The story
Skidoo was a rarity: an orderly, water-supplied Death Valley gold camp, its name taken from the slang '23 skidoo' after the 23-mile pipeline that brought snowmelt from Telescope Peak. About 700 people lived here around 1907, and its mill ran profitably on gravity and that improbable water.
The town is remembered for the 1908 affair in which saloonkeeper Joe 'Hootch' Simpson murdered banker Jim Arnold and was lynched by the townsmen — then, legend insists, strung up a second time when the press arrived wanting a photograph. The gold thinned by 1917 and Skidoo simply dispersed; the desert took nearly everything but the mill.
What remains today
The multi-level Skidoo stamp mill (stabilized by the Park Service) and scattered debris fields; the townsite itself is bare ground with interpretive signs.
From the archives
Skidoo turns up on 7,354 digitized newspaper pages from California — read them free in the Library of Congress's Chronicling America collection.
Source: Library of Congress digital collections.
Questions from the field
- What does 'Skidoo' mean?
- It's from '23 skidoo,' 1900s slang for clearing out — pinned to the camp for its 23-mile water pipeline from Telescope Peak.
From the field
The most valuable part of this record is the part only visitors can write.
Stamp your passport
Check in at Skidoo — GPS-verified visits earn an inked stamp.
File a field report
Road conditions, what's still standing, what's gone — your report joins the record.
Add photographs
Credited, dated, and preserved as part of Skidoo's permanent record.
No field reports yet — sign in to file the first.
Primary sources for this record
- — USGS GNIS feature 1656631
- — Death Valley National Park — Skidoo Historic District
- — Inyo Register accounts, 1908