I've visited the Mojave Megaphone a few times, so stumbling on this article - which helps to put a bit of the "what is it, really?" to rest, I figured it was worth archiving.
Trips to the Mojave Megaphone
By KAREN KUNDE
December 8, 1990
Barstow Desert Dispatch
Staff Writer
A myriad of mysteries span the California Desert. From prehistoric times to today, desert residents have left their mark, from rock alignments to modern-day metallic objects. Many are well-preserved and thankfully spared from vandals.
The Drum
Bill Mann, field trip guide for the Mojave River Valley Museum, happened upon an unusual steel object atop a ridge in the Crucero Hilts 25 to 30 miles north of Ludlow.
Speculation ranged from a movie prop to a modern art sculpture to something solely to confound the curious.
Dennis Daraghy, Bureau of Land Management ranger in Needles, had the chance to meet its maker about a year ago. The skillfully welded object is the body of a drum. The drummer hauls up skins for drum heads, and wires the drum to a generator-powered amplifier. It is on private land, but Daraghy met the pair who rigged the elaborate setup after they traveled slightly off-road onto nearby public land.
Daroghy says the drummer didn't say why he had chosen that particular spot. The device doesn't appear to aligned with anything, sitting roughly 15 degrees off of a north-south angle.
The climb up is precarious, and Daraghy was told the drum was hauled up there by hand, though it weighs some 350 pounds. It is about 7 feet, 5 inches long. and bolted into granite- It sits far enough back from the road that it's easy to miss unless against the skyline. Bill Mann likens its shape to two big megaphones, back-to-back and bolted together.
Gene Stoop, assistant field trip coordinator for the museum. is a welder himself. and says building the drum must have been a "labor intensive" effort.
Hopefully it was well worth the effort.
Intaglio
North of East Highway 58, an artistic, circular design is drawn onto rock-hard "desert pavement."
Lines branch off the outer circle, but they do not go completely around the circumference and are not all the same length. Mann thinks this intaglio was carved in prehistoric times, but if it was, he wonders "Why would they have done it here? Why. who and when?"
There are no signs of prehistoric habitation there and the nearest water would have been Lake Manix. Perhaps it's a directional marker for seasonal travelers, or else has religious symbolism.
Malcolm Rogers rock alignments
Prehistoric rock alignments some 30 miles north of Ludlow near Mesquite Springs, were recorded in 1926 by an amateur archaeologist named Malcolm Rogers, who hiked the desert in the 1920s recording various sites.
Mann guesses the alignments have been there "a long. long time given the extent of the desert varnish" on the rocks, a polishing effect due to wind erosion and such.
Related Stories