Let us only believe that which is shared with us on Facebook. That's my name. "I know this is kind of weird, and a lot of people look at me like I'm nuts," he said on the Death Valley Jim Radio Program, the podcast where I first heard him talk. But when he tried to lift the chest out it fell completely apart." In 1870, for example, explorer Albert S. Evans was traveling to San Bernardino, Calif., when he claimed to have stumbled on its remains. Even Grasson concedes that a part of it should have remained above ground. A 16th-century Spanish ship seemed the most plausible to Dunning, but he discounted this as well, largely on the grounds of paleo-hydrology: Given the course and depth of the Colorado River, it could not have deposited a ship in some of its more popular mythological locations in the Colorado Desert. While inspecting the property, Carver noticed that the fence posts were oddly shaped. In 1933, she was hiking with her husband in the Anza-Borrego Desert, not far from the border with Mexico. Those wildflowers were what brought the Bottses to the desert, and they ended up near a tiny settlement called Agua Caliente. Reach her at kristin.scharkey@desertsun.com or on Twitter @kscharkey. It may be a story about some masterpiece you've been nurturing for years, of selling a tech startup to Google, of raising a family in rural Vermont. We pulled off the highway, drove through town and toward a farmhouse shaded by a line of trees. But others must be allowed to live, because without such nourishing nuggets of wonder, life can shrivel up into an endless series of tasks, captured and measured, posted on social media, forgotten. When we'd spoken on the phone, I'd gotten the impression he thought the ship was of Spanish origin, which made more sense, as there were Spanish conquistadors in Mexico in the early 1500s, whereas there is no solid evidence of Viking settlement on the West Coast. They point, for example, to a wooden sloop from the 1770s unearthed during excavations at the World Trade Center site in lower Manhattan, or the more than 40 ships, dating back perhaps 800 years, discovered in the Black Sea earlier this year. “The moon threw a track of shimmering light” upon “the wreck of a gallant ship,” Evans wrote in The Galaxy magazine in 1870, “which might have gone down there centuries ago when the bold Spanish adventurers … were pushing their way to the northwest.”. A moment later I realized it was a child's play structure wedged between two trees. In the parking lot of a small Indian casino where we stopped for lunch, Grasson pulled from the back of his Jeep a copy of The Last of the Seris, a 1939 book by Dane Coolidge about the indigenous people of Tiburon Island, in the Gulf of California. Let us banish forever all traces of wonder from our lives. I will honor his request, but will note that it's kind of refreshing—and indicative of Grasson's character—that what he fears might be salacious wouldn't even make a fifth grader's cheeks turn red. That's unfortunate, because Canebrake is gorgeous land in the midst of the Anza Borrego, nearly as jagged and wild today as when the pioneers first came through. In a guide to California published during the Great Depression by the Works Progress Administration, author Kane Springs writes about a ‘shipwreck’ on the edge of the Salton Sea, saying that there was “a boat built in 1862 by a Colorado River mining company, transported partway across the desert by ox team, and then abandoned because of the difficulty of the journey from San Gorgonio Pass to the … I fear, also, that Grasson was too nice and too Midwestern for the likes of the Comedy Store. Mother Nature leaves open the possibility of a nautical mystery, they argue. The Lost Viking Ship Quite possibly buried in the 1933 earthquake, a lost Viking Ship apparently resides in the Anza Borrego Desert State Park in San Diego County. He prefers to be called an "explorer of legends and lore," not a treasure hunter. The book so entranced him that he eventually drove to the Arizona State University library in Tempe, asking to photocopy all of Bailey's notes for the book. "The moon threw a track of shimmering light," he wrote, directly upon "the wreck of a gallant ship, which may have gone down there centuries ago.". To naysayers, it’s simply a myth passed down through oral and literary tradition. It's "not uncommon" for entire vessels to last 500 years – in Egypt, buried ships dating back to around 2700 B.C. The Desert Magazine covered the mystery of the desert ship for the first time in 1939, when writer Charles C. Niehuis described a strange encounter he'd had with Jim Tucker in Prescott, Arizona. There's no way a historic ship is buried beneath the California desert. This is what Grasson believes. And yet the legend about a long-lost vessel has persisted for centuries. It may be about a ship stranded in the desert. He is trying to reconcile the imagined and the real, but he must do it in his free hours, on a bad knee, with no apparent means of outside financial support. The Vikings presumably abandoned ship, giving themselves over to the harsh elements, but their ship remained—and perhaps remains still. Unfortunately, that very day, a 6.4 magnitude earthquake struck Southern California. He once met Jay Leno, but asked me not to repeat the story of that encounter because he thought it was salacious. Such a ship then, would have to be much closer to the river's delta, in the armpit between Baja California and the Mexican mainland. We cannot subsist on faith alone, but can we subsist without any faith? Newsweek is drawing attention to a search for California’s lost Viking treasure ship Breaking News tags: California, Spain, Viking, Archeology. Until someone proves the ship doesn't exist, it could exist. We deprive them, but we also deprive ourselves, crowding an already-crowded world that needs fewer "shoppes" and more places of solitude. In 1870, Philadelphia’s Evening Telegraph called it “a marvellous story” about “a ship high and dry on a Colorado Desert – billows of sand beating about her.” In 1875, British publishing house Chapman and Hall released poet Joaquin Miller’s book of verse The Ship in the Desert. The stories have given Pal… One day, Santiago saw Petra making tortillas on a type of round griddle called a comal. Again, no desert ship. © 2021 www.desertsun.com. Cahuilla dried out centuries ago, but water returned here in 1905, after a dam broke on the Colorado River. It was a hint, though also a taunt. Norse Greenlanders Dominated Ivory Trade, Walrus DNA Shows. In the Los Angeles Daily News of August 1870, the ship was described as a half-buried hulk in a drying alkali marsh or saline lake, west of Dos Palmas, California, and 40 miles north of Yuma, Arizona. But these are not the things Grasson has chosen to do. Two factors drove Grasson into the realm of obsession. In the early 1970s, Lawrence Justus sought permission to enter Anza-Borrego Desert State Park in Borrego Springs, Calif., for “the purpose of locating certain artifacts,” according to documents obtained by The Desert Sun. There has changed many times, dotting the landscape of the Colorado Desert with visions of a ship that never quite docked at the port of reality. Follow Question; 3 Great Question; Asked by ScottyMcGeester (1897) July 2nd, 2013 I wanted to know more about this story, as much as I can. "[Their] science basically started with a treasure hunter looking for gold." There are many places to cast doubt on the Botts’ story. Viking Sunstone Josh travels to England and Norway to unlock the secrets of the Viking sunstone, a mystic crystal the Vikings used to conquer the seas. Unfortunately, that very day, a 6.4 magnitude earthquake struck Southern California. The Canyon collapsed and the ship was buried in the rubble. Promising leads have vanished like a cactus mouse in the undergrowth. In 1996, Grasson moved out to Orange County, because it was cheaper to live there. He concluded that no Norsemen sailed up the Gulf of California: "There is no archeological evidence of Vikings anywhere along the American West Coast.". And whatever he made was hard-won. Like all faiths, Grasson's constantly renews itself, flourishing at the very moment when it should expire. To go through all of Bailey's research took Grasson seven years. It sounds implausible, right? The lost Spanish Galleon stories began after the Colorado River flood of 1862. Sightings of the desert ship began in the 1870s and The Desert Magazine covered the mystery of the desert ship for the first time in 1939. This may be foolish, for there are surely more productive ways Grasson could spend his time. That tribe, he says, is concerned only with self-enrichment, willing to abuse property rights and historical artifacts in the pursuit of some long-lost trove. All rights reserved. As in a good television mystery, there are clues everywhere. It is fed entirely by agricultural run-off that will soon cease to flow, for an insanely complex set of reasons having to do with California's insanely complex water-rights statutes. "Could a ship pass through here? "We tell ourselves stories," Joan Didion wrote in The White Album, "in order live." Yet never once did I hear him air any grievances. Most notably, how would a ship get into the middle of the desert? A serpent-necked Viking ship was also reported by natives in 1900 in the Colorado River region. The Los Angeles Times concluded there are plenty of craft at the bottom of the Salton Sea, but it reported that they were all attached to the nearby U.S. Navy test base. is fueled by his boundless curiosity and his craving for validation—although pocketing a hidden treasure wouldn’t be such a bad thing. Elizabethan chronicler Richard Hakluyt reported that Cavendish’s Content and her consort ship, Desire, had set sail for England heavily laden with plunder from the Spanish galleon, Santa Ana. In 2003, the Los Angeles Times concluded there were plenty of craft lost to the saline depths of the Salton Sea, but these belonged to the U.S. Navy, which had a test site nearby. A Viking ship. Grasson isn't an archeologist, and is definitely not a paleo-hydrologist, though he understands how and where water has moved across the desert. Most of these do not return to search for ancient treasure ships. Grasson pointed to the striated rock that rose all around us. Jacobsen said this was because they came from a boat he'd found on his property. A new life was started in San Jose California in 1886 by an eccentric lady named Sarah Winchester from New Haven to California. "But I really think this ship is there." And yet the legend about a long-lost vessel has persisted for centuries. Most notably, how would a ship get into the middle of the desert? Myrtle Botts, the librarian who said she saw it, claimed it was buried by an earthquake. It took Jakie quite some time to get through all the sand, but when he did he found a small chest full of gems. To get to Imperial, you skirt the western edge of the Salton Sea and head through the unnaturally fertile Imperial Valley. But those who believe in its existence point to the way water once covered this arid landscape. Some time ago, he listened to a recording made by a farmhand named Elmer Carver. A cache of Viking artifacts discovered in the Arizona desert launches Scott Wolter on a quest to find a lost Viking ship that legends claim is buried somewhere in the Southwest. About 10 years ago, one of his co-workers told Grasson he was too intense and needed a hobby. History. And I am glad he said it, for it would have been deflating to have his search voided by a single paragraph in an 80-year-old book. So they left and decided to come back in a few days. He declared he knew where he could get her a better one. Botts claimed it dislodged rocks that buried her Viking ship, which she never saw again. He then told Petra he'd been exploring the mountains north of the border when, in a "narrow box canyon," he saw "a boat of ancient appearance—an open boat but big, with round metal disks on its sides." To continue reading login or create an account. It is said that after a very successful pearling trip along the coastal waters of Baja California, he sailed up the Sea of Cortez (Gulf of California) to explore its northern end, which is the Colorado River delta. In the rugged Colorado Desert of California, there lies buried a treasure ship sailed there hundreds of years ago by either Viking or Spanish explorers. He sells mattresses. His faith may be strange, but it meets several hallmarks of a religion, right down to the prolonged sojourn in the desert, as well as a convoluted and improbable origin story whose artifacts are at once valuable and irrecoverable. To enter the desert is to succumb to the unknowable. History. Here, in the creosote wilderness, he found a tranquility he had never known before: "You start getting giddy when you realize how relaxed you are," he told me. "This guy from Skeptoid is grossly misinformed," Grasson says. This would explain why sightings of the desert ship began in the 1870s, by which time the abandoned boat, exposed to the elements, would have come to look like an ancient vessel. Then, that became too expensive. Melting glaciers in Lendbreen, Norway have revealed a lost mountain pass and artifacts that were used by the Vikings. But included in California State Parks' files is an old, black-and-white photo of Justus, wearing dark sunglasses, from an unidentified publication. I will say this in defense of John Grasson: If catfish farms are possible in the desert, so are ancient treasure ships. See why nearly a quarter of a million subscribers begin their day with the Starting 5. Those willing to see the place for what it is are few in number, since what's readily visible doesn't seem like much. "The usual theory advanced is that it is a mirage," Bailey said of the desert ship. By the time I heard it, while working on a story about desert conservation, it had been nearly a century and a half since explorer Albert S. Evans had published the first account. Carver gave his audio testimony in 1964; it subsequently passed into the hands of "private collector" whom Grasson won't name. "If you gotta guy who spends 10, 15 years looking at one particular story," Grasson said one day over breakfast, "and you got an academic who spent maybe a summer or two—you gotta realize who really knows more.". Selling mattresses can't be an easy job, nor an especially profitable one. "I know too much," Grasson lamented in a radio interview, "but not enough.". "I don't question the existence of the Lost Ship of the Desert," he wrote to me in an email. Sarah Winchester as a young woman. 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