After coming to California he first went to work on the Los Angeles Examiner, quitting that job to become a publisher and his little magazine, _The Bystander_ gained nationwide circulation. While editing this magazine he became editor of Los Angeles' first theatrical magazine, _The Rounder_, which was a "must" on the list of early movie stars and soon discovered that the most lucrative field for a journalist was in ghost writing. As a "ghost" he addressed big political conventions, assemblies of governors and mayors and in one instance, a jury as the prosecutor. One eastern industrialist paid him a fabulous fee when the address Caruthers wrote for him brought a great ovation.
Finally his physician warned him to slow down. It was then--in 1926--that he came to the desert, and, during the intervening 25 years, has spent much of his time in the Death Valley region. He has witnessed the transition of Death Valley from a prospector's hunting ground to a mecca for winter tourists. This is a book of the old days in Death Valley.
--Retained publication information from the printed edition: this eBook is public-domain in the country of publication.
--Added page numbers to plates (in roman numerals).
--Included a transcription of the text within some images.
--In the text versions only, text in italics is delimited by _underscores_.
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Loafing Along Death Valley Trails, by William Caruthers