Death Valley NPGallery Digital Archive
Hidden in the green oasis of Grapevine Canyon in far northern Death Valley,
the Death Valley Ranch, or Scotty's Castle as it is more commonly known,
is a window into the life and times of the Roaring '20s and Depression '30s.
It was and is an engineer's dream home, a wealthy matron's vacation home and
a man-of-mystery's hideout and getaway.
Walter Edward Scott, Death Valley Scotty, convinced everyone that he had built the castle
with money from his rich secret mines in the area.
Albert Mussey Johnson, a Chicago millionaire and investor in Scotty’s fake mine,
actually built the house as a vacation getaway for himself and his wife Bessie.
Scotty was the mystery, the cowboy, and the entertainer, but he was also a friend.
Albert was the brains and the money. They were two men as different as night and day,
from different worlds and with different visions - who shared a dream.
After falling in love with the climate, landscape, and isolation of the desert,
Albert Johnson set to work purchasing a number of Death Valley properties from 1915 to 1917.
Among these properties was the Steininger Ranch in Grapevine Canyon.
The property, renamed as Death Valley Ranch, includes both Upper Grapevine Ranch,
where Johnson first built practical concrete box structures and Lower Grapevine Ranch where Scotty resided.
Over the next decade these modest buildings evolved into the vibrant and elaborate Scotty’s Castle.
The Castle’s remodel was designed by Charles Alexander MacNeilledge and inspired by
California’s love of Spanish architecture.
Building Superintendent, Mat Roy Thompson carried out MacNeilledge’s vision on the ground.
Many of the photographs in this collection feature construction images taken by Thompson
to communicate progress on Scotty’s Castle to Johnson in Chicago.
Others include the Native Americans of the area involved in construction at
Scotty’s Castle – many of them the Timbisha Shoshone people living at Indian Camp on Death Valley Ranch.
For further information on Death Valley Ranch and Scotty’s Castle see:
Livingston, Dewey. Historic Resource Study, Death Valley Scotty Historic District,
Death Valley National Park, April 2009: a comprehensive history of Death Valley Ranch and Scotty’s Castle.
Historic American Buildings Survey, Library of Congress, Death Valley Ranch.
1989 measured drawings and documentary photographs: visual explanation of landscape and
names of buildings and rooms.
About NPGallery
The NPGallery Digital Asset Management System is an enterprise system for storing,
organizing, and sharing photos and other digital files. NPGallery's central online repository offers
a place for the NPS to store digital assets, including photos, illustrations, audio files, videos,
and documents. The NPGallery platform lets parks and other programs easily store and organize all
of their digital files, and allows users access to easily find and retrieve specific files.
NPGallery is a premier solution for NPS parks and programs who have a need to manage and disseminate
large volumes of digital assets, with many people accessing and using those assets.
NPGallery supports a wide array of digital asset file types (images, MS office formats, adobe pdfs, audio files, videos).
Digital assets have control access to those files to ensure they are used properly.
NPGallery supports parks and programs with
digital asset hosting and delivery services.
Digital assets in the system can be provided for
public use, or locked for discovery only by internal NPS users.
NPGallery has terabytes of digital files of all types that are safely stored and quickly
retrievable for NPS business needs.
NPGallery provides a simple text search and search by state and park options,
or has the ability to “search more fields” for robust metadata searching.
Search results can be refined by filtering options.
NPGallery supports web services, support for embedded metadata, and integrated geospatial capabilities.
NPGallery also has a responsive user interface design, and the interface will gracefully
resize to match the size of the screen on your device, supporting mobile.
Web authors using the NPS.gov content management system(CMS) now use NPGallery as the
source for all photo galleries shown in the CMS.
Benefits of NPGallery to Parks & Programs
The NPGallery platform lets parks and other programs easily store and organize all of their digital files,
and allows users access to easily find and retrieve specific files.
These images and other digital assets have a direct URL link and can be used on program web pages.
Multiple file sizes of each digital asset are stored and available for use and download.
Contact the NPGallery staff to have us assist your park or program with your unique Digital Asset Management needs.
Email: NPGallery@nps.gov
NPGallery has continued working with individual parks and programs to create individual portals.
These semi-custom web pages allow NPS parks and programs to deliver digital assets from a
unique web page that highlights and shares photos, documents, audio files, and videos.
Searching the featured digital archive can be customized to help guide a user through discovering
the valuable digital assets unique to each park or program.