The DE Focus on our leaders for upcoming trips started off featuring Ted Kalil. Now I’d like to put the spotlight on Bill Gossett even though he isn’t currently scheduled for any future trips. However, he did lead a trip back in June, and although Neal and I weren’t able to go, I have heard nothing but positive comments. Bill is noted for his personal stories and knowledge of the California/Nevada desert. We even found his signature in an old cabin log book near Quartzite, Arizona a few years ago. That guy gets around! I don’t remember how we stumbled on Bill or vice versa, but that was a lucky day for the DE.

So enough kudos. Wife, Barbara, who is an active half of this "desert team", says Bill is actually a very private person, so you need to go on one of his trips to get to know him. But I can tell you he is a first –rate history buff, and is especially interested in mining history. Bill is a board member of the Searles Valley Historical Society and is also involved with the Searles Valley Gem and Mineral Society. He enjoys archaeology, rock hounding, and exploring the backcountry.

Bill and Barbara are both originally from Trona. They have three adult children and three grandchildren.

Bill and Barbara own some property at Onyx Springs on the east side of the Argus Range north of Trona. Some of us have been lucky enough to visit their place there and have heard parts of the story involving their struggle to keep their property and its access road out of Wilderness. Here is a very condensed summary of their BATTLE FOR ONYX SPRINGS…………………

Ours was a battle to have our private property and our access road removed from the Argus Range Wilderness. When the Argus Range Wilderness in the Panamint Valley, Inyo County, California was established, our deeded, private land was locked inside. In 1996, the access road to our deeded, private land was posted with a "no vehicles beyond this point" sign. We went to the BLM and met with Lee Delaney the Ridgecrest Resource Area Manager and Katie Wash the Wilderness Specialist. They tried to tell us that it was a done deal and that it would be best for us to sign an access agreement in order to use our road. We refused, stating that we already had the right to use the road. Lee let it slip that we might have an RS2477 right of way but at the time it did not register. We had several meetings over the next couple of years regarding the access road with no real results.

When Lee left for a job in Washington, D.C., Hector Villalobos was hired as the new manager. He had a hard-nosed approach to land issues and after a failed attempt to get us to sign a permit, slapped us with a Notice of Decision. You see, the BLM's main objective was to make us willing sellers at a price set by them. They wanted our land because of the 5 springs located on it but we own the mineral rights and they wouldn't pay for the minerals. We immediately filed an appeal based on the RS2477 even though the appeal instructions that they sent us were outdated and would have caused us to fail in our attempt to appeal. We have never received a decision on the appeal.

In the meantime, we wrote several of our congressmen and senators regarding our problem and asking for help. We got the ear of Congressman Jerry Lewis R-California who along with his aides Janet Scott and Spencer Freebairn took our cause to Congress. We had documented our case so well that there was no denying that we were being railroaded. We had tape recordings from meetings with BLM management, we had letters from BLM to congressmen and senators that were contradictory and could be proven wrong and we had proof that my husband Bill had been the final speaker at the congressional hearing in Barstow, California during the wilderness hearings at which time he requested that our property be excluded from the wilderness. We were also advised by a person privy to the information that a wilderness study had never been done on the Argus Range. At one point we sent a video tape showing parts of the original road onto the property from the late 1800's and showed the remains of an old miner's cabin on the 40 acres. When the dust settled, it was clear that we had won. Congress had passed and the President had signed the 2001 Dept. of the Interior appropriations bill which included a section removing our property and its access road