 |
| Via Newspapers.com |
An odd little mystery from Mojave Desert history was recalled by the (Santa Rosa) “Press-Democrat” for October 17, 1984:
Giant Rock, Calif. (AP) In sweltering little towns that dot the Mojave Desert, residents still tell of the "Mystery Man of Giant Rock," a World War II tale that ended with a shattering explosion.It’s still anyone’s guess what in hell Critzer was up to.
Was Frank Critzer a German spy or just a hermit unlucky in love? Why did he build a home inside a 70-foot-long boulder miles from civilization, then singlehandedly construct an airstrip outside his door? And why did Critzer blow himself to bits when three curious Riverside County sheriff's deputies went to Giant Rock to talk to him on July 24, 1942?
Critzer, a 54-year-old American of German ancestry, carried all the answers to the grave when he took his life that day in the desert.
Harold Simpson, 72, is the only survivor of the three Riverside County deputies who last saw Critzer alive. Simpson was stationed with the sheriff’s Banning office during the summer of 1942 and remembers visiting Critzer frequently at the remote Giant Rock, located about 190 miles east of Los Angeles. Critzer had been interned in Kansas as a World War I sympathizer, so the FBI wanted Riverside County authorities to keep an eye on him.
Simpson recalls that on his hour-long trips to the rock, he would find Critzer in faded dungarees, denim shirts and with a pair of binoculars around his neck. The two would do some target shooting, listen to Critzer's elaborate radio with 4,800 feet of antenna wire or talk about Critzer's strange home inside the rock.
"He had never actually filed a claim on the property, he just squatted there," Simpson recalls. "He was very afraid that the government would take him away from his airport."
Critzer used dynamite to hollow out two rooms in the underbelly of Giant Rock, with only a small stairwell leading inside. He drilled airshafts in the boulder's side. For 10 years, Critzer, who lived only with his dog, built a 1,600-foot airstrip by dragging a stone-weighted iron from his old Essex automobile. He built about 60 miles of roads, all leading in a spiderweb fashion from the Giant Rock.
Today, Giant Rock Airport is on state maps but is accessible only by those same dirt roads. Simpson, who filed reports to the FBI, knew Critzer's radio was capable of receiving signals from Germany and Italy.
"I heard them talking in Italian and in German," he recalls. "They came in loud and clear."
In addition, he built a series of concealed caverns on the side of the rocky butte which were invisible to unsuspecting visitors. Mostly, authorities were baffled by reports of single-engine planes conducting quick rendezvous on the airfield with lumbering transport planes and black sedans leaving the airport under cover of darkness.
On July 1, 1942, authorities got an unexpected break when the maximum draftable age was raised from 50 to 55. Had Critzer, who was 54, registered? Well, by taking him to town, officials theorized they could wait around Giant Rock to see who might fly in.
Simpson and deputies Mack McCracken and Fred Pratt drove to the airstrip July 24. Simpson recalls that the well-armed Critzer had said "he would never leave Giant Rock voluntarily." Critzer told them he'd been meaning to go into Riverside to register. "Why not come back with us, it's the county's gas," Simpson says he told him.
When Critzer declined the invitation, they told him they'd have to take him in. He had to go to the bathroom first, he told deputies, and walked into an outhouse and then to his 10-by-10 foot bedroom inside the rock to get his hat.
He emerged holding a flashlight battery to a wire dangling from the binocular case. He held another wire running along the wall.
"Are you going to go away and let me alone, or are we all going to hell together?" he shouted.
Then, the explosion. Simpson, who was standing at the entrance, flew out of the rock and 80 feet through the air over Pratt, who was standing outside. Doctors said one of Critzer's vertebrae penetrated McCracken like a bullet, but McCracken survived.
Any planes arriving at Critzer’s airstrip could only have come from elsewhere in the United States or from Mexico. But the Mexican government had cut diplomatic ties with Germany in December 1941 and declared war on the Axis powers in June 1942. Neither country was a safe place for Nazi sympathisers, let alone a major operation with “lumbering transport planes”, even assuming that such aircraft could actually use his improvised runway.
ReplyDeleteHowever, his known pro-German sympathies and the sheer scale of his constructions do suggest that he really was trying to build a base for them. It’s conceivable that he might have made contact with an agent for one of the Axis powers, who might even have sent a small plane to test his runway. But they would almost certainly have concluded that he was just a crank.
So, my guess is that he was a pro-Axis fantasist who blew himself up because he thought that the deputies had come to evict him.
http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/53/archibald.php
ReplyDeleteAnd it later became the site for ufo contactee conventions.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Mr Zalotocky in that Critzer was probably a spy-wannabe. He may have initially had contact with German agents but they wouldn't have taken him seriously. I feel sorry for Mr Critzer. (But I love the original name of the community: Giant Rock...)
ReplyDelete