latest on Burro Schmidt Tunnel

[ Follow Ups ] [ Death Valley Talk - Archive Set 7 ] [ FAQ ]

Posted by baldon on July 14, 2004 at 22:27:13:

BLM plans Burro Schmidt cleanup
From the Ridgecrest News Review, July 14, 2004
By ADAM L. R. SUMMERS
News Review Staff Writer


The Bureau of Land Management will conduct a cleanup of the grounds around Burro Schmidt's cabin later this month as part of what BLM officials describe as an ongoing effort to preserve and one day restore the historic Burro Schmidt Tunnel site.

The cabin is where miner William Henry Schmidt lived during the three and a half decades he spent blasting and hand-carving a tunnel through the granite bedrock of a nearby mountain in the El Paso Mountain Range south of present-day Ridgecrest.

He was given the nickname "Burro" by other inhabitants of the surrounding mining communities because of his close association with Jack and Jenny, the pair of burros that hauled debris from the tunnel as he built it.

The tunnel and cabin, along with Schmidt's chicken coop, have been listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Since the land the cabin and tunnel occupy is public property, the task of preserving the historic site falls to the BLM, said Land & Minerals Branch Chief Linn Gum of the BLM Ridgecrest Field Office.

After Schmidt completed the tunnel, he moved away and left his property and mining claims in the hands of a man named Mike Lee. Eventually, many of the claims came into the hands of Evelyn "Tonie" Seger, Gum said.


For more than four decades, Seger lived a hermit's existence in a cabin next to Schmidt's. Most visitors to the tunnel during those years remember Seger as a colorful personality who would rent flashlights and spin stories about the tunnel and its history.

When Seger died last year, longstanding issues about the ownership of the tunnel, the cabin and the land came to the surface. BLM officials had long believed that Seger, who often claimed to own 800 acres of surrounding land, did not have a legal right to occupy the site at all. BLM officials claim that although Seger's mining claims were valid, she never met the criteria for residing on the claim since she never engaged in any significant mining activities.

Seger's occupancy brought certain problems along with it, Gum said. She accumulated a group of other desert-dwellers around her who brought other structures to the site, and much of the occupants' trash and collected junk ended up piled all around the historic buildings.

In late April, the BLM cleared 11 tons of trash and junk from the site with the help of nearly 200 volunteers from the Friends of Jawbone Canyon off-road vehicle club. But many more tons of debris remain, including at least seven relatively modern portable structures that form what Gum called a "shanty town" on the site.

With the cooperation of Seger's granddaughter and heir, Cheryl Kelly, who claims ownership of the personal property on the site, the BLM will conduct another cleanup operation July 19-21. The goal of the cleanup will be to remove all of the structures from the site except for Schmidt's cabin, his chicken coop and the structure known as the Mike Lee-Tonie Seger cabin.

At the same time, the BLM will install a fence around the cabins to deter looters and vandals until a more permanent solution is worked out, said Field Office Manager Hector Villalobos.

Ultimately BLM will have to enter into an arrangement with a third party in order to properly care for and present the historic site, since the agency does not have funds for anything beyond the essential protection of the site, Villalobos said.

Shortly after Seger's death, BLM had meetings with Kelly, one of Seger's associates named David Ayers who lived on the site and representatives of the Maturango Museum. But little progress has been made toward an arrangement where the museum would provide the funds and expertise to oversee and care for the site.

Museum officials point out that funding and staffing limitations make any but an advisory role unlikely unless a funding source materializes that would make continuous occupancy of the site possible.

For now, the agency is focusing on the immediate need to preserve the site, Villalobos said. Its future will be sorted out later.



Follow Ups:


[ Follow Ups ] [ Death Valley Talk - Archive Set 7 ] [ FAQ ]