In the Middle of Nowhere

March 20/2015 Weather Sunny high of 85 in Death Valley Junction, California.

in a dusty old mining town, this entertainment venue is still open

There are some strange and unusual places which you could say are in the middle of nowhere???? Riding through Death Valley Junction (population is 6) we spotted this aging white adobe hotel and opera house.  Intrigued by how this came to be we stopped today on our motorcycle.  The motel has 20 rooms still in operation (each room has hand painted murals) and the opera house was having a show tonight. 

inside the opera house

Marta Becket’s life story is well known to lovers of dance and desert lore. Born in 1924, as a girl growing up in New York City she studied dance and theater and enjoyed substantial success.

Marta Becket's Autobiography

But it was a fortuitous flat tire in 1967 in Death Valley Junction that changed her artistic and personal life forever.  Marta and her husband were camping in Death Valley when the situation occurred with the tire; she noticed a rundown community hall that once had been used as a theater by the Pacific Coast Borax Company in the care-worn mining town.
In a moment her vision was clear: She would reinvent the hall as the Amargosa Opera House, listed now in Roadside America.com.  In the early years of the theater there were few visitors sometimes none at all so she began to paint an audience on the wall.  Characters from the past including kings and queens, Native Americans, bullfighters, gypsies, and more took shape.  After four years of painstaking work, she then began painting the ceiling with cherubs, billowing clouds and ladies playing antique musical instruments..
It was a theater company of one; that played to an equally creative mural of dignitaries of her own creation and often to capacity crowds of tourists and desert rats.

Motel in the background, Plaque dedicated to Marta's life at her 90th birthday

Marta's ballet costumes are on display in the Motel lobby

National magazines and newspaper feature writers made their way to her door. In 2000, filmmaker Todd Robinson’s “Amargosa” about her remarkable life was nominated for an Academy Award for best documentary.  This place has also been featured on the Travel Channel - Ghost Stories.   This remote historic place is still having performances today; however Marta gave her last performance in 2012.  She celebrated her 90th birthday August 2014.

Mural painted by Marta - in the Motel lobby