Calendar of Events

Friday, November 2, 2018

1:00 P.M. Museum Meeting Room

Jeff Lapides

PASSAGE TO ELDORADO

THE MOJAVE ROAD IN 1863: FROM LOS ANGELES TO FORT MOJAVE AND THE MINES OF ELDORADO CAÑON

GOLD! SILVER! And those seeking their fortunes against the backdrop of the American Civil War, relations between white settlers, Hispanics, and Native Americans, military exploits, salacious news accounts, greed—and one naturalized German with a camera.

Rudolph d’Heureuse—surveyor, cartographer, civil engineer, mining engineer, oenologist, inventor—who on one momentous journey photographed the Mojave Road in the Desert West from the shores of the Pacific Ocean to the banks of the Colorado River and the mines of Eldorado Canyon in today’s Nevada. His subjects included San Bernardino, Cajon Pass, and Los Angeles’s seaport, New San Pedro (Wilmington). He did it in 1863, many years before anyone else took another photo of this desert and its travelers, crossroads, forts, soldiers, and watering holes.

Jeff Lapides is a Southern California photographer and book designer residing in Sierra Madre, a village at the foot of the San Gabriel Mountains.