Flooding causes extended closure of Death Valley attraction — PHOTOS

DEATH VALLEY NATIONAL PARK, Calif. — Scotty's Castle, a palatial ranch named for a con man that's become one of the most popular tourist attractions here, could remain closed until spring 2016 or later after its grounds sustained extensive damage from flash floods over the weekend.

Much of the national park was bustling with visitors and seemed back to normal Thursday, four days after the storm. But blocked roads, spongy ground and dried mud — along with water still flowing across a road just east of the park — offered evidence of Sunday's fury.

Crews were working to fix the road to Scotty's Castle enough that employees will be able to get there Friday to start assessing damage and planning repairs.

But it will be much longer until the site is reopened to the public — perhaps six months or more, park spokeswoman Abby Wines said.

"The castle itself is fine, so we could take people in there," Wines said. "It's just that everything around it is in such bad shape."

The former garage and longshed that's now the visitor center was filled with mud to a depth of about two feet, and the storm pelted the exterior with mud, rocks and other debris. Mud also seeped into other buildings.

More importantly, perhaps, the water treatment system was heavily damaged. Wines said that means no bathrooms, no air-conditioning and no fire suppression systems, making it unsafe to open the remote site to visitors.

"This was clearly at least a hundred-year flood event," said Wines, whose own office at Scotty's Castle was inundated with mud and water.

But an hour south at the park's Furnace Creek Visitor Center, there was only a tenth of an inch of rain Sunday, Wines said — compared to at least 2.7 inches at Scotty's Castle.

And elsewhere in Death Valley, the damage paled in comparison to that from a 2004 storm that killed two people and closed the entire park for 10 days.

Scotty's Castle, which is in the northern end of the park, was built in the 1920s as a vacation home by wealthy Chicagoan Albert Johnson. As National Park Service literature explains, he'd been convinced to invest in a purported gold mine nearby by a con man named Walter Scott, the "Scotty" for whom the home is named. The two men became unlikely friends.

On Thursday, the road leading to Scotty's Castle was blocked with concrete barriers, orange cones and a sturdy chain. Many other side roads in the park were closed, too, including the one to Badwater Basin, the park's lowest point.

Bas Lucas, a Dutch tourist, had been planning to visit Badwater on Thursday. He visited Death Valley with his family 10 years ago and came back with his girlfriend, Marleen Velden.

When his family got to Badwater in 2005, he recalled, "Me and my sister wouldn't get out of the car because it was too hot." Only their dad braved the heat.

Sunday's storm left about 20 tourists stranded in the park. They spent the night along with three park rangers, and all made it out safely Monday. People who got out of the park but couldn't get home stayed just over the Nevada border in Beatty.

"They were fine: Everybody had a room; everybody hung out, partied, played the slots," said Linda Shirley, who works at the Beatty Chamber of Commerce.

Pat Champine and Joan Spurgeon, Californians who were disappointed they couldn't visit Scotty's Castle, said the power of the storm was apparent in the aftermath they saw when they arrived Monday: the tan-colored water roaring through roadside pipes, a toppled utility pole that had to be righted by helicopter, the power that didn't come back on in their RV park until Wednesday.

Scary as the storm must have been, Wines said those who rode it out should consider themselves lucky to have experienced the power of nature firsthand.

After all, as she put it, wind and water "are what shape this valley, literally."

Contact Eric Hartley at ehartley@reviewjournal.com or 702-550-9229. Find him on Twitter: @ethartley