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ARLIER THIS YEAR, MY wife and I were able to spend a few days in Death Valley National Park, which straddles the California– Nevada border, east of the Sierra Nevada. With its diverse environment of salt-flats, sand dunes, badlands, valleys, canyons, and mountains, Death Valley is the largest national park in the contiguous United States, as well as the hottest, and the driest. It also has the lowest elevation of all the national parks. It was my first visit, and we had a great time. I became enamored of the stark, yet beautiful, desert landscape, the shifting sands, the borax mines, and the history Death Valley has played in the Western genre. The visit led directly to the Death Valley full-length episode of the Six-Gun Justice Podcast in which my co-host, Rich Prosch, and I talked at length about the many movies, TV shows, and books inspired by the Death Valley. One of my discoveries, however, was special enough to deserve a column of its own. I have no doubt, most Saddlebag Dispatches readers are more than familiar with the haunting country and the western hit song “Ghost Riders in the Sky.” The words and music have probably started running through your head with the mere mention of the song title. But there is a great story behind the song I want to share with you, including the series of serendipitous events that led Stan Jones, the man known as “The Singing Ranger,” to pen the iconic
tune that opened the door to his remarkable career as a songwriter. While in the park, I had the opportunity to read about the amazing career of Death Valley’s famous Singing Ranger, Stan Jones. A 1947 article in Arizona Highways describes Jones’s birth this way... One June evening in 1914, while Pancho Villa was busy shooting up a border town, a newborn citizen lustily joined in the din from a little Arizona ranch house about 200 yards away. Stan Jones had just arrived. Interested to know more, I took the opportunity to visit the ranger station, which was the residence where Stan Jones and his wife were living when he wrote “Ghost Riders in the Sky” while on assignment in the park. To say it was primitive doesn’t do it justice, especially when you take into account the stark realities of the desert and the intense heat in the Valley of Death. The ranger residence is a short distance inside the entry to the park, near the desolate outpost of Stovepipe Wells. With its two-pump gas station, small motel, restaurant, and gift shop, Stovepipe Wells is the last vestige of civilization before the long, long miles of tarmac leading to the two resorts nestled in the heart of the Valley. Another well-known resort in the Valley is Scotty’s Castle located at Furnace Creek. However, it has been closed for several years due to flash flood damage but is set to reopen in 2022. Stan’s parents, John and Berta, had roots in the
