California condor survey field notes, v1476
Page 277
Image from the Biodiversity Heritage Library. Contributed by Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, University of California, Berkeley. | www.biodiversitylibrary.org
Transcription
Traveling and grading streets for this development that is offering 2½ acre lots for sale. Several Trailer-houses dot the area where purchasers of the land come to spend a weekend, now and then. Two houses appear to be occupied; but just occupied! The Tracels of Toto-Gates, or Trail-bikes, ribbon this part of the desert. Scarcely a can remains on the desert floor that has not been widdled by bullets. Nowhere on this desert does one see any sign of responsibility by human beings here. The smoke plume of a forest or brush fire, that appeared to be to the east of Castaic Junction, cast a pall of smoke over the Antelope Valley at sunset. A stiff west wind held this smoke to the center and south portions of the valley. It was quite cool in the evening. I had been following the trail of sheep most of the distance from Tehachapi. Sheep that were moved from Tehachapi, to Antelope Valley, followed the same desert road that parallels the Los Angeles Aqueduct, as did I, although I saw signs of where the herders and their flocks had camped; I came upon none. One could see where the sheep were watered and fed alfalfa hay turnouts. For the trip from Tehachapi probably took three to four days with a large band of sheep.