THE LAY OF THE LAND
The Center for Land Use Interpretation Newsletter

WENDOVER UPDATE

Exhibit by Richard Menzies
on Display in CLUI’s Utah Exhibit Hall

Richard Menzies exhibit at the CLUI Wendover, Utah complex. Richard Menzies photo

Passing Through, a new exhibit by Wendover artist-in-residence and Salt Lake City resident Richard Menzies, is now on display in the CLUI Wendover Exhibit Hall. The exhibit features photographs and text describing some of the most interesting people that have settled in or passed through the Wendover region over the years. Subjects include Rolling Mountain Thunder, who built an elaborate sculpture park and several buildings by hand near Lovelock, Nevada; Melvin Dummar, famous for allegedly picking up an injured Howard Hughes in the desert, and becoming a contested heir to his fortune; and Robert Golka, who built an elaborate high-voltage laboratory in the Enola Gay hangar in Wendover using Air Force money, and who was later evicted by the City in the early 1980’s (but not before a film was made about his research there by Robert Frank and Gary Hill, a film featuring Doctor John as a sort of musician and sage).

Menzies is a journalist and photographer who has been exploring Nevada and Utah for decades. He was part of the publication team, with Richard Goldberger, that produced the remarkable periodic newspaper Salt Flat News in the 1970’s. Each of the 25 or so issues of the Salt Flat News focused on stories about Wendover and the Salt Lake Desert, while the paper itself was circulated to subscribers around the country. "It was a conceptual newspaper," said Goldberger, who continues to research startling global phenomena from his office in Salt Lake City. Some front page spreads of the paper are in the Menzies exhibit in Wendover, which will be on display until the spring of 2001. To visit the CLUI Wendover Exhibit Hall and the Menzies exhibit, go to Wendover, Utah, and find your way to the old airbase across the tracks on the southeast side of town, and look for CLUI signs. The exhibit hall is open to the public 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Access to the building is currently obtained by pressing the numerals "1" and then "2" on the combination door lock on the front door. Occasionally the combination is altered. For updated access information, call (310) 839-5722)

Other events at CLUI Wendover over the summer include the installation of Wendover Residence Program participant James Harbison’s sound sculpture. The Wall of Clang was assembled at an abandoned rail siding near the state line. Harbison, who has collected fragments from the desert around Wendover over several successive visits, is a veteran scavenger, and has served as artist in residence at the San Francisco city dump. His adventures in Wendover include spending the night in jail at Elko for "borrowing" a milk crate from a local merchant.