Quail Springs Pump House

 Today we're heading out to a location called the Quail Springs Pump House in Joshua Tree National Park. It's been quite a while since I've visited, and I'm hoping it's as interesting and well preserved as I remember.

I was lucky I chose today for a hike. A little light rain as I drove into the park, and dramatic skies for the entire day.

 

A nice benefit to hiking to the Pump House is that there are some cool things to see along the way. This old rusty car is a favorite. I'll bet it has some stories to tell!

 

I've even photographed it back in 2019 at night under the Milky Way:

 

"Historic" trash.

 
Not far from the rustmobile is a collapsed homestead cabin. It's likely whoever lived here owned the car. I've never been able to learn who this cabin belonged to. It's quite a mystery.

All that's left is a bunch of wood on the ground and some nice stonework that must have been the front porch. The coolest thing about this old cabin is that it has a cellar!
 

Part of the floor has collapsed down into the cellar, but at one time, it would have been quite large. Nice craftmanship on the stonework!

 

The front porch, and more beautiful stonework. Spectacular desert views. Sure makes you wonder who lived here and what he/she/they did!

 

Time to continue my hike to the primary objective (the old pump house), but first let me show you what the skies look like:

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Ta daaa!! The Quail Springs Pump House in all its glory! I'm pleased to see it's still standing and actually looks to be in very good shape. It's about 1/2 mile from the old (collapsed) homestead cabin. Seems like you would want to put your well closer to your house, so not sure if the cabin owners had anything to do with this pump house. Then a friend of mine sent me an old Park Service map:

Unfortunately, it's not dated, but it shows "Horse Camp" near where the pump house is located. It appears that back in the day, you could come to Joshua Tree National Monument and rent horses and go horseback riding! It's also possible the Park Service built this well and pump to keep the horses watered.

 

The pump house has an old fashioned pump connected to a pipe that leads to a trough. And here's the best part: IT STILL WORKS!!

 

Let's take a closer look inside the pump house:

Found just outside the pump house (and left it where I found it).

 

I love this old pump house, but it's time to continue on. I think I have enough daylight left to hike over to Samuelson's Rocks (I'll save that post for next time). Before doing that, I hiked to the top of a hill next to the pump house for some nice desert views.

Thanks for joining me on this hike to the old pump house!

 Linking with Skywatch Friday.

Milky Way Over Quail Springs Pump House

 I've hiked out to the Quail Springs pump house before (most recently HERE), but never at night. As a matter of fact, I don't think I've ever seen a night photograph of the pump house, and I know I've never seen a photo of the pump house under the Milky Way. Not many people know about the location so it doesn't get many visitors, and the number of night visitors is probably... well, let's see... zero! Anyway, the idea hit me when I was trying to think of possible interesting foregrounds for the Milky Way, and the pump house seemed to check all the boxes. The view of the pump house is to the south (as is the MW), so we can check off that box. The location should be plenty dark, and it's about 2 miles to the nearest road (so no interference from car headlights: Check ✔️). The elevation is nearly 4000', so that would help a little with the hot summer desert temperature.

On the hike out to the pump house, you pass by this old rusty relic, which is pretty cool! You are also not far from Samuelson's Rocks. Close to the rusty car is a collapsed cabin, so lots to see out in this area if you know where to look.

 

This cabin was unique in that it had a basement or cellar. It's noticeably cooler down here! Now it's just a snake den. No, just kidding, but I do look very carefully before proceeding in. Because of the rusty cars close proximity to the cabin, they very likely had the same owner. But I've never been able to find any information about the owner of this cabin. 

 

This cabin had a totally bitchen front porch, and the whole area has a very nice feel to it, with lovely desert views. Desert living at its finest! There's a very faint road that leads from the cabin to the pump house. It's likely the owner(s) of this house drove the old jalopy up to the pump house for water.

 

I've heard it said that the old timers would use whatever they could find (usually an old piece of tin from a can) to cover up holes in cabin walls, especially where there was knot in the wood that would allow air to blow in. Here's proof!

 

It's about 6:30PM when I get to the pump house. That gives me about an hour until sunset, and plenty of time to look around and get my camera and tripod set up.

 

 

The old pump still works, which is amazing to me! On this visit, it took a lot of pumping for just a trickle of water. I kept at it until the trough was about half full. I'm guessing the local critters will appreciate it! Interesting side note: Almost the moment I pumped out a trickle of water, the bees went crazy!

 

Killing time, waiting for the Milky Way to rise.

 

 

 

Until finally, it was dark enough and the MW was in the right position...

It's so much fun being out in the desert at night under all these stars! Totally quiet with just the occasional yip of a coyote. The above photo is actually 10 photos that are "stacked" to reduce noise (since you have to crank up the ISO for these MW photos). My plan was to go out at night for more photos the night after this photo was taken to (hopefully) capture the Perseid meteors. Long story, but the camera settings were incorrect (read: User error) and after taking around 300 photos, I got nothing. So I decided to go back to my pump house photos, brighten them up a little, and see if I could spot any meteors.

Darn if I didn't capture some!! Out of the 10 photos I took (10 second exposure, ISO 8000), 3 or 4 had faint meteors that could be seen. I combined them into this single image. What a nice bonus to have on my MW photos!

 

There's only one challenging part to this hike, and that's hiking open desert using headlamp and phone navigation to get back to the car. The above photo shows you exactly what it looks like. No mountains or landmarks of any kind; just a patch of light from the headlamp. If my phone navigation would malfunction or my battery died, I would have to just sit down and wait for first light. There's just no way of navigating without GPS, unless you're one of those people who know how to navigate using the stars! Anyway, all went well, my trusty phone app guided me right back to my car, and it was a wonderful night to be out taking pictures in the desert!

 

Thanks for stopping by, and stay healthy!

Linking with Skywatch Friday.

Quail Springs Pump House

I think this location qualifies as one of Joshua Tree National Park's "secret spots". I won't give away the location other than to say it's a mile or less from Samuelson's Rocks (which is itself somewhat of a secret location). No signs, no trails, no mention in any NPS brochures. Just a water pump out in the middle of nowhere! I had seen pics and a blog post or two, and knew the approximate location, but it was still like looking for the proverbial needle in the haystack. After scouring Google Maps, I noticed a very small square object and thought that might be the pump house. Then again, it might just be a square rock!

We had some dramatic skies for the hike to the pump house. The hike also included a visit to Samuelson's Rocks and an old homestead location, but those have been covered on previous posts.

I think it's somewhere over there!!

 In our search for the pump house, we crossed this wash which contained all kinds of interesting old pipe and other debris. I knew something had to be "upstream" from here!

Eureka! We found it!! 

Cousin Scott checking out the pump and mechanism. It appears it might have been belt-driven, with a belt turning the wheel on the pump (left side) to pump the water.

The really cool thing about this pump is that it still works!! Move the pump handle up and down and it pumps water out the black pipe to the metal water holder you see here. There was water in the container and I'll bet critters come by after dark to get a drink here on a regular basis. I was tempted to taste the water but decided it might not be too clean once it passes through the rusty pipe. Had it been a typical hot desert day, I could have soaked my head with genuine Joshua Tree well water!

I'm sharing a video from my friend Elliot Koeppel's blog post, which you can check out here. 

I took my fisheye lens on this hike, so I'm required to share a couple shots. One is barbed wire in the Samuelson corral area, and the second is the signed rock. Such an interesting and bizarre area!

Time to start the hike back. Look at these beautiful desert skies!!

During part of the hike, you can follow the old double-track trail. But it disappears after a while.

A final parting shot.

"Leave only footprints, take only photos"

Linking with Skywatch Friday.

Thanks for stopping by!!