Page 8 - The Gluckman Occasional Number Eleven

Off the Beaten Path in California

Little-known natural wonders, roadside attractions and lost histories

Cyber Pass A lone laptop computer wired to the pole of an altitude
marker indicates the spot where a busload of software developers en
route to the new offices of Patata LLC in Nevada starved to death
when their luxury vehicle ran off the road and the doors jammed.
Heavy snowfall obscured the location of the crash, miles from any
cellphone tower. Patata quietly paid damages to relatives of the
victims, that expense quickly recouped by replacement of the workers
by artificial intelligence. Rumors of cannibalism among those trapped
for months without sustenance beyond trail mix and energy drinks
were never confirmed. The ad hoc memorial may still be extant, 5.7
miles north of Punkville on the I-93.

Colossal Birthmark 180 miles south of Barstool lie the ruins of a
nameless town that grew up around a stranded medicine show in the
late nineteenth century. Soon after the mountebanks’ wagons broke
down at the crossroads of now-State Highway CA-282 and Horned
Toad Road, the area was filled with would-be miners attracted by the
discovery of a few gold nuggets in nearby Bendinda River. The first
of the businesses and services springing up like weeds to serve this
fevered clientele was Doc Dickory’s Medicine Show and Museum of
Marvels. The boom town’s success came to an abrupt halt in 1897,
when an investigation revealed that the river had been salted by Doc
Dickory. All that endures of this once-bustling settlement is a
ramshackle saloon, on one side of which is painted an advertisement
for the side show framing a faded image of its main attraction.
Whether the unfortunate individual afflicted with a nevus covering
most of their epidermis was male or female is unclear.

Fort Roque Take the first dirt road north of Boone Dock off the
Ghost Highway (four-wheel vehicles recommended). It ends at a
promontory overlooking the ocean. In the early seventeenth century
a little-known maritime explorer, Jacquard du Vay, reached the
Central California coast. There his crew built a rough stone fort in
anticipation of later colonial conquest. The site, however, was sacred
to an otherwise peaceful society of natives. The Europeans, believing
they had claimed the land for their king and country, attempted to