Ghost Mountain: Marshal South House Ruins

Marshal South House (#41) -- by Joe Reifer

For 17 years, from 1930 to 1947, poet, artist, and author Marshal South and his family lived on Ghost Mountain - a remote, waterless mountaintop that is today within California’s Anza-Borrego Desert State Park. Over a period of nine of those years, South chronicled his family’s controversial primitive lifestyle through popular monthly articles written for Desert Magazine.

- From the article Finding the Real Marshal South, by Diana Lindsay

Lindsay's fascinating book Marshal South And The Ghost Mountain Chronicles: An Experiment In Primitive Living includes all of South's articles for Desert Magazine, and an introduction by his son Rider. Diana Lindsay is also the co-author of the excellent guidebook, Anza-Borrego Desert Region: A Guide to State Park & Adjacent Areas of the Western Colorado Desert. I also highly recommend Robin Halford's book Hiking in Anza-Borrego Desert: Over 100 Half-Day Hikes.