Category: People

Asa Merton Russell “Panamint Russ” (1895–1970) was a California prospector, small-scale miner, desert homesteader, and occasional writer whose four-decade presence in the Butte Valley district of the Panamint Mountains made him one of the last classic solitary operators in Death Valley country. Universally known by his nickname “Panamint Russ,” he built the stone cabin now called the Geologist’s Cabin (or Russell Camp), developed a reliable spring, planted the only locust trees and Concord grapevines for scores of miles around, and doggedly drove a horizontal tunnel into the granite of Manly Peak—all while holding down a day job in Los Angeles until his 1960 retirement. Though his claims yielded little recorded production, Russell’s wry, faith-filled 1955 Desert Magazine article “Life on the Desert” remains one of the most vivid firsthand accounts of mid-20th-century desert mining life.

Early Life and Military Service

Born in 1895, Russell served as a sergeant (SGT) in the U.S. military, though specific details of his enlistment, branch, or conflict are not recorded in surviving sources. By the 1920s he had settled in southern California and found steady employment with the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. He married and had at least one son. His wife occasionally tried to break what she called his “desert habit,” complaining that he stayed too long each year in the remote Panamints.

A 1925 prospecting trip into the Redlands Canyon area of the Panamints reportedly yielded a brief but tantalizing discovery of a rich gold vein that he later “lost”—a story that foreshadowed the persistence and frustration that would define his later career.

Arrival in Butte Valley and the 1930 Strike

Russell’s serious mining career began in 1930. While exploring high on the western slope of 7,200-foot Manly Peak, he located gold-bearing quartz and immediately filed the Lucky Strike Quartz Mining Claim (March 1931) along with several others between 1933 and 1947. The claims sat in the South Park Mining District on the east side of the Panamint Range, in what is today Death Valley National Park.

That same year he began construction of a modest stone cabin at the base of Manly Peak, on the site of the old Ten Spot Mill / Last Chance Claim. The one-room structure—later known as the Geologist’s Cabin or Russell Camp—became his seasonal headquarters. Roughly a quarter-mile south of the historic Mengel/Stella cabin and at an elevation of about 4,500 feet, the camp offered commanding views across Butte Valley.

In 1929–1930 he also improved a nearby spring, creating a gravity-fed water system that supported drinking water, a small orchard, and vines. He planted locust trees (the only ones known within 125 miles) and Concord grapevines, which he proudly tended for decades. By the late 1950s or early 1960s the system included a 500-gallon storage tank.

Mining Operations and Daily Life

Russell’s principal working was a long horizontal tunnel driven into the granite of Manly Peak, reached by a steep, winding burro trail about one mile above camp. For most of the 1930s and 1940s he performed the required annual assessment work during two-week vacations from his Los Angeles job, often laboring entirely alone. Helpers were scarce and unreliable; scorpions, rattlesnakes, cloudbursts, twisters, flat tires, and pack rats nesting in dynamite all conspired against him.

In his April 1955 Desert Magazine article “Life on the Desert,” written at age 60, Russell described these hardships with humor and quiet determination. He recounted a twister that nearly tore the roof off his shack, a cloudburst that stranded him for days, a double hernia suffered while prying boulders, the theft or shooting of his beloved burro “Jubilee,” and the endless search for trustworthy labor. Through it all he returned to the theme of “Good Faith”—the inner resolve required to keep returning to the desert year after year. He closed the piece with an unshakeable optimism:

“But out here, there’s always a blue sky, good pure water filtered by Nature through lime and granite rocks, smogless air, no 50-cent parking lots, fresh sage and pinyon pine… I have Faith, and it will pay off!”

Retirement and Final Years

Russell retired from the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power in May 1960. That fall he moved permanently to Russell Camp, living full-time amid the Panamints. In 1962 he transferred ownership of the nearby Carl Mengel cabin and associated claims to Clinton and Stella Anderson, further establishing himself as a quiet steward of the local mining landscape. He continued sporadic work on the Lucky Strike and other claims into the early 1970s.

Death and Legacy

Asa Merton Russell died in 1970 at age 75. He is buried in a marked grave (Find A Grave Memorial #3748983).

Though his mines produced no major bonanza and left no great fortune, Russell’s legacy is written in stone and living green. The Geologist’s Cabin, the spring-fed water system, the locust trees, and the grapevines he planted still stand as testaments to one man’s determination. His camp remains a landmark for backcountry travelers in Butte Valley within Death Valley National Park. More than half a century after its publication, “Life on the Desert” continues to be read and quoted, offering later generations an intimate portrait of the isolation, frustration, beauty, and quiet faith that defined the final chapter of small-scale Panamint mining.

In the tradition of contemporaries like Pete Aguereberry, Carl Mengel, and Seldom Seen Slim, Panamint Russ proved that a man could build a meaningful life in one of America’s harshest environments—not through spectacular wealth, but through stubborn persistence, self-reliance, and an unshakable belief that the next fifty feet of tunnel might finally pay off.

The concord grapes are doing well, too. Twenty-five years ago coming through Riverside, California, I stopped at a nursery and bought a half dozen bare-root size, wrapped them in a newspaper, laid them on the running board with a wet gunny sack and today they are 20 feet of beauty.

Life on the Desert – by Panamint Russ – Desert Magazine, April, 1955

References

• DigitalDesert.com
• BackcountyExplorers.com