Bessie Johnson

Born into an upper class family, Bessie Johnson experienced many things for the first time in Death Valley. She wrote, "The night at Granite Ridge was the first night I had ever slept out-of-doors in the Desert. I was a sure-enough tenderfoot and little did I sleep; although Al made me a fine bed and dug hip and shoulder holes, for me, in the sand. But O! How lonely and desolate it all seemed."