Chubbuck, CA

 Chubbuck, CA, is another place you've never heard of. Drive about 6.5 miles south from Archer on the old dusty, washboard Cadiz Road, and you will be at what remains of Chubbuck. Unlike Archer, which has almost completely vanished, there are remains at Chubbuck that prove something used to be here.

See if you can spot the small white box, upper center.

Let me paraphrase from Joe DeKehoe's excellent book The Silence and the Sun:

A visitor to Chubbuck today sees only empty desert in every direction, which belies the fact that for 25 years this was an active community of about two hundred people. What remains today are concrete pillars next to the railroad tracks and a few scattered cement foundations. Among the creosote bushes are scattered piles of rusty tin cans and broken plates. A dirt road leads west from the ruins to the limestone quarry, which was the reason the settlement was here. The sun beats own from a cloudless sky, and all is quiet.

 

Chubbuck was a mining outpost. These large concrete structures are the remains of the limestone processing mill (the Chubbuck Lime Company). For a short period of time, there was a cement plant here as well.

  

 

I believe this is the old oil bunker that was used to store crude oil that was piped to the kiln burners. Let's take a look inside.

 

Surprisingly roomy!

 

This old barrel heater, complete with store-bought wood, would keep you warm on a cold winter night. Not sure I would want to spend much time inside this dusty structure. Someone has written "Doom Lives Here" on the rafter above the stove. 

Someone with a sense of humor has been here!

 

Perhaps the same person with the sense of humor had something to do with this grave which is next to the bunker?

 

My square, my rules!

 

Remember when I asked if you could see the small white box in the first photo of this post? Well here it is up close. It's an explosives bunker. Explosives would be stored here, and transported up the hill to the limestone quarry. There's a touching photo in the DeKehoe book of mother and daughter going door to door in Chubbuck, selling pies which were carried in a Hercules dynamite box!

 

Time to leave Chubbuck and continue on to our next destination. One thing I am curious about is if these tracks are still in use. These tanker cars look relatively new. After following Cadiz Rd. for two days, we never saw or heard a single train.

 

I can see recent areas of repair. Maybe these tracks haven't been used for a long time, but they are getting ready to start using them again?

 

Desolate outpost. Whatever this sign said has been eroded away.

 

Mitch & I stop for lunch at the only shade we can find!

 

A favorite paragraph from the chapter on Chubbuck from The Silence and The Sun:

The men on the railroad shared a kinship with settlers in these small desert communities and did their best to ease some of the hardships. Families living in Chubbuck were obviously poor, but being poor in those years and under these circumstances was not necessarily a stigma. In the absence of money and material possessions, friendships and character were more important. Oftentimes the trains coming north from Blythe, before the days of refrigerated railcars, were pulling boxcars of produce packed with ice. The engineers and brakemen on the train sometimes stopped at Chubbuck to deliver mail or machinery, and they turned their back while the children scampered among the cars, loading their small arms with as many chunks of ice as they could carry. Two blasts on the train whistle was the signal to get back on the ground. If the train was on a tight schedule, it might simply slow to a crawl while they went through Chubbuck and the conductors would slide pieces of ice out the side of the trail. The children, who made a game out of it, would run alongside, clamoring to be the first to touch a piece of ice and thereby lay claim to it.

 

Thanks for stopping by, and join me next week as Mitch & I continue down Cadiz Road to our next adventure. Hint: If you like sand and wind, you won't want to miss it!

Linking with Skywatch Friday.