Amargosa Opera House and Hotel

The story

Death Valley Junction is a tiny settlement in eastern Inyo County, California, close to Death Valley National Park. Its heart is a single U-shaped complex of adobe buildings in Spanish Colonial Revival style, put up between 1923 and 1925 by the Pacific Coast Borax Company as a company town. The architect was Alexander Hamilton McCulloch. Inside were the company's offices, staff quarters and a dormitory, plus a hotel of 23 rooms that had its own lobby, store and dining room, and at its northeast end a recreation hall where the town gathered for dances, church services, films, funerals and meetings.

In its borax-boom years, when the town, then called Amargosa, sat at the end of the Tonopah and Tidewater Railroad, around 350 people lived here. The borax company had also built the Death Valley Railroad to the junction in 1914. Executives and investors stepping off the train after a long, hot ride were greeted by valets in white gloves. Besides the hotel, the complex housed workers' bunkhouses, an infirmary, a general store and a café, and a large garage across the road repaired the trucks that hauled borax from the mines. Rail service ended around 1940 according to Legends of America, while Wikipedia says the railroad stopped paying its way in 1942; its tracks were pulled up and shipped to Egypt to support the Allied campaign in North Africa. After that, the hotel, the hall and some 250 acres changed owners many times.

The building's second life began in 1967, when Marta Becket, a dancer and painter, stopped in town with a flat tire. She rented the old recreation hall, then known as Corkhill Hall, for $45 a month, repaired it, built sets, and covered the adobe walls with murals. She named it the Amargosa, after the town's old name, and performed her own dance and mime shows there, sometimes with no one watching. In 1970 National Geographic writers found her dancing to an empty house; their story, and another in Life, brought visitors from around the world, among them Ray Bradbury and Red Skelton.

Becket finished her murals in 1974 and set up a nonprofit, Amargosa Opera House, Inc., which, with help from the Trust for Public Land, bought the whole of Death Valley Junction. The town was listed on the National Register of Historic Places as a historic district on December 10, 1981, and in 1983 the theater replaced its worn garden chairs with 120 seats bought from a theater in Boulder City, Nevada. Becket gave her last performance in February 2012 and died in January 2017. Jenna McClintock, who had been inspired to take up ballet after seeing Becket perform at the age of six, danced with the Oakland Ballet, came back to carry on the tradition, and retired from the opera house in 2016.

The legend

The earliest ghost accounts found come from Marta Becket herself. She spoke of the spirits of former residents of Death Valley Junction, and described things shifting position or appearing where they did not belong, and soft voices when nobody was around. A 2018 Pahrump Valley Times article characterized her experiences as mild, and noted that visitors report much the same. Over time the hotel became a destination for ghost hunters.

Many more specific stories circulate, but most of them trace back to a single travel and folklore website, Legends of America, and should be read as lore rather than documented events. They include a ghost cat that is said to interrupt performances, and Tom, the comedian, stage manager and master of ceremonies who performed alongside Becket and died in 2005, who is said to sit in a chair watching the shows. Shadows are reported moving across the stage.

In the hotel, Room 9 is called the most haunted: guests have described something pinning their legs and feet down in bed, doorknobs turning, and a child giggling and running in the corridor. Room 24 is linked to a crying child, explained in some retellings as a little girl who died in a bathtub in 1967; no record of that death was found. Room 32 supposedly has a menacing presence, said to have been a mining boss's quarters where men were hanged during the borax era, which is not historically confirmed either. Other reports mention a group of voices in the dining room, including a shrill female voice, footsteps, knocking in the walls, a scent of lilacs and showers that turn on by themselves. The unrenovated wing, a former miners' dormitory that locals call "Spooky Hollow", is said to have contained a hospital and morgue.

On television, the opera house and hotel featured in "Death Valley", the 26th episode of the third season of the Travel Channel's The Dead Files, broadcast on May 17, 2013, with medium Amy Allan and former detective Steve DiSchiavi. Wikipedia also says the buildings were investigated by Ghost Adventures in 2010, but that episode could not be confirmed in our research. In 2018 the local horror film Crossover, directed by James Horton, used the hotel as its setting and had its first screening in the theater.

What remains today

The opera house, its adobe walls still covered with Becket's murals, continues to host performances, and the hotel takes guests year-round. The nonprofit founded by Becket owns and maintains the historic district. Beyond these buildings, Death Valley Junction is close to a ghost town: there is no gas station, and the Amargosa Café, once run by the opera house, has closed.

Visiting

The Amargosa Hotel is open to overnight guests and the opera house still stages shows, with proceeds supporting the nonprofit; check the official website for room bookings and the performance calendar. No regular ghost tour was confirmed. Staying the night in the hotel is the legal way to experience the rooms in the stories; the unrenovated wing should not be entered without permission.

This is remote desert country. Come with a full tank, water and supplies, since the junction has no fuel or open restaurant, and remember that summer heat in the Death Valley region can be dangerous.

Sources

1. Wikimedia Commons category : Amargosa Opera House — Wikimedia Commons
2. USGS 1:250000-scale Quadrangle for Death Valley, CA 1958 — U.S. Geological Survey, 1958 · Public domain (USGS)
3. USGS 1:250000-scale Quadrangle for Furnace Creek, CA 1908 — U.S. Geological Survey, 1908 · Public domain (USGS)
4. USGS 1:62500-scale Quadrangle for Ash Meadows, NV 1952 — U.S. Geological Survey, 1952 · Public domain (USGS)
5. "Amargosa Opera House weekend goes from opera to paranormal" (Robin Flinchum, 19 Oct 2018) — Pahrump Valley Times — Pahrump Valley Times
6. "Death Valley Junction & the Haunted Amargosa Hotel" — Legends of America — Legends of America
7. "List of The Dead Files episodes" — Wikipedia — Wikipedia
8. Official website
9. Wikipedia article — Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Text written by AI from the sources above and checked by a separate AI fact-check (how we work). Images: credits and licenses under each picture.