Samuelson's Rock
Samuelson's Rock
John Samuelson, a Swedish citizen, spent his early life at sea. In 1926, he appeared at pioneer Bill Keys’ ranch looking for work. Keys hired him to help with his Hidden Gold Mine, located below the overlook at Keys View (within the current bounds of Joshua Tree National Park). By 1927, Samuelson had decided to homestead and located a piece of property in the middle of the Lost Horse Valley to the south of Quail Springs. On top of a small hill he called The Rock of Truth, he built a wood and canvas shack where he lived with his wife Margaret. When not working the Hidden Gold Mine, he carved defiant, topical, impassioned, sometimes puzzling and often witty political statements on the rocks surrounding his house. When Samuelson attempted to file on his homestead in 1928, the land office discovered that he was not a U.S. citizen and ruled that he could not legally hold title to the land. He sold the land to the Headington family and moved to Los Angeles. The following year, while at a dance in Compton, he got into an altercation with two men and killed them.
Erle Stanley Gardner, who first met Samuelson in February of 1928, discovered that, although arrested for the murders, Samuelson was never tried. Instead he was judged insane and sent to California’s State Hospital at Mendocino. He made his escape in1930. He evaded the authorities and made his way north to a lumber camp in Washington. In 1954, Samuelson wrote to Bill Keys that he would like to return to the desert but was afraid the authorities would catch him. Keys later received a letter from the lumber camp where he was working reporting that he had suffered a serious logging accident. Soon after, another letter came informing Keys of his old friend’s death.