Transmitting from the Mojave Wilderness in Joshua Tree, California, now is the time for Desert Oracle Radio, the voice of the desert.

Deep into the weird year of 1947, a man named

Howard E. Hill stood before a lunchtime audience

at the Los Angeles Transportation Club

and told an incredible story

of an ancient temple

within Death Valley's

Panama Mountains.

Hill was speaking on behalf of Dr. Bruce Russell, who had retired his medical practice in

Ohio to mine the California Desert for Treasure.

The Desert Southwest was filling up with aging Easterners seeking dry air for their

various ailments and excitement for their dull lives.

Dr. Russell had found both, but for 16 years he had little luck in convincing the world to accept his Death Valley discovery.

That was now Howard Hill's job, the roots of which could be found in newspapers across America in the following days.

On August 4, the Associated Press sent out a story that started like this.

A retired Ohio doctor has discovered relics of an ancient civilization whose men were eight or nine feet tall in the Colorado

Desert near the Arizona, Nevada, California line. Several well-preserved mummies were taken yesterday

from caverns in an area roughly 180 miles square, extending through much of southern Nevada

from Death Valley, California, and across the Colorado River into Arizona.

Dr. Russell claimed he had fallen through loose alluvial sands into an underground cavern while he was digging a mine shaft.

He would return in 1946 with an Arizona-born archaeologist named Daniel S. Bovi,

who had worked on cliff-dwelling sites in New Mexico and claimed to be an expert in Native American history.

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