STL DPB On The Road: Amargosa Opera House At Death Valley Junction

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Death Valley Junction lies just outside the national park. There was a hamlet to care for the needs of the borax workers in the area, who extracted and shipped the area's main mineral product. Like so many of the settlements around here, it withered with changing times.

In 1967, a New York dancer named Marta Becket and her husband drove through on their way to Los Angeles. Their car broke down. Becket fell in love with the remote, wildly beautiful ghost town. There was a small theater. Becket spent six years painting its walls and cieling as you see here, founding the Amargosa Opera House. She created her own show which she famously performed even if there was no one in the audience. I saw her perform in her late 70s. Her pure art and dedication was unmatched. Now 85, she stopped dancing at the Opera House when she could no longer pirouette. A younger dancer, Sandy Scheller, has taken up Becket's cause, performing a show inspired by the murals called If These Walls Could Talk. We saw it Saturday night, in the very middle of nowhere. People who attend these performances never forget them.