Bessie Johnson
Photograph
c 1920s

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."

Photographic paper. L 35.1, W 26.8 cm
Death Valley National Park, DEVA 60616