Amargosa Opera House still features entertainment

After 41 seasons, the show still goes on at the Amargosa Opera House in tiny Death Valley Junction, Calif. Multitalented Marta Becket entertains audiences each Saturday evening through May 9. Now an octogenarian with a bad back, the former dancer presents a sit-down performance featuring stories and characters from her creative past. She still gives her audiences their money's worth.

Reserve tickets for the remaining shows this season by calling (760) 852-4441 or online at www.amargosa-opera-house.com. Adults pay $15, while the cost for children aged 5-12 years is $10. Doors to the venerable theater open at 7:15 p.m. with performances starting at 8:15.

The theater, a former recreation hall built in the early 1920s, looks far different today from when Becket first saw it in 1967. While waiting for a tire to be changed during a California road trip, she peered through a hole at the interior with its tattered curtains and decades of dirt and debris. She saw a place where she could perform and create on her own terms, far from the restrictions of the stage career she knew in New York City.

Soon after, she rented the space in the desert outpost and began its resurrection. Situated 90 miles from Las Vegas at the junction of California Highways 127 and 190 and a Death Valley shortcut road from Pahrump, Death Valley Junction rose from the sagebrush as a company town. Pacific Coast Borax Company constructed an adobe complex in the Mexican Colonial style from 1923-26 to house offices, a store, employee dormitory, a 23-room hotel, a dining room and a community hall near the T&T Railroad, short for Tonopah & Tidewater.

The property changed hands over the decades, declining and deteriorating as time passed. When Becket first visited, the little town was owned by Peter Simon, son of pioneer Nevada mining man P.A. "Pop" Simon. Eventually, Simon sold the town to Becket and a nonprofit preservation trust.

Becket's dance and mime performances began on Feb. 10, 1968, running three nights a week, with or without an audience. As word got out about the developing artistic venue in the middle of nowhere, the patrons began to fill the auditorium. At first, they sat upon makeshift benches, later upon donated garden chairs and later still upon proper, padded theater seats from a theater in Boulder City.

Also a talented artist, Becket made sure she always had an audience by painting 16th-century characters upon the walls of the opera house. With the agreement of her landlord, she also decorated walls of the adjacent hotel with her whimsical, fool-the-eye scenes. She painted walls for four years. Then she started a two-year project to transform the ceilings. Soon, visitors came to view the art work as well as the stage performances.

Death Valley Junction acquired an interested following that developed into a group dedicated to salvaging the town. Restoration of the old mining company buildings drew attention. Death Valley Junction was listed in 1981 on the National Register of Historic Places.

Restoration continues with 18 of the original 23 hotel rooms reopened for occupancy. Within the past few weeks, the dining room opened again, appropriately called the T&T Restaurant, serving breakfast and lunch daily and dinner on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays. Death Valley Junction also now boasts an RV park with 60 sites, some with hookups for water and sewer.

Restored to 1920s standards, the rooms strike many as Spartan. They have air conditioning, toilets and showers, clean linens and privacy, but no televisions, Internet or cell phone service. The highly mineralized water the town uses leaves stains. The front desk closes at midnight, reopening at 8 a.m. Prices are moderate, about $68 for a double, $79 for two doubles and $85 for a king bed.

If you need entertainment, read, play games or watch a video in the lobby. Many guests enjoy sitting outside and watching for the wild horses coming for water or witnessing glorious sunsets or waiting for darkness and one of the best starry skies around. If you crave something fancier, stay elsewhere.

Margo Bartlett Pesek's column appears on Sundays.