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Royal blue 55 gallon drum container marked "AGUA" that holds many factory sealed one gallon plastic containers filled with water from the Borrego Springs Water Company, Southern California. Photo Credit: Edmund Jenks (2006)
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S2 & The Mile Marker Mystery Tour
Is the photo above evidence that would suggest the potential existence of a California State sponsored “underground railroad”, facilitating the movement of illegal immigrants northward, on this road east of San Diego, California?
Read the whole story below and help me to find out.
On Friday, June 9th, 2006, I had occasion to attend a business seminar and new product introduction at the W Hotel in downtown San Diego. After spending a lovely evening in Old Town San Diego, it was decided the next morning to take the long way home back to Los Angeles.
We looked at a map after reading about the history of how Southern California built its communicative and travel infrastructure on the routes of the
Great Southern Overland Stage Route of 1849 and the old Butterfield Overland Mail stages. So we set out east on Highway 8 before heading north, tracking along a line on the map that started at Ocotillo (a settlement about 2.5 miles due north of our border with Mexico), through the little town of Agua Caliente on San Diego County "S2".
S2,
as shown on the map, is a road that goes mostly through Anza-Borrego Desert State Park in the south, and ends near Warner Springs at California State Highway 79 in the north.
Late morning, upon entering the Park, about 3 miles or so north from Ocotillo, we saw the Border Patrol and a few National Guard troops setting up an immigration check point along the road. We thought to ourselves, "Well, so this is evidence of the new program of joint deployment we had heard about recently in the news", and then turned our attention to the beautiful landscapes that the far southern parts of the California deserts have to offer.
Driving along another couple of miles or so, we crested a rise in the road and my wife exclaimed, "Did you see that?"
"See what?" I asked.
"Did you see that blue can ... or thing along side of the road? It said "Agua" on side of it!" Cookie exclaimed.
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"It was more of a large drum, and it had stenciled along the side in white lettering "AGUA", you know, Spanish for water.” she said.
We drove on and noticed in the next minute and a half another blue drum, but this one had "AGUA" along the top with "WATER" stenciled in white just underneath along the side.
I asked, "What is going on?"
Another 90 seconds or so passed and another blue drum sat along the side of the road.
Questions arose and the mystery began to build. Where did these blue drums come from? Why are they here? Who put them here? Why are most of them identified only in Spanish?
"Hey, Cookie, let's stop and look at the next one we see, okay?” I asked. She responded, "I think that they are placed near the mile markers along the side of the road."
And sure enough, at mile marker 52, there was another large blue drum (photo above).
I stopped the car, got out and walked across the street over to the west side of S2, and in from the mile marker a few feet I arrived at the side of the blue drum, camera in hand.
The drum was topped off with a half-disk shaped wood top that appeared to have been designed to keep the sun from reaching the contents inside. As I peeked into the drum, the shade in the bottom of the drum covered 6 containers holding a gallon of water each.
I reached down into the drum and pulled out one of the gallon containers to inspect it. The container was factory sealed and labeled as being produced by the
Borrego Springs Water Company, complete with UPC barcode, ready for retail sale.
More questions rushed forward in our minds. Who is paying for this? Who is keeping the "water stations" stocked and maintained? Isn't this State of California land? This is a road that runs through a State Park after all! How does one get permission to do something like this ... that is, if it isn't the State of California that is doing the duty? Is the National Guard responsible for these support services too?
We drove on and discovered that not only are these blue drum "AGUA" water stations at each mile marker, one appeared in a dry streambed that was an obvious migrant trail track also used for hiking and offroading.
We drove on from the South to the North and it appeared that the blue "AGUA" drums were placed at every mile marker from mile marker 55 to mile marker 40 near the Agua Caliente airport. Beyond mile marker 40 on northward, no more drums were sighted. We drove throughout the park that entire day without sighting anymore blue drums for park visitors or anyone else … other than in the most southerly 15 mile section along this road, as described. Curious that.
This situation is a real mystery. When almost 70% of the voting citizens want to put up a fence, and implement processes that deter border hopping immigration, why is the State of California subsidizing, underwriting, working against, turning a blind eye to, anything that will facilitate illegal immigrants to migrate across the border, hide and survive just to assimilate into our capitalistic landscape?
So now it is time for MAXINE (maxine-log.blogspot.com) to turn to the internet community and, hopefully, tap into the power of, as Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit and MSNBC would put it, "An Army of Davids"!
Are there any answers out there to the questions raised by this mile marker mystery tour?
Further, I have photos and digital video clips to support this whole story if any one would need them to help spread the story and/or make the point. I look forward to your responses. "On point".
Brewed Awakenings, with its pithy name, artful drinks and wireless Internet service, has found itself unexpectedly percolating on the forefront of high-tech law. Image Credit: KATU - Channel 2, Portland
