NICHOLAS
CLAPP
Author’s Bio
Documentary filmmaker and author Nicholas Clapp has studied and filmed the deserts of the world.
With a master’s degree in cinema from the University of Southern California, his first professional break
came when he produced and directed The Great Mojave Desert, a one-hour special for CBS and the
National Geographic Society. Two more American desert documentaries followed, The Haunted West and
The Animals Nobody Loved. Over the years he has worked for David L. Wolper, the Walt Disney
Company, Columbia Pictures, and all three networks and PBS – always finding the knack for winding up
in deserts, from Tierra del Fuego to the High Arctic of Ellesmere Island, which though a deep freeze,
meets a desert’s climatological criteria. He roamed the Sahara and the Rub’ al-Khali, Arabia’s “Empty
Quarter.” It was while there filming endangered oryx for the World Wildlife Fund, that he heard of Ubar,
a lost city of the sands, which led to an expedition that discovered the ancient site, until then believed to
be mythical. Writing a book about this discovery prompted a shift from filmmaking to archaeology.
He spent later years excavating at Petra in Jordan, months in Israel, Syria, Ethiopia and Yemen
researching his second book on the myth and reality of the biblical Queen of Sheba. It was this same
queen that led him to the Death Valley area to find out more about the Queen of Sheba Mine. That led to
his last book, a look into one of the characters of the Last Frontier and his mysterious death, Who Killed
Chester Pray?
Months of scouring libraries while he searched for information about Chester Pray led to the
discovery of how many rare photographs actually existed about the Last Frontier of America. With the
detailed eye of a cinematographer, Clapp has noted the most exacting details in each of the photographs
selected for this book and a last look at life on this Last Frontier.
ABOUT THE BOOK
In the 1890s, historian Frederick Jackson Turner lamented that the frontier was gone and with it
the Old West, but overlooked was some 50,000 square miles of a frontier line outlining the Mojave Desert
– the Last Frontier.
In this arid land, unsettled and sketchily mapped – written off as godforsaken and worse – there
would now be a headlong 25-year rush for riches…and for the Old West – a grand, tumultuous, rowdy
Last Act.
Overnight towns named Randsburg, Tonopah, Goldfield, Rhyolite, Greenwater, Skidoo, Ballarat,
and Bagdad popped up in this arid desert as gold and silver was discovered. The rush was on as miners
worked their various digs: the Yellow Aster, the Lost Gunsight, Mizpah, Belmont, Mohawk, Florence, the
Lost Breyfogle, Bullfrog, Bagdad, and the Glory Hole. Just as quickly ghost towns replaced booming
towns as mines played out.
All of this is captured in rare photographs of the day assembled with interpretive text by
cinematographer and author Nicholas Clapp. The Last Frontier may really be gone, but it lives on through
these photographs.