I’ve just gotten back from an awesome trip to Death Valley. I haven’t been there since I was a kid. It is really stunning and anyone who has a chance should go and visit. The winds can get to ridiculous speeds and blew out my tent poles.
In any case, there are at least two things named for the devil there. There’s the Devil’s Golf Course, which is an awesome salt lake bed of treacherous lumps and the Devil’s Cornfield which is drought tolerant bunches of weeds in a sandy plain.
I’ve also been to Devil’s Postpile in Mammoth Lakes, a spectacular formation of basalt columns.
I’ve been to the Devil’s Punchbowl on the Oregon coast. I may or may not have been to the Devil’s Punchbowl north of LA when I was a kid.
I’ve been to Mt. Diablo and the boundary of Diablo Canyon where the nuclear plant is (from Montana de Oro State Park).
So, have you ever been to some place named after the devil?
Spuyten Duyvil - a section of the Bronx, NYC. There is a popular misconception that the name derives from the Dutch meaning “in spite of the devil” but more likely translates as “spinning devil” or “the devil’s whirlpool.”
Devil’s Den - a nature preserve in Connecticut. Random fact: Keith Richards property abuts the preserve and he often takes walls there through his own private gate.
There’s another Devil’s Punch Bowl near Hindhead, Surrey, England. I used to drive through it twice weekly for a couple of years in the 1990s. Hindhead is now bypassed by a tunnel so the A3 doesn’t go through the DPB any more.
A couple of weeks ago I visited “Hellhole Canyon,” a hiking trail that goes up into the mountains near Borrego, California. (There’s a lovely waterfall, about three miles up the trail. Warning, it’s a very rough trail!)
I also like to hike up the Eagle Peak Road, to gaze upon John Dye Falls, which plunges off of “The Devil’s Jump Off.”
Just for equal time, I recently climbed Calavera Hill, in Carlsbad, California (on Easter weekend, no less) and, alas, found it to be a bit of a via dolorosa…
Aut Caesar aut Diaboli, wrote Sir Richard Burton, probably quoting someobody famous, or a famous anonymous quotation. “Either Caesar or the Devil”, meaning that weird geological formations seem to be named for either Caesar or the Devil.
It’;s not really true, because I can give plenty of counterexamples, but the Devil certainly gets his due. I’ve probably seen others, but the Devil’s Slide is the one that stands out in my head. I saw it marked on a road map and drove by it while I was living in Salt Lake City:
In addition to his other holdings in Death Valley, the devil has a Hole which houses a rare pupfish. It’s quite remote and I haven’t been there.
So what do we know about the Devil? He seems to be quite the land baron. He has a golf course, an orchard, a corn field, a garden, several dens, a hole, a playground with a slide, a tower, and a lake. And, he seems inordinately fond of punch bowls. His wedding guests clearly blew off the register, because so far as I know there is not a single Devil’s Blender.
