Control Line in Death Valley?

[Dave Hull]

I thought this was interesting....

https://www.msn.com/en-us/video/webcontent/the-mysterious-circle-of-evelyn-california/vi-COCBrioBunSaTg?vid=Ng95JaMyQUk&provider=yt&ocid=msedgntp&pc=HCTS&cvid=703488aafc02422a976f36f0db44ddd3&ei=31

You're gonna need some 142' lines, so make sure you add lots of tip weight. And bring ALL your gear, the nearest hobby shop is....well, it's a loooong way away.

Dave

[Steve Dwyer]

It would be interesting to visit the County to view the recorded property maps and talk to a historian in Evelyn if one exists. Maybe it was built as a racetrack for go carts, it's anybody's guess.

Steve

[Brett Buck]

I thought this was interesting....

https://www.msn.com/en-us/video/webcontent/the-mysterious-circle-of-evelyn-california/vi-COCBrioBunSaTg?vid=Ng95JaMyQUk&provider=yt&ocid=msedgntp&pc=HCTS&cvid=703488aafc02422a976f36f0db44ddd3&ei=31

You're gonna need some 142' lines, so make sure you add lots of tip weight. And bring ALL your gear, the nearest hobby shop is....well, it's a loooong way away.

Dave

  Well. it's a little rough, but not a lot worse than some of the WAM contest sites we have flown at!

     Brett

[Mike Hazel]

Abandoned full size tether car track!

[Dave Hull]

At most, this was a stop on a long gone rail line. You can see the prior railbed melting back into the desert immediately east (half-a-hurl) from highway 127 on google maps. (Lat 36.14671, Long -116.31802) It is unclear that there were ever any (many?) buildings here.

Not sure why the circle was put there, but it's continued existence can be explained by this statement from a wiki:

"Currently, there are no residents of Evelyn. No structures remain. All that remains is a paved loop of road next to the old railroad grade. The California Department of Transportation uses this area to store paving materials and test equipment for work on California State Route 127 and other area roads."

I suppose if the state highway maintenance guys get bored, they might run their paving machines in head-to-head "tether car" competition, but they're gonna need a BIG post....

I find the "marker" there just as interesting. It appears to be very close to where I would estimate the corner of the Greenwater Range federal lands to be. Although I don't seem to be able to navigate the USGS database for benchmarks....to confirm that. It doesn't immediately strike me as an earthquake fiducial marker, but trying to find a listing/map of those is elusive, too.

I'd be very disappointed to find it was just a key lockbox for paving equipment being staged there....

[Dave_Trible]

I'd say it was either a practice field for Windy's Sweeper or an auto race track from the 1920s-30s.

Dave

[john e. holliday]

Could that have been a new development for housing poeple wanting to move west.   Does the family still own the land?

[Steve Thompson]

Comment from video:

@jimrook5726
3 months ago
I grew up in Shoshone and now 87 years old. We used to drive around this circle as a teenager and see how fast we could go. The circle was used to mix cold mix asphalt with a road grader to patch holes in hwy 127.  They used the circle material to make the asphalt. The reason for the circle was to avoid turning the grader around during the mixing. It required many circuits to get it mixed properly. The stripes were just practice for the striping crew. I hope this helps.

[Dave Hull]

Oh man! If I could just talk CalTrans into "mixing" asphalt on our flying circles at the Sepulveda Basin so that they could pave the local roads properly....  I'd think that the bottom four inches or so would never mix well enough to use on a road, and they'd have to leave it there, no?