In Search of Nellie Bly Baker, Inspirational Badass of the Eastern Sierra

[Music] hello Wonder hussy here up in the Eastern Sierra Nevada mountains at gorgeous Lundy Lake now you might remember that I actually came here to Lundy Lake last summer because I hiked up to this super duper remote old I think it was a gold mine way up the canyon there and when I was standing up on that Ridge I looked down here where I am now and I think I talked about how there's this old abandoned Resort well come to find out it's not actually abandoned it's a Historic Resort dating from like the 1930s I think that I guess was sort of falling into disrepair the previous owners didn't really do maintenance on it and so all the old buildings started falling apart and fortunately uh I guess the place is under new ownership and these folks are working at restoring these old historic cabins some of which date from the 1800s that's right this wasn't a resort until I think the 1930s but prior to that Lundy Canyon was the site of a mining and love umber Milling town because obviously yeah there was the gold mines up in the mountains there but there's also a lot of pine trees up here and since we are in the Eastern Sierra once the mountains sort of Peter out it turns into desert and so there aren't any trees over that way and so a lot of these mining towns Over Yonder to the east including Bodi if you've ever been to Bodi ghost town it's one of the best known ghost towns in America and it's just right over there well they needed Lumber to build those towns there weren't any trees over there and so all the lumber that was used to build bod ghost town was actually milled right up here in Lundy Canyon so yeah this was an old milling and mining town called Lundy but when a dam was built on Lundy Creek the newly created Lundy Lake ended up flooding most of the ruins and a lot of the old foundations are underwater now but lucky for us there's plenty of cool stuff that did survive in part thanks to a very interesting woman that I had never even heard of until I started researching this video it's a woman named Nelly blly Baker and she was an actress a Hollywood actress way back in the day the days of silent movies okay I guess she started out working for Charlie Chaplain as a projectionist I think she was the first female projectionist remember back in the day you actually had to have skill to load the reels onto the movie projectors and show the movies well Nelly BL Baker was a first female projectionist worked for Charlie Chaplain I guess he saw something special in her and so he put her in one of his movies as an actress and from there well she transitioned into being a silent film actress and she was in a whole bunch of movies um never really a star in role she always played kind of supporting roles she played a lot of maids according to what I read online anyway she worked as a Hollywood actress for over a decade until one day in the 1930s I guess they came up here scouting locations for some movie she was going to be in she fell in love with the landscape and decided to leave her husband and Hollywood behind and move up here and who could blame her now when she got here there wasn't really anything up here other than an old busted abandoned Ghost Town not all that different from the way it looks today but apparently Nelly blly Baker was a total badass because she got up here looked around poked through the random odds and ends that were left behind from the old mine camp and built her own cabin from scratch by herself and lived in it for two Winters by herself up here in the mountains and the snow piles up real high out here this woman came out here back in the 1930s and did all that I think it's absolutely amazing I can't believe I had never heard of Nelly blly Baker before but I'm glad I did thanks to this awesome viewer of my channel who invited me up here and told me about it hey Cindy hi Cindy you're awesome thank you for inviting me up here thank you for being here what's your name again ma'am I'm Haley Haley Haley has been up here busting her hump well there's been a lot of us there's a lot of friends and family that are helping to restore the place and bring it to life and so you're the new owner of the resort yeah my family and I together yeah and you're going to bring this place back to life that's the goal I'm fourth generation and my goal is to get it to a place that we can have another four generations fourth generation coming up here to Lundy Lake yeah my my great granddaddy like uh worked for the equivalent of like AT&T and uh would travel up and down the 395 and like so many others just said oh what's that sign that says lendy Lake and drove up the road and then he took my grandpa and my Grandpa took my dad then my dad took me and then all my extended family comes up here so we drink the Lundy Kool-Aid so I was just talking in my intro about Nelly blly Baker I had never heard of her before but she built a cabin here out of old odds and ends that she scavenged from the old mine Camp that's right and you've been restoring Nelly's cabin yeah okay the cabin that Nelly blly Baker built out of random mine Camp leftovers became affectionately known as the Tilton Hilton because it had fallen into disrepair over the years and was shall we say tilting a little bit but considering it was built by a Hollywood actress with zero construction experience using salvaged materials from an abandoned ghost town about a hundred years ago I think it's pretty impressive if there's anything left standing at all according to Haley Nelly basically took a few of the abandoned Shacks from Lundy ghost town and sort of cobbled them together to create this pretty impressive twostory cabin it needed to be two stories so that in the winter time she had an entrance and exit because so much snow comes here during Peak winter um with snowfall this is completely covered really so you wouldn't be able to get out the first floor door oh or you'd have to dig a lot and so you have to have a second story in order to enter oh so this is kind of like a little covered porch on the Second Story imagine you are um in the snow at Lundy in the winter time or early spring and the snow is going all the way up to here yeah so just for reference like snow will pile up that high to the second floor yeah this is her Pao okay so this was her this was her front door when the snow was piled up correct that's the I like to call it the door to Nowhere door to Nowhere yes so I don't know if you can see see the sun's kind of glaring on it but there's a little door coming out of the Second Story onto this little patio and so when the snow was piled high all she had to do was walk out here right onto the snow without having to dig a tunnel and go out the first floor M but when there's no snow it's a door to it's door to Nowhere if you walk out there now you're going to fall what like 10 ft yikes yeah that's the resourcefulness of mountain folk I guess instead of shoveling all that snow every winter to Tunnel out of your house just build yourself a second story door to nowhere and when it comes to staying warm in the winter time well then you just build yourself a big old fireplace using whatever random materials you have at hand so these are all like local rocks and then you see all of this random metal that's in here oh so this is like she didn't have rebar no rebar she needed to reinforce the chimney but she didn't it's not like there's a Home Depot right there like literally like a bolt right here so these are just like bits and Bobs of stuff she found yep laying around how did she figure out how to make a a fireplace there's an interesting story with that isn't there well The Story Goes that I don't know if it was the capital or the White House I forget I would have to look it up but she you know let's pretend it's the white I think it was the White House Dear White House um I you know I live in the mountains and I'm looking to build a fireplace and a chimney how do I do that and she mailed the letter and then they mailed her a letter back with directions on how to build a fireplace and boy have things changed boy yeah how things have changed imagine writing to the White House how to build a chimney and getting any answer at all that's incredible let alone an answer that actually worked right I know I know well I think she probably had to make some adjustments after getting the feedback of how to actually she had already started by the I think she had started yeah cuz she had to have a DOT and she stayed two Winters by herself right all alone I don't know how many but definitely she had Winters by herself I mean like a pet skunk and a pet she wasn't by herself she was she was like Snow White oh my with her pet skunk I know she's she's really just an incredible lady oh because she was also the first female licensed female Mountain guide in yeah Wilderness guide female Wilderness guide is at Lundy and now um we have a bunch of you know you know we're car we're carrying on that Legacy sure there's plenty of female Wilderness guides now but back in the day that was a big deal and so she did she took guys on Expeditions I know right that's amazing in addition to building her own house and you know taking care of her pet skunk and all the other things she did it's amazing that a Hollywood actress would come way up here in the mountains find an old mining town figure out a way to put everything together I mean my sister and I have a hard enough time just trying to do minor Home Improvement projects I don't know how this woman did this and then the fact that it's still standing today almost 100 years later I'd like to see any of today's Hollywood actresses do something like that anyway I could tell Haley was really passionate about keeping Nelly's story alive and in fact her goal is to eventually restore the Tilt and Hilton to the point where the ground floor can be used as the camp store for the Lundy Lake Resort and upstairs she plans to create a little Museum to honor The Life and Legacy of this fascinating woman wow thank you so much for having me up here and sharing your you have a lot of knowledge about this place and I can see that you have a lot of passion about I'm I'm still learning and it's everyone who comes up here teaches me something new whether it be about fishing or Wildlife or the history of the place but um you know Lundy is well and Alive yeah exactly so not not an abandoned Resort thriving and in the process of becoming even better than it ever was yeah to serve the next four generations goal of Lundy lovers yeah okay Cindy listen I can't thank you enough for inviting me up here I would never have known about any of this if it wasn't for you emailing me so thank you sis thank you yeah uh it was pointed out that we kind of look like twins because you're wearing the hat that well kind of like the Hat I'm wearing it's a good look okay wow what cool people and what a beautiful Canyon I can totally see why they're so passionate about preserving the history and the old Resort cuz I I mean look at the surroundings you know they were saying uh families have been coming out here for Generations well you can understand why just looking at how absolutely beautiful this Canyon is anyway I drove way up the canyon because there's something up here that Nelly painted and it's this giant well I guess they call it Indian Rock because it's painted like a Native American okay obvious ly the paint has been touched up over the last 100 years but apparently Nelly BL Baker in addition to being craftsy enough to build an entire two-story house out of old mining wreckage was also artistic and so apparently she painted four or five I think big boulders like this scattered all around the canyon to look like well I guess the shapes that she saw in the Rock so like with this one she saw the shape of a Native American wearing a big feathered head dress and well bye golly she painted The Rock to look like her vision boy you never saw Nelly blly Baker just sitting around twiddling her thumbs you know what I mean seems like she was always busy if she wasn't building a two-story cabin out of old mining wreckage or painting rocks she's also responsible for having built one of the best known tourist attractions in this area right down the hill in the little town of Lee viny and since I'm headed that way anyway cuz I got to get gas well we might as well head on down there and check it [Music] out okay we're here in the unbelievably quaint and picturesque town of Lee Vining just down the street from the mono cone which is an awesome little fast food stand and if you've ever been to the monoc con well maybe you've taken the time to walk down the street and see this next place that we're about to check out that's right it's the world famous upside down house which was built by Nelly blly obrien uh okay I know I've been calling her Nelly BL Baker in this video but I guess her married name was Nelly blly O'Brien there she is her badass self I guess that's in her days as the first female Wilderness guide but then down here there she is from her days as a silent movie actress this woman did it all including building this well I don't know how else to describe it other than upside down house exactly as advertised and I think the interior is just as upside down as the exterior unfortunately you really can't see much Through the Windows and the door is shut oh wait look we can peek in oh my gosh look at this okay I know it's going to be kind of dark and it's probably completely disombobulating but everything in this house is upside down even the pictures hanging on the wall the lantern hanging on the wall let me see if I can zoom out there's a bed on the ceiling uh I think there's a there like an upside down flower pot in here somewhere the whole dang thing is upside down so what looks like the floor is actually the ceiling and what looks like the ceiling is actually the floor too funny okay I guess she was inspired by well the sign said there was a children's book I guess at the time called upside down land which came to her mind when she saw a tipped over Miner cabin you know we're out here well now we're right on the shores of Mono Lake so there was all kinds of busted old mining wreckage just like the stuff she used to build her tilt and Hilton up in lendy Canyon well she saw some old falling over Miner's cabin and it gave her the idea to build an upside down house as a sort of tourist attraction I guess for the children in this area how about that wow this upside down house is located in this little park that's full of crazy old mining equipment including a giant old compressor truck reminds me of my friend Ross the one-legged minor who just went to Great Lengths to get a compressor of his very own but his mine hi Ross anyway you can see that to this day folks still come by to take pictures of Nelly blly Baker or Nelly blly O'Brien's upside down house house and I just think that's really cool that her Legacy lives on and as a matter of fact being here in leining and needing to get gas reminded me of another part of Nelly's Legacy that I didn't even realize was a part of her Legacy until [Music] now that's right the world famous most Mobile gas station on tyoga pass just south of Le Vining has a very well-known restaurant inside and you might be wondering well why is a gas station restaurant so well known well it has amazing high-end gourmet food and the name of that restaurant is the wo nelly deli now I've been here many times over the years and in fact if you've been watching my channel for a while you might remember that I always used to wear a mobile hat from here until they quit making them in the color that I liked and so I went and had my own made but anyway this is where I used to buy those hats and I've eaten at the deli and I never even stopped to wonder why it was called the wo nelly deli and it only occurred to me while I was researching this video that it's named after Nelly blly Baker and since I'm here anyway I might as well just go inside and check one more time oh my God they do have it in the color I like man I have been looking for this hat for years [Music] [Music] [Music] look at all the fun other colors we have come get your own oh I don't want any other colors than this one and uh you knew that didn't you I knew that and how did how did you know you tagged us on Instagram so what's your name ma'am Denise Denise Denise you are in charge of making the hats here we make the hat and you saw me complaining like I saw you make your own I was offended okay well I'm going to burn this hat and only wear this one now like collector's well it's it's pretty funky by this point so is this actually named after Nelly blly Baker slightly yes slightly what does that mean it's most named after the people flying down TI the pass and we say wo Nelly cuz their brakes are on fire people coming down the pass too fast okay wow how about that and as if her making this hat for me wasn't nice enough she just went ahead and gave it to me so I guess even though it is something of a bummer that the deli isn't technically named after Nelly blly Baker everything worked out just fine anyway and to thank these fine folks for their generosity I'm going to go ahead and fill up my tank here yikes [Music]

Channel: Wonderhussy Adventures

Views: 51,916

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Id: t_QBVu_oMLc

Length: 21min 2sec (1262 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 14 2024