Bishop’s Rock today sits under a table at Barstow’s Mojave River Valley Museum, a rather inauspicious landing after its perilous air and land journey across the desert 50 years ago this spring.

Easily several hundred pounds, the rock is an example of the irony regarding graffiti. If you chip your name on a rock today, it’s vandalism; do it in 1859 and it’s an historic exhibit in a museum.

Such is the case for Bishop’s Rock, so named because “S.A. Bishop” was chipped on it in large letters about 165 years ago. It was apparently done by or for Samuel Addison Bishop, a desert teamster who hauled supplies across the Mojave and briefly camped at remote Piute Creek in 1859. He’s also the man for whom the city of Bishop is named.

As it turned out, Bishop’s Rock might have remained hidden from the world except for its discovery 50 years ago by the late desert historian and writer Dennis Casebier. In March 1974, he was exploring Piute Creek, where the Army had a post in the late 1860s about 30 miles west of the Colorado River. On a remote hillside, Casebier found the rock with Bishop’s name chipped into it.

He returned there six weeks later only to find the rock in pieces, the apparent victim of vandals who pushed it from its hillside perch to the bottom of the canyon.

Casebier wrote state and federal authorities about the destruction of the historic rock, urging that it be collected and repaired. He convinced officials of the Bureau of Land Management to send a helicopter to recover the stone on July 12, 1974.

I suspect the BLM had no idea how difficult it was to retrieve the rocks, especially since at least two of its pieces stretched the maximum lifting power of the chopper. After some fuel was drained from the aircraft and equipment removed, it barely lifted the rocks out of the canyon to near a BLM truck. A wrecker had to be summoned from Needles to load the stones onto the truck for a trip to the BLM in Riverside.

News reports then said once the boulder was repaired, Bishop’s Rock could be returned to its original place at Piute Creek. That has never happened probably because of the cost and difficulty in making such a move. Instead it was moved to the Barstow museum, where it sits next to photos showing the efforts by the BLM to retrieve the rock at Piute Creek.

In all honesty, Mr. Bishop’s rock really isn’t much to look at. After its fall and subsequent move west, it’s gotten pretty scratched up. It’s just not that easy to display something weighing perhaps half a ton.

But even if you’re not terribly interested in viewing the rock, it would really be worth your while to visit the impressive Mojave River Valley Museum, 270 E. Virginia Way, in Barstow.

Its 4,000 square feet is jammed with nicely displayed Mojave Desert-area artifacts, photos, maps and information. And it’s open every day but holidays from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. with free admission. Its website is https://mrvmuseum.org.

A new language

To become a sports writer years ago, it was necessary for me to become bilingual by acquiring an understanding of the peculiar vocabulary of that craft. You see, sports writing through the years has always been where cliches are born, raised and then oozed into common language.

I recently found a mind-numbing, cliche-ridden article in the Pomona Morning Times of May 24, 1911, telling of an upcoming baseball game between Riverside Poly High and Pomona High. (I shall endeavor to provide translation.)

The article said Poly had some talented “pill-tossers” (baseball players) and the game was to be played for “the purpose of settling the dispute over the championship rag” (a game to decide the league pennant). Poly was playing a few days after its “contest with the beauty chorus from Redlands” (a game with a team from Redlands High, I think).

Pomona’s pitcher Pitts had “Merry Widow slants” that may do “considerable mischief before the needle is applied” (now, your guess is as good as mine).

“Pitts is in the best of shape and gives promise of being able to pitch the simon pure article in fancy curves” (sorry, I give up).

Wide-open Vanderbilt

Vanderbilt was a wild and wooly San Bernardino County mining camp near the border with Nevada that prospered for a while around the turn of the 19th century.

The county Board of Supervisors on July 18, 1899, voted to approve the ninth and 10th saloon licenses for this thirsty camp. “With 10 saloons, Vanderbilt ought to come rapidly to the front as a wide-awake, wide-open camp of the first class,” joked the Sun newspaper the next day.

After expanding the availability of alcohol there, supervisors had the foresight to also appoint L.J. Spear as constable for Vanderbilt — perhaps if their decision brewed any trouble.

Women not good enough

The Pomona Daily Progress reported on April 8, 1898, that Horace G. Burt, newly appointed president of the Union Pacific Railroad, had ordered the firing of all women stenographers and clerks. This followed the Chicago Northwestern Railroad, which did the same several months earlier.

But why?

“He gives as his reason that men cannot do as good work where women are and that women cannot do the work as well as men,” wrote the Progress. He dismissed six women at his headquarters and the remaining 200 women working for the railroad would “follow at easy stages.”

Historic tours

The Historical Society of the Pomona Valley has scheduled tours of two of its historic sites on Sunday afternoons.

On Sunday, a tour is planned at the historic Spadra Cemetery, 2850 Pomona Blvd., Pomona. A tour of the Barbara Greenwood Kindergarten, 332 W. McKinley Ave., Pomona, will be on Jan. 28.

Tickets must be purchased in advance. Further information and tickets are available at www.pomonahistorical.org.

Joe Blackstock writes on Inland Empire history. He can be reached at joe.blackstock@gmail.com or Twitter @JoeBlackstock. Check out some of our columns of the past at Inland Empire Stories on Facebook at www.facebook.com/IEHistory.