Mural at Amargosa Opera House, a remarkable image from what is largely a ghost town: Death Valley Junction, just outside Death Valley National Park in Inyo County, California

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The community, once a dusty mining, railroad, and mill town, was known as Amargosa, after the desert valley that surrounds it. A recreation hall at the northeast end of the complex eventually become the "Amargosa Opera House," decorated with elaborate wall illustrations such as this one. In July of 1968, Marta Becket, an acclaimed New York dancer, mime, actress, and an accomplished painter took charge of what she called the Opera House. She performed there regularly through early 2012 after painstakingly painting images of an entire audience on the walls, including characters who might have attended an opera the 16th century, from royalty to bullfighters, monks and nuns, and ordinary observers.

Credit line: The Jon B. Lovelace Collection of California Photographs in Carol M. Highsmith's America Project, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

Gift; The Capital Group Companies Charitable Foundation in memory of Jon B. Lovelace; 2012; (DLC/PP-2012:063).

Forms part of: Jon B. Lovelace Collection of California Photographs in Carol M. Highsmith's America Project in the Carol M. Highsmith Archive.

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