Label Type
Cultural/Historical ContextLabel
INTO THE CHUCKWALLA LANDS
Essential to the cousins' liberation were two inventions: the camera and the Ford motorcar. Susie's father taught her to drive and repair the vehicle, allowing her to take off boldly across untracked desert. Her cameras (a Kodak and a Graflex) gave her an entree into the wilderness and the lives of the men who lived and worked there.
The photographers' kingdom extended from Mecca to Blythe and was fringed by the Orocopia, Chocolate and Eagle Mountains, with the Salton Sea to the west and the Colorado River to the east. Even today, it's a big stretch of nothing, generally passed over by tourists driving I-10 east to Arizona. When you travel this route today think of Susie and Lula and what it must have been like when the main highway consisted of "two ruts across 90 miles of blow sand," as one account put it.
The cousins established base camp at a cabin in Corn Springs. The oasis ten miles east of Desert Center is known for its nearly 600 petroglyphs etched on rock faces. Here Lula met her husband-to-be, miner and engineer Warner Graves. The cousins presided over a gypsy camp inhabited by a changing cast of exotic characters.
While some explorers are driven by profit or gain, Susie and Lula were motivated by the joy of discovery. In this display of their work from almost 100 years ago, note the delight on the faces of the subjects and photographers alike. As Susie asserted: "I made my own roads and took pictures for pleasure."