The ghosts of Bishop

Most visitors come to Bishop, Calif., for the abundant and diverse four-season recreational opportunities.

If you can’t find an outdoor activity that revs your engine, it probably doesn’t exist. A lively small town on the northern end of Owens Valley, it boasts a big backyard. A really big backyard.

Population 3,715, Bishop’s setting is simply irresistible. Flanked by the outrageously scenic drama of the Sierra Nevada escarpment to the west and the much lesser known brooding brown shoulders of the White-Inyo Range to the east, Mother Nature has been lavishly generous here.

I have hiked these mountains for years, decades really. But not today. I am here to indulge my other Sierra passion: its history.

Much more than a spectacular recreation paradise, the Bishop area holds a deep, rich past. My objective: find and photograph concrete silos east of town.

Sometimes called the ghosts of Bishop, tall cylinders once stored harvested green fodder to be used for animal feed in winter. Pam Vaughn, immensely knowledgeable curator of the outstanding Laws Railroad Museum, said they dated back to the late 1800s and early 1900s when pioneer Midwestern farmers arrived to homestead Owens Valley east of Bishop, then known as Bishop Creek.

Standing tall above the arid high desert terrain, it was easy to find them. I visited 12 of them, not yet fully understanding why they were here.

The landscape was bone dry, sandy, filled with sickly vegetation, tired old trees, sage brush, pathetic yellow weeds and not a drop of water in sight. Dust devils swirled across the land like sidewinders on the hunt.

These silent sentinels marked the locations of abandoned farms, dairies and ranches long-gone to Valhalla. What could possibly have grown in this waterless wasteland?

Nonetheless, they are intriguing structures. Each ring has an opening for aeration, most have an attached metal ladder, all face east and rebar sprouts from the top rings like old crooked bones.

Each ring is 2.5 feet high, and I marveled how they were lifted one above the other to heights of 25 feet or more in an era without cranes. Amazing what a “gin pole” and mules can do.

Cement contractor A.O. Adams had been stamped into the bottom ring of some of them. All of them are on land owned by Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP).

In the 1860s, farmers began to arrive from the Midwest, even the East Coast. They came not for the world-class scenery, but because they’d heard about farm land available to homestead.

The demand for beef, dairy products and other edibles in the gold and silver camps lured them to Owens Valley. In addition to raising crops and animals to feed themselves, they had a market to sell their goods.

Brave and hardy men and women homesteaded in harsh terrain that was totally foreign to them, willing to take on the task of making new lives in new country. They worked the land on high desert acreage just to the east of present day Bishop, but some claimed land to the west.

Here, in the midst of a dry and hostile landscape, new ways to farm had to be mastered. Water was key to their survival.

Additionally, the long siege of summer’s brutal heat had to be endured. Before long, the hardy souls realized they could not depend on scanty, fickle seasonal rains to sustain crops.

Instead, they figured out irrigation systems to bring water to their fields by gouging out canals. Historian Christopher Langley states 200 miles of unlined ditches were dug.

By 1892, there were 22 ditches that brought water from substantial streams to the west and Owens River eastward. They can be seen today as dry troughs meandering across the landscape, mute witnesses to a vanished way of life. The past never completely goes away.

The early Euro-Americans were not the first to dig ditches to channel water. On a much smaller scale, Native Americans diverted water from local streams to irrigate their fields of wild hyacinth and yellow grasses.

The seeds were an important part of their diet. Did the pioneers learn from them and enlarge the water delivery system to suit their needs?

As the old saying informs: The desert will be your friend as long as you feed it water. And that was gospel truth for a few decades.

Flush with water, farms and ranches flourished. Crops were grown, gardens and shade trees appeared. Cattle grew fat and sleek on the greenery. Corn and alfalfa fields were bordered by ditches, often marking ranch boundaries.

It must have been an Edenic scene when water from Bishop Creek to the west and Owens River to the east transformed the semi-arid high desert valley.

The first silo was built in 1898. Thereafter, anyone who could afford it wanted one or two. Presently, 29 silos can be seen dotting the terrain, more numerous to the east of town.

The earliest silos were fashioned from specially cut wood shipped from Oregon. None remain though their concrete bases have survived.

Sometimes called “agricultural tombstones,” they are important cultural/historic symbols of life in Owens Valley more than a century ago. However, LADWP removed all traces of the ranches and farms on land they eventually owned. If you didn’t know the backstory, this certainly adds to the mystery of their solitary existence in barren fields.

More greenery is present eastward toward the Owens River, canals, ponds, marshes and seeps. The difference is striking. Birds sing and flit about in the willows and cottonwoods, insects buzz and click in the grasses and the smell of water is delicious. It’s not rocket science to understand the magic of water in the desert.

In time, trouble came to Paradise. Though the infamous building and completion of the 233-mile-long aqueduct in 1913 stole Owens Valley water and sent it south to slake the thirst of Angelenos, the farmers played a part in the desertification.

They were careless, inexperienced and ignorant with how to best utilize water in this land of little rain. The ditches were unlined and seepage from them created marshes. When it rained, water was left to stand, and poor drainage spoiled the fields with alkali deposits laid down yearly.

Additionally, relying on water brought to them via canals, there was no water storage in place.

Ultimately, the LA aqueduct killed agriculture in Owens Valley. Massive water diversions forced many ranches to sell their property to LADWP at bargain prices and move away.

Presently, about 314,000 acres are owned and controlled by the department. But, the rancorous Owens Valley Water War is another story to be told at another time.

In my imagination, the silos are Watchers. In each ring, openings like big eyes seem to be waiting and watching for their people to come back.

But no one is coming.

Ever.

Getting there: Drive to Bishop on U.S. 395, 60 miles south of Lee Vining/Mono Lake. You can view the silos on Highway 6 not far from town; turn east on East Line Street to find more; on the south end of town, turn east on Warm Springs Road for more. My favorite is alongside Highway 6, a short drive from town. A single silo rests on a knoll backdropped by the peaks of the eastern Sierra escarpment. Before you enter Bishop proper heading south, take the turnoff to Highway 6, look west to see a postcard setting of two silos and a large old barn. It is okay to walk on LADWP land to view the silos up close.

Sierra native Sharon Giacomazzi is the author of Sierra historical hiking guidebooks and articles for outdoors publications. She can be reached at sharong@sti.net. “Feet are like dogs, they are happiest when going somewhere.”