The Harpist of Richmond
“Her interpretations of Bach and Chopin earned her accolades for their emotional depth and technical brilliance.”
Before the desert:
Why the Desert?
Leaving Manhattan Beach behind:
“The answer didn’t come from memory or sentimentality—it came from the earth itself.”
Photo: Los Angeles Times
THE TRUE STORY
The driveway story
Margaret Alberta “Bonnie” McMains Orcutt kept a home on 100 acres east of Newberry, on a dirt driveway that met old Route 66. When survey markers for Interstate 40 crossed that track, she reached for her typewriter.
Did anyone answer? Read the book.
Santa Monica Freeway (Interstate 10) at La Cienega and Venice Boulevards, photographed March 22, 1964, while crews were building the freeway. This is Los Angeles, not the Newberry Springs driveway. Gil Cooper, Los Angeles Times · CC BY 4.0
The interstate years were not only a Mojave story. The photograph above is the Santa Monica Freeway in Los Angeles. Bonnie's letters concern Interstate 40, east of what was then called Newberry. Stay on public roads. Bonnie's house is not a tourist stop.
Sources
Mrs. Orcutt's Driveway
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More desert history from C. V. Wooster: The King of Quacks (Zzyzx) · When the Birds Go Silent (the Mojave War)
Substack
The parchment, postmarks, stamps, gilt corners, and desert sketches come from C. V. Wooster's presentation for the book. Photographs are credited where they appear. The award seals and the signed manual page are from the author's materials.
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The road
Visit & play
Who Bonnie was before the desert
Margaret Alberta “Bonnie” McMains was born on September 7, 1909, in Boone County, Indiana. She grew up in Indianapolis, and in 1927 her family moved to Richmond, Indiana. Her schooling took her to Earlham College, Butler, DePauw and the Arthur Jordan Conservatory of Music. She majored in biochemistry and concentrated on plant biology. She was also a harpist good enough for the concert stage, and she played with orchestras in New York. During the Second World War she taught pistol marksmanship to more than a hundred new police officers.
In 1948 she married Kenneth Forest Orcutt, who worked as a chinchilla broker. Kenneth was killed in a crash. In April 1954 she was hit with a $50,000 lawsuit tied to that crash, and that September someone slashed the cover on her parked car. She left Manhattan Beach behind and settled on 100 acres east of Newberry, in the Mojave, where the clay and sand were right for her model kits. Her first shelter there was an Airstream trailer. Around it she built an adobe house with her own hands, and she grew orchids in the middle of the desert.
The road that came to her
When Bonnie first settled near Newberry, U.S. Route 66 was still the main road across the California desert. The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 changed that. The law set up the money for a national network of limited-access interstate highways. In the Mojave, the new Interstate 40 was planned to replace the old two-lane alignment of Route 66 between Barstow and Needles.
Everything turns on the idea of limited access. On Route 66, a driveway could run right up and meet the highway. On an interstate, it could not. Drivers got on and off only at planned interchanges, and frontage roads went in only where the engineers decided one was needed. For a woman living alone miles from town, those survey markers raised a very practical question. Would there still be a way to drive home?
That question is why she wrote. Her letter of January 13, 1965, to Lady Bird Johnson asked for something modest: “a road on and one off of the present Highway (66).” Lady Bird Johnson was First Lady from 1963 to 1969, and in those years her name was closely tied to the nation's highways. The Highway Beautification Act, a law she championed, was signed on October 22, 1965.
Timeline
- 1909: Margaret Alberta McMains is born on September 7 in Boone County, Indiana.
- 1926: U.S. Route 66 is designated on November 11.
- 1927: Her family moves to Richmond, Indiana.
- 1948: She marries Kenneth Forest Orcutt.
- 1954: In April, a $50,000 lawsuit over the crash that killed Kenneth; in September, her car cover is slashed. She leaves Manhattan Beach for the Mojave.
- 1956: On June 29, the Federal-Aid Highway Act funds the Interstate Highway System.
- 1965: She writes her letter to Lady Bird Johnson, dated January 13.
- 1985: On June 27, Route 66 is removed from the U.S. highway system.
- 1986: Bonnie Orcutt dies.
What this page leaves out
This site stops short of the answer, and it does so on purpose. The letters, and what came after them, are in the book itself. Copies of the letters printed in the book can be found in the reader archive, behind the code printed near the end of the book.