Talk:Cantil, California

Cantil's main claims to fame are Pancho Barnes, and its proximity to gold mining ghost towns of the Rand Mountains at Randsburg and Johanesburg.

The glory days of Cantil were those of commercial salt mining in the Saltdale area. The Cantil-Garlock area was significant in the WWII era as a site of air- and spacecraft fuel development. Aspects of this may still be classified. Much of that area is fenced off by the USBLM as wildlife preserve. There is at the east end of Munsey Road from Cantil a USBLM facility that is closed to unauthorized personnel, at the southeast end of Koehn Lake, that looks a lot like a forward aircraft base and controller station.

Pancho Barnes lived in Fremont Valley in Cantil, which is quite desolate country. Cantil is on the southwest side of Koehn Lake. It is accessed by Neuralia Road from California City and by Munsey Road, which runs on the south side of the lake. There are no facilities nor amenities of any kind in the entire area (except at the Jawbone Canyon Park, far to the west). People traveling to the end of Munsey Road should have a cell phone. There are many legends of hidden abandoned WWII era aircraft landing strips in the Cantil era. There may be more truth than poetry in some of them.71.243.210.149 (talk) 17:08, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

If not contrary to Homeland Defense interests and policy, it would be nice to have a marker indicating the BLM facility, and an historical marker noting the location of the Pancho Barnes-McKendry airstrip in Cantil. This note is about an era of giants that once flew in America’s skies. Pancho Barnes was one of that species. Her exploits and dreams ended sadly and catastrophically in the heart attack that ended the suffering she endured as sequel to sequentially bilateral breast cancer.

Florence Leontine Lowe-Barnes was a bigger than life character. She was a one-of-kind personality, as were many of her associates in the development of America’s aviation industry. When you see she was personal friend to Howard Hughes, Jimmy Doolittle and Chuck Yeager, you catch a glimmer of her star magnitude in flying’s firmament, that flashed at Oro Verde, Cantil, Jawbone Canyon and Gypsy Springs of the Mojave Desert.

Florence Lowe went from fabulous southern California inherited wealth to destitute borax-dusted poverty, in ill-managed efforts to create a Las Vegas of aviation in the Mojave Desert, first at Oro Verde, southwest of Edwards Air Force Base. She dreamed of fly-in water sports luxury resorts, in a land that did not geologically and climatically support them. Lauren Kessler’s book The Happy Bottom Riding Club—The Life And Times Of Pancho Barnes ((c) 2000) reveals other powerful natural forces that worked against her.

Pancho had that rare gift the military calls leadership that causes men (and women) to be more than they ever wanted to be. The gift she had is called charisma by people in show business. Whatever it was, it gathered folks around her in displays of outrageous genius and wild libido. When she was born a scary geni was let out of its bottle. Pancho Barnes married a society preacher man, gave birth to a child, and ascended into heaven.

Time has given a golden aura to the gargantuan life of Pancho Barnes that was tarnished somewhat in her own time. DeLorme cartographers have an irritating tendency to rewrite the history in our maps to make them non-ethnic and impersonal. The Gypsite shown on page 118 of DeLorme California Detailed Topographical Maps is the Gypsy Springs site of the Florence Leontine Lowe-McKendry home and airstrip.

The Gypsy Springs Ranch of Mac McKendry and Pancho Barnes was all that hard work and inspired thinking could make it. But the money to build the dream never came. The water was brine, the sun was hellish hot, and the Air Force was not the U.S. Army Air Corps that made Oro Verde work. I came of age in The Tea House of the August Moon on Okinawa, and saw the cultural change in the military coming.

I have ground reconned this area, insofar as I have access. I have not imposed on the kindness of the McKendry family Armstrong heirs of Pasadena and Cantil. There are some stories too big to be told. Some such are too sad for human hearts to hold. Such a story is that of Pancho Barnes, who was a bona fide hero of aviation, who stood up for the equality of women in endeavors long considered male-only activities.

The Home of Pancho Barnes and E.S. “Mac” McKendry was in Fremont Valley between Cantil and Lake Koehn, in a spring-fed but salty oasis, that could not support alfalfa fields and expensive race horses. Pancho dreamed of an aviation resort there, and Mac McKendry graded an airstrip to accommodate big party planes—but they didn’t come.

The desert and destiny finally beat Pancho Barnes at Boron. Thoroughbred race horses, cows, dogs and hogs died with Pancho’s dreams at Gypsy Springs. There are other stories to be told of Cantil and Gypsy Springs, but I could not do justice to them.71.243.210.149 (talk) 15:58, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Re: The Above 'Talk' Entry

The long, rambling entry above appears to have been posted by someone woefully unfamiliar with the format and function of Wiki. I propose that it either be: 1) Cleaned up and posted as an actual Wiki article OR 2) Deleted LorenzoB (talk) 20:15, 19 January 2013 (UTC)