Yucca Fountain: How It All Began
This desert saga began like all the others: years ago and in the search for cold refreshment…
We first learned of Yucca Fountain when we were lured off course by a soft serve ice cream sign. We stopped at a dusty desert crossroads to gas up and get a cone. Outside was an old hand-embellished trailer where you could buy local desert honey, pistachios and “Really Good!” beef jerky. Inside the non-descript, low, stucco building was a common mix of wares for the road – a smattering of camping supplies, snacks, cold drinks and tchotchkes. The proprietors had amassed a collection of Route 66 and desert kitsch and it was all on display. Amidst the Rat Fink graphics, the blinking LEDs and the wacko rhinestones was a stand-out, hand painted number on a rusty piece of tin: Visit Yucca Fountain! Cold Drinks! Air Conditioned!
We struck up a conversation with the gentleman behind the counter who told us how he came by the sign. A local by the name of Bert Tuttle had loaned him the sign to, in Bert’s words, “elevate this other crap on display.” Bert, it seems, was a complicated man. We discovered that like us, he was a collector. He was an amateur historian who knew all the local characters and area myths. He was an atomic enthusiast who had shared stories of watching the Nevada a-bomb tests “at a safe distance” as if it was an event like any other. He could come off as a little “thorny” but had a heart of gold. He lived off the grid in the middle of the middle of nowhere. He had conspiracy theories and a singular obsession: Yucca Fountain. If we wanted to know more about the sign and that storied place, we’d have to talk to Bert.
Intrigued, we got directions to Bert’s property and the owner of the little oasis assured us that we’d be welcome. But Bert’s place wasn’t in the direction we were headed… we had other sights to see and places to visit. We filed the slip of paper into our travel journal and kept driving.
Last year, on another desolate desert spirit quest through Nevada, we were finally in the neighborhood and decided to call on Bert. With memories of Bert and the mystery of Yucca Fountain swirling in our imagination, we followed the directions out into the desert passing over cattle guards and through the gates of fences that ran from one horizon to the other. When we arrived at Bert’s homestead, we found that we were too late. Bert had passed away the year prior. His property had been recently purchased by a couple who were in search of solitude and natural beauty. Emphasis on the solitude.
We explained why we had come and they told us that we were welcome to look through the out-buildings – it seems that Bert had left quite a bit behind that they were eager to get rid of. In one dilapidated building we found the original Yucca Fountain neon sign as well as several badly-damaged bar stools and a piece of what must have been the Fountain’s counter. In another shack, we found the Fountain’s menu board, the neon SODA sign and other diner odds and ends including what we imagine was the original soda fountain fixture.
Bolstered by our enthusiasm and delight at finding these rusty treasures, the new property owners encouraged us to look inside “Bert’s research trailer.” This is where we found the gold!
Back in the 1950s, the dusty desert badlands of Nevada were not as barren as the government’s nuclear scientists would have liked you to believe. At the edge of the Yucca Valley atomic blast zone was a thriving soda fountain frequented by cowboys, Native Americans, conspiracy theorists, alien abductees, desert weirdos and the residents of Survival Town. Yucca Fountain was the watering hole and gathering spot – a fixture of the Yucca Valley community for over 100 years. In its early days, Yucca Fountain was a place to get news of the outside world. In later years it became a must-visit way point between the biggest little city in the world (Reno) and the bright lights and excitement of Las Vegas. In the heyday of the atomic age, it was a place to get a malt and watch the mushroom plumes form, expand, tilt and shift through the stratosphere. Geiger counters beeped in time with the be-pop music playing from the juke box. A blast of light, a blast of heat, a shaking in the ground and a sip of a sweet, sweet chocolate milkshake…
Bert had a theory: Yucca Fountain hadn’t perished in fire as was reported; that was just a cover story. His favorite haunt had been destroyed by a grave miscalculation – it was just a little too close to one of the hundreds of atomic blasts that lit up the desert. The scientists who deemed when conditions were “right,” when it was “safe,” had got this one wrong. Think Bert was nuts? It had happened before! One of the most notable testing missteps sent an a-bomb’s plume right over St. George, Utah raining radioactive ash and debris down on the population of this unsuspecting town.
As we combed through the documents in Bert’s trailer we became more and more excited. What a story! What a place! The new property owners, in a gesture of extreme generosity and eager to retrieve their long sought-after solitude, told us we could take whatever we wanted for a very modest fee. We packed up the Fountain ephemera into Bert’s trailer and hit the road.
Our restoration of Yucca Fountain, based on eye-witness descriptions, scant photographic evidence and months of painstaking research, pays homage to Bert, the zenith of ice cream culture and the atomic sublime.