The well was once at the intersection of two trails through Death Valley. After sand obscured the spot, someone stuck a piece of stovepipe into the well as a marker.
One of the few buildings still standing in Rhyolite is a house made of glass and adobe. A local saloon owner, Tom Kelly, built this house in 1906 using materials he had in abundance: 51,000 beer bottles and mud.
Rhyolite was a town near the eastern edge of Death Valley that began as a mining camp in 1905. Fueled by a gold rush, the town grew to nearly 5000 people in just a few years, but the easily accessible gold had all been exhumed in just a few years. By 1910, the mine was operating at a loss. The mine closed in 1911 and the town's population dove to fewer than 1000 peopl. By 1920, the town was abandoned and in ruins.
Shorty Harris (along with his partner Ernest Cross) struck gold in the Bullfrog Mountains in 1904, and sparked the gold rush that built Rhyolite. This sculpture portrays Shorty as a miner with a pick axe, and artist Belgian artist Fred Bervoets as an out-of-place does-not-belong-in-the-desert alien penguin.