ADAM WALKS AROUND Ep. 49 "Mystery Road" (Palmdale-Barstow Road, Mojave Desert, CA, USA) 

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I have some answers for you Adam, regarding Houze Place. Norman Houze was a county coroner for Bakersfield from the 1930s to the early 1950s. Houze Place sits on the border of San Bernardino, Kern and Los Angeles counties. Houze Place is also southeast of Muroc dry lake bed (now Rogers dry lake) at Edwards AFB which was very active during WWII as a bombing range. Many mentions of Norman Houze can be found in the Bakersfield Californian and San Bernardino Sentinel from the 1930s and 1940s. Houze even registered for the draft but he never served. The subdivision you mention in your video was a military training site and the buildings were relocated to San Bernardino and Riverside. This was also mentioned in a newspaper but I can't recall which one. My sources were archived newspapers, property records, post office and census records. Thanks for the video - you sent me down a rabbit hole that I'm still exploring.

This video was relaxing, informing and intriguing. Thank you for taking us along on this epic peak into this yester-mistery of the desert.

I left in 1984 at 12 years old. you can still google where my house was at 40834 mednickvale drive (house seems to be gone, or google earth just cannot zoom in that much). It intersects barstow rd, had a house to the left and the right and that was it for miles. I am deep diving the area for nostalgic reasons. excited to watch the video. Its the closest i have come to it without going back IRL.. Also fun fact, our mailboxes were all the way out on avenue "O" lol

I live about 8 miles East of Willow Springs. Been here 30 years, never knew about this road. Might need to load up the Jeep some weekend... 🙂

Lived in Barstow and in Lancaster, never knew of this road ??

Hi Adam, loved it! So many mysteries, keep at it!

I’d like to add Theory 3.5, which you’ll see as an amendment of your military road theory. During my extensive travels down the Ewasko rabbithole, I trawled through the various Joshua Tree USGS topo maps, and the USGS website helpfully has maps from every era. Anyways, I quickly came to the conclusion that maps prior to (ahem) 1942 were at best “approximate”. So further investigations led to a paper stating that there was a huge USGS push in 1942-43 to diligently map the western seaboard of the US just in case the military needed them for defensive action against a Japanese invasion. Must have been effing scary times. The USGS were properly resourced, and rapidly painted those topo maps with proper detail. With remote terrain, the USGS had a habit of creating so-called “jeep trails” as capturing the topography understandably required numerous trips into the back of beyond. (Yep, those same jeep trails as likely led poor Bill off trail). Anyways, I do wonder if that road is an USGS jeep trail.

Nice video! Thanks!!

Epic vid, bro!

excellent, thanks.

Another great job by a great investigator of sparse clues. Good to see you're still in touch with Tom Mahood. Did you get to discuss the Ewasko news with him? His adventures have provided me some adventures also, though we've never met. I just found out some news regarding a mystery I've been interested in for a long time, not involving Tom. A poker friend of mine for the last 15 years had previously been a spammer's assistant prior to my meeting him. His mentor was already on the run from the law by then, mostly for evading prosecution on spamming charges, and partly due to neo-Nazi activity. Turns out, he was living under an alias in Canada as a scroungy rock climber, when he was shot in an SUV which was then set on fire, in 2017. It wasn't until late 2020 that the body was identified via DNA. The long, hazy story involves burying and retrieving gold bars, and many other things. I may take some wild guesses and see if I can get closer to any remaining gold than the couple of furlongs I missed finding Ewasko by. Or more realistically, just fill in a blank or two about a twist or turn his path of evading capture must have taken. You can Google spammer Hawke for some interesting stories about the dead mentor of my friend. How the two took different paths after caught, reminds me of the judge in Caddy Shack telling caddy Danny that he can choose to be good or bad in the future, and that he's had to send people choosing bad, to the electric chair. Enjoy Asia again, and return safely someday. Hopefully your mission over there involves music.

Nicely presented.

Nice video nice area to ride dirt bikes

Awesome video 👍

Good video 👍

Some interesting hypothesis. I live out here in the desert and have done a lot of cycling and driving so can tell you that there are tons of dirt roads out here and some have been around since the 1940's and earlier. Lots of mining activity account for some roads and there were also several military air fields in the area that have completely disappeared. I've driving most of the roads you covered in the video and I have a couple of places I need to explore that cross your "mystery road" on the east side of Hi Vista, fairly soon. I've found your video to be interesting and it will get me out there to check out some of these places. BTW - You mentioned returning to S.E. Asia, do you live there? In the Army (1960's), I lived/served in Thailand, Vietnam, Japan, and Taiwan so have interest in those areas.

Adam. Very interesting and well done. I'm a Route 66 buff and love the desert around Barstow. Also a fan of your Beach Boys work.

Besides Club Ed, another movie set made a cameo in this video! The church at 11:05 is the one from Kill Bill.

L A river bed was built so the military can get to the Ocean they avoid the traffic on the local streets maybe the road is a short cut for the military I just guessing

Gotta be WWII related. I just don't get Houze Place and the "subdivision".

STOP THE KAP