Sands Ghost Town Adventure

Welcome to Afton Canyon, known (believe it or not) as the "Grand Canyon of the Mojave". HH and I took a perilous detour through here on our way to find a ghost town. We drove through the Mojave river, which is a joke on maps being as it runs through a gigantic desert... but up close and personal, it gave the Jeep quite a bath and us quite a shock.


After much rumbling on dirt roads, dry river beds, railroad sidings, washes, etc - we eventually made it to Sands:


Sands was once a ranch, from what we can tell, located on the cusp of "Devil's Playground". The only building that still had a significant portion remaining is the barn. Huge timbers were brought in to build this place and of course many parts seemed to be hand-tooled. It was truly awesome to look at this wood and imagine the hard work that someone put into this many many years ago.




What we couldn't figure out was where the ranch house and windmill went. We saw a picture that showed the barn, with metal windmill in background, in a fairly similar state as we saw it. There were no roof remnants when we got there, unlike the picture, and also unlike the picture, there was NO sign of the windmill. Where did it go? The ranch house was even more of a mystery. The only thing that looked like it could have belonged to it is the post below that might have been part of the frame. We thought that maybe the ranch house was torn down for some reason by the rail company. Bizarre. I intend to find out more.


I rather enjoyed the glass that was probably deposited here in the older days... Below, parts of a classic 7up and I think, Royal Crown Cola. (RC label below seems to be circa 1950s according to inter-web... and it seems as though the orange-back 7up label is from the same vintage)