Imlay, Nevada is a special place not much to it off interstate 80 but this fortress. You can't help but stare. We had to stop. Road paved up until a certain point, then gravel. It was very early and still a mega chill in the air. It was Saturday I think, we had pulled over and slept in what Shannon explained was dubbed the "armpit of America", "something-Mountain"-Nevada. Filled with late night child gangs, dreaming young adults, and a few motels. Like the "Owl Motel and Casino" Nothing under 40 dollars a night. So my last night with them, cold in car. We hit the road at 6:30 am and stopped again in "Gongalog" I think was the place so Al and John could get bread. The clerk was a middle aged man with a sunburned red face and an untrusting confused mug at us. Thought maybe he was to blame for the missing old guy on the billboard on our way into town.
Up the gravel road you are greeted by worn statues of Indians. A Devilish one. Paint chipping. There's a fence with "No Tresspassing" signs. But one entryway open. Looks like there's already a family inside walking around. There's a "visitor center" under a little porch like set up. Encased letters of welcome with sun faded computer printed photographs. A guest book with a rock on it to hold it shut. Walls are all around built of glass bottles and cement. Cement everywhere you look at the structures. Old rusty car frames and machinery. The mastermind is a guy, I think his real name was Frank, but he was known as "Rolling Thunder". This place is called "Thunder Mountain". It was built between 1967 and 1975. Over 8 years that Thunder spent with his family constructing this monument that they lived in and called a home. Built from "White Mans Trash", it is a monument to the hardships of the American Indian. It is covered with over 250 somewhat 3 dimensional murals illustrating moments in history. Dozens of statues that I could see. Al repeats "This is so legit". We're all off on our own missions of discovery and exploration taking pictures, touching the ruins. There is a traveling camper set up and a couple of cars on the property I wonder about. I sit on this single wooden swing for a moment. I start rewinding and reloading a roll of film to the side and I'm approached by a man with a little dog. He asks if my friends and I would like to see inside the other fence around the main monument and take pictures. He leads us around, unlocks the fence. He asks that we lock it again if we leave before he comes back and when the other families leave. The Sun's finding a higher point in the sky.
He asks us if we've heard of the tale of "Ichee" or "Icky" the indian. An indian man whose camp was ambushed by white settlers who killed everyone but him his wife and children who escaped, however he never saw or heard what became of them again. He surfaced in some town of Northern California not speaking any English. The townspeople put him in overnight jail not knowing what else to do. People from a nerby university came to speak with him knowing his and other indian languages. They listened to his story, and moved him to the university town. He lived there for the rest of his life. This gentleman with dog shows us this main mural illustrating the plite of Ickys people. Only one of many. Thunder likened the phasing out of the American indian to that of the Jewish holocaust. Hist statistics would agree I'd say. I asked the gentleman's name. He said it was "Fred" and an exchange named me "Kaley". It happens all of the time, not worth correcting. Fred is an old friend of Dan Van Zant, son and successor/inheritor of Thunder and this property. Going back to their high school days in Northern California. The family Thunder had before this Nevada home. Fred was a fountain of stories. After high School him and Dan went separate ways enlisting in the service, but crossed paths again in some California town. Over the years the recession took a toll on Fred's business, so he got out of it while he still had something made of it. he got on social security and took Dan up on an offer to come out and be a live on site care taker of Thunder Mountain. With a wife I'm guessing and his dog Oscar in that camper. he says back in the day Thunder, Dan's Dad, used to scare him and that he finds it fascinating that people unrelated to him could stick around so long and help build. In the years between '67 and '75 there were visits from many walks of people, mostly traveling hippies. They would often stay on at a hostel Thunder built on the grounds, beautiful back then, and get meals in return for labor spent building. Rules were no drugs or alcohol on the property and no "open love or sex". Not exactly so unlike WWOOFing. Some folks ended up staying as long as 5 or 6 years. A few of them even decided to buy property and settle in the hills near by. Too bad that pretty hostel in the pictures burnt down for the most part in 1983. Left are ruins of the foundation, fountains, swingset.
Thunder was a WW2 veteran and was a minister in training for some time before he decided he did not agree with many of those practices, etc and decided to turn a new leaf. He was a very mystical and spiritual man still. Obviously. He drove east to try and get far from California in 1967 and his car broke down near Imlay. In fact, Fred says that his car is still somewhere up in the hills. Fascinating! He brought his new family out and they lived in some kind of camper for a while building the beginnings of this estate. Walls built on top of one and other of giant rock, cement, Sheriffs windshields, broken glass, anything and everything imaginable that might have been abandoned or cast aside as garbage. It found a new home and a purpose here. Statues everywhere as guardians, naked indians, men, little ones with spears, and one in particular, a stout man with clay colored skin and dark hair we learned was one of Thunder's sons, Sid. Sid was killed in an accident on the grounds while building. Tragic. Sid was very loved and missed by his father who created this statue. A Dark Tribute. One of if not the youngest daughter was named "Obsidian", like many of the rocks in the cement. When she was just 13 year family gave her a rifle and her dog, and sent her to live up in the hills wilderness for a winter. It was her "Walkabout" so to speak, and she took pride in it. In interviews with her she says she never cried so hard as the day she came home to her family and they kissed and hugged her welcoming her back as if nothing had changed. The nearest school board caught wind of this and nabbed her, stuck in her in a public high school. Bullied and outcast pretty hard, one day she sought retaliation. She caught a snake back at Thunder Mountain, stuck it in her backpack, and at a lunch period planted it in this major bully's locker. Some say no louder scream had ever been heard in that school before. And Obsidian was rarely bothered or picked on again. Funny. What a neat girl she seemed, though never having been around girls her own age, I certainly would have found an interest in her.
Rolling Thunder was in his late 50s when he went out in 1967. Crazy! To have so much drive, energy and ambition still. one could only hope to maintain. In the later years Thunder grew into a sort of sense of Dementia. That it could be seen in some of his writings on the monument, be immersed in one idea that would change completely with no notice. He died in 1989. Leaving the place we noticed, Al and I this little alter with the Virgin Mary. Looked like it was maybe Thunder's grave. Right by the statue of Sid. Writing done in wet cement. So now it's Dan Van Zant's Treasure taken care of by Fred here and Oscar. Dan did his best to see his half siblings it sounds like. He had a firend in Reno with a plane. He would buy 30 lbs of candy and fly over Thunder Mountain making it rain candy for the little kids. Little kids who had not much to play with but each other and toys found in the garbage with building materials. Thunder might even have let his family go hungry some nights just to afford more cement. That's about the only building material he paid for. Built without prior building expertise. One day in the 80s Thunder called up Dan telling him the next time he heard from him he might be needing to get bailed out of jail. Some people from a company IMB were flying helicopters over Thunder's 180 acres of land and were scaring wild horses on over to their own land so they could capture and sell them for who knows what. Thunder said he was going to shoot his rifle at them next time. Dan talked him out of it. Fred said Thunder was a guy people loved or hated. A nearby town thought for ages, even after his death that he cursed them with one of his indian statues holding a spear pointed at them. Eventually Dan convinced some people it was really just a symbol of protection actually. A misunderstood man.
Some of the children, all grown up, sometimes return to visit. 2 did last summer, sisters. One of the youngest sons is estranged from the family sounds like. Sad, but with 11 kids I guess it's bound to happen. I wonder how they all feel about their upbringing. Very different I'd imagine. It's hard to know what people are thinking, especially when they do things like he did. He made a statement for sure. Something that would outlive him and won't impose on somebody, hurt somebody, some work worth preserving some people want to know about. I only hope to leave behind something like that. That's a memory in somebody's life. Mine, Al, John, Shannons, Moms, Dads, their children who my friends judge so pretentiously. All cultures are different and determine experiences, interpret life in different ways. One 13 year old girl's winter in the wilderness is another 14 year old girl's trip to the burning man festival I guess. Sure funny and not the same but who are any of us to say they are wrong? Fred says they are looking to repaint a lot of the indian statues, that perhaps if any of us return things may look a bit different. We leave as Fred and Oscar burn leaves. I'll always remember that place. I take with me some chunk of opaque purple glass and imagine the place as it may have looked at it's best and most lived in, hostel, fountains, swimming pond, flowers, green trees, water coming down out of the mountains. In the middle of the desert, this man carved out a special, one of a kind world for his family.
