where is Dezdan

[Donovan]

Do any of all y'all know what happened to Dezdan? He dropped off the grid seemingly.

[David_Bricker]

I don't think any of us have heard from him for the last several years.

David Bricker / SYR

[D.A. Wright]

Dan is shown to be living near Carson City and works for BLM.

[Donovan]

Tell Danno to stop by here and say hey.

[D.A. Wright]

Last time I saw and spoke with Dan was in 2009. I don't have contact info for him. I found the above from a quick search. And after his rapid withdrawal from the two forums he hosted (this and d-v.com) I believe he simply wants to live life offline.

[DUG]

I don't know Dezdan, but lately I've been spending many late night hours pouring over defunct websites via the WayBack Machine. His name comes up a lot and his research skills must have been top notch. Some of the stories I've read will cite an article or book reference that Dezdan found. Stuff that I would love to read, but can't find. He sounds like he would be a great dude to know.

[D.A. Wright]

I've met Dan in person several times, the last being here in Winnemucca and along with Chris (B-spec). Both were working for the Park Service and were heading north to northern Washington state. He was just a kid when I first met him, but super enthusiastic.

Back in the late 1990s there was a forum called Death-Valley.us, which is the ancestor of Lonnie's (NetLama) forum today. Dan was a teenage kid from the Palm Springs area back then, but quickly found a niche in the forum. He took over and hosted the forum after D-V.us suddenly went dark for mysterious purposes, calling it by another name. After Dan went dark, Lonnie managed to salvage the files that were archived and created dv.netlama.us. Dan also hosted or had a heavy hand in this forum as well.



My photo of Dan at a gathering of members of this forum at PSR in 2006. You can find photos of Dan on Guy Starbuck's website, as Dan has accompanied Guy to numerous places.

[DUG]

Yeah I've seen him all over Starbuck's site, usually on the harder stuff. But he partnered up with a lot of the other explorers back in the day and I've enjoyed reading old message board posts (here and other places) and going through shut down sites with the WayBack Machine. I've found a lot of stuff that way and been guided to a lot of books and magazines that I've had to track down. In the 90s and up to 2020 I was in prime hiking shape, running the Grand Canyon Rim to Rim to Rim, running our own thrown together 1/2 marathons into Badwater and hiking Mt Whitney from Mineral King or Kings Canyon Road's End in 48 hours. If I was only using some of that to hike to some of the harder mines and camps, I could have really seen a lot. Beveridge would have been no big deal. Seeing the bulldozer at the Keynot mine would have been a dayhike. I just started too late I guess.

[D.A. Wright]

I've found a lot of stuff that way and been guided to a lot of books and magazines that I've had to track down.

I might have given away a lot of those books and magazines that you are looking for, on that day at PSR when I took that photo of Dan. A few years before I sold my large home in Ridgecrest and moved full time into my much smaller home in Big Pine. At Ridgecrest I had a large library of publications but no space in Big Pine for them. I put a call out on the forums and had plenty of takers waiting at PSR, who helped me reduce much of my collection. Since then, I have given away much of the rest to friends, historians and researchers; I'm keeping only my favorites and those fit in a small space.