracks with eight people living in each 20 by 25 foot room. They tried to imitate normal life here for three years, setting up schools, churches, housing, workplaces and other institutions. The camp layout included barracks with straw mattresses, bare lightbulbs, and communal latrines. Neighbors simply took over their houses and businesses as innocent Japanese-Americans were rounded up in a few days, following the Pearl Harbor attack by Japan, and forced to live under guard in these military camps.

Along the way, we stopped to pay our respects at the bleak Manzanar internment campsite, one of 10 places where the nation’s Japanese-Americans were imprisoned in the middle of the desert during World War 2 without due process.

Amargosa opera house to gold point ghost town