S Hole

S Hole
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December 6, 2017 July 18, 2019 by SHABL

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Mel’s Hole in Ellensburg, Washington is a unknown to many. Before February 21 st , 1997, Ellensburg, Washington was pretty much Nowheresville, USA. That’s until Art Bell made a phone call that changed it all. Ellensburg was known for being home to Central Washington University, not much else. Ellensburg was also known for its peaceful vibe, then Mel’s Hole came about…
That’s until a call from an eccentric local to a popular late-night talk radio show changed everything. A bizarre tale told about a yawning chasm in the earth in the wilderness of Central Washington State was told. The legend of Mel’s Hole in Ellensburg, Washington was born.
The story behind Mel’s Hole began one night during an episode of Coast to Coast AM.
It’s a late night nationwide radio show. It deals with the paranormal, conspiracy theories, and so forth.
On February 21 st , 1997, a man calling himself Mel Waters phoned up host Art Bell. He claimed to have found a pit with no verifiable bottom on land he used to own near Ellensburg, Washington. Washington is in the Pacific Northwest of the USA . He attempted to measure Mel’s Hole depth using fishing line and a weight. In doing so, he determined Mel’s Hole to be greater than 15 miles deep.
He also stated it had the ability to bring animals back from the dead. This is where things got a little strange. He had heard a story from another man who threw his dead dog in the pit. Only to find it walking around alive just a few days later. Shortly afterward, he said federal agents appeared and were hostile. They claimed his land was the site of a downed air force plane, forcing him to surrender his property.
It was in exchange for a leasing arrangement, which paid him a fixed amount of money each month. Using these funds, he then moved to Australia. It’s from there he phoned into the show for the first time. Of course, our friends on Reddit have a few opinions on the matter.
The legend of Mel’s Hole Washington continued to build over the years. The syndication of the Coast to Coast AM recording ensured the growth of this urban legend. What’s more, Mel Waters continued to phone into the show, most notably in 2000 and 2002. At these times, he reiterated the story he originally told while adding new details.
However, he refused to confirm the exact location of Mel’s Hole. This, despite the establishment of search parties by local paranormal enthusiasts. These tales eventually captured the attention of local media. Of course the media did some investigative reporting of their own. Their research, more or less, debunked the entire theory of Mel’s Hole. There was no evidence that anyone named Mel Waters had lived or owned property in the area. That or proof that his wife, purportedly a professor at Central Washington University, worked there.
Department of Natural Resources geologist Jack Powell then put the final nail in the coffin. Using basic knowledge of how dirt and rocks behave, he concluded that a chasm matching the description of Mel’s Hole could never exist. Reason being the heat and pressure that far down would cause the walls of the pit to collapse. To give a sense of scale, the deepest naturally occurring cavern on Earth plunges 7,188 feet. The deepest mine in the world went down to a depth of 12,672 feet.
Taking things further, the Russians drilled the deepest hole in history from 1970 to the early 1990s. Hitting an absurd depth of 40,000 feet below ground! They encountered insane conditions which slowed drilling to crawl. These included rocks which behaved more like plastics rather than the solid rocks. That and temperatures pushing 180 degrees Celsius. Extrapolating out from these data points, it’s clear Mel’s Hole can’t exist.
As if reason couldn’t bury this Snopes worthy story, there’s more. Mel Waters in his later calls with Art Bell in 2002 cast further doubt on whether his tales regarding Mel’s Hole. In these calls, he disclosed he had been arrested by police in Tacoma, Washington. Also a black out to wake up in an alley in San Francisco missing all his teeth.
Stories of a dime he found from 1943 which mysteriously dematerialized on contact were bizarre. Most alarmingly, he mentioned that he found another bottomless hole in Nevada. This abyss had even stranger powers than the one purportedly on his land. This hole set ice on fire for months without it ever melting. When a sheep was lowered into it, it emerged from the chasm with an alien embedded within. He didn’t stop there: he maintained that this alien being was able to communicate via radio waves. It warned humans to back away from nuclear conflict, as it posed an existential threat to our species.
While it should be relatively obvious to any thinking person that the totality of Mel Waters’ story is likely a hoax…
Itseems likely the story of Mel’s Hole Washington is based on a pit which exists in fact.
The craziness of Mel Waters and the undressing of the story behind Mel’s Hole Ellensburg Washington is something. Something you’d think would be enough to put the legend of this chasm to bed for good?
In 2008, a local First Nations man going by the name of Red Elk spoke with a great deal about Mel’s Hole. He mirrored Mel Water’s claims by stating that Mel’s Hole set fire to ice lowered into it. However, he went further than that, stating that a sheep lowered into it wasn’t just cooked alive… Only that it also implanted a seal fetus inside its uterus, as if by magic. He also claimed Mel’s Hole was the site of a secret base maintained by the United States Army. Where they liaised with alien life forms. Humorously, though, he was unable to locate the very hole of which he spoke of. This was even when he led an expedition of 30 curiosity seekers to the purported site in 2002.
Where is Mel’s Hole anyway? Mel’s Hole is in Ellensburg Washington, but where exactly is it? Jack Powell, having grown up in the Kittitas Valley and been employed by the Department of Natural Resources. He had a good idea where the Mel’s Hole location was. After all, when you can’t find Mel’s Hole Google Earth , why not ask a geologist?
In the area described by Mel Waters, he knew of an old abandoned mine. Upon examining the area, he found an open pit which fit the description of the hole. It likely had a present depth of 90 feet deep (with an operating depth of over 300 feet when it was being actively mined). Jack could easily see how lesser educated locals could conclude a hole of this nature would be bottomless. After all, a hole of that depth would have no discernible bottom. Especially if it was deeper than the conservative estimate mentioned previously.
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Sites: Submerged Resources Center, Death Valley National Park Date Released: 2019-04-03
Devils Hole--a detached unit of Death Valley National Park--is habitat for the only naturally occurring population of the endangered Devils Hole Pupfish ( Cyprinodon diabolis ). The 40 acre (16 ha) unit is a part of the Ash Meadows complex, an area of desert uplands and springfed oases designated a national wildlife refuge in 1984.
Ash Meadows
Ash Meadows is the discharge point for a groundwater system extending over a hundred miles to the northeast. Thirty seeps and springs bring to the surface "fossil" water which entered the groundwater system thousands of years ago. Ash Meadows is home to 26 species of endemic plants and animals, including three other endangered fish (two of them pupfish) and seven threatened plants.
Devils Hole is a window into this vast aquifer and an unusual indicator of seismic activity around the world. Large earthquakes as far away as Japan, Indonesia and Chile have caused the water to 'slosh' in Devils Hole like water in a bathtub. Waves may spash as high as two meters up the walls, sweeping clean the shallow shelf so important to the pupfish.
Watch this video of a 'tsunami' in Devils Hole caused by a large earthquake in July 2019! Learn more and see another video in this Scientific American article.
Devils Hole Pupfish
Earlier pluvial (wet) periods allowed colonization of present sites; subsequent xeric (dry) conditions served to isolate the aquatic habitats, with the result that the inhabiting organisms have differentiated and evolved into the relict species found today. The Devils Hole pupfish have been isolated 10,000 to 20,000 years, longer than any other in the Death Valley system. Devils Hole itself is a water-filled cavern cut into the side of a hill. The cavern is over 500 feet (152 m) deep and the bottom has never been mapped. Devils Hole provides its resident pupfish with conditions of constant temperature (92°F, 33°C) and salinity, unlike the fluctuating environments of many other pupfish . Although pupfish have been found as deep as 66 feet (20 m), the fish forage and spawn exclusively on a shallow rock shelf near the surface, feeding on the algae and diatoms found there. The Devils Hole pupfish is considered an annual species, with the historic population fluctuating between 100 - 200 in winter and 300-500 in late summer. Research indicates that pupfish population numbers respond primarily to the amount of algae present on the shelf. The algal growth depends, in turn, on the amount of solar radiation the shelf receives and the concentration of nutrients in the water. Finally, recent evidence suggests that nutrient availability is highest when the cave is used by barn owls ( Tyto alba ) as a roosting/nesting site. The owls increase the pool nutrient levels by casting nutrient-rich pellets into the water.
Conservation Efforts
The history of conservation efforts for the Devils Hole pupfish is instructive. The Devils Hole unit was added to Death Valley National Monument by presidential proclamation in 1952. Ten years later the NPS installed a hydrograph in the Hole to monitor water levels. Subsequently, the Hole was fenced after two divers drowned in its water. In 1967 the Devils Hole pupfish was officially listed as an endangered species .
New Threats
That same year saw a farming corporation amass 12,000 acres (4,900 ha) in the Ash Meadows area; by 1968 the hydrograph had begun to register a decline as large capacity wells were drilled and pumped in Ash Meadows. The alarming water drop threatened to expose the critical spawning/feeding shelf and precipitated the formation of two groups to work for protection of Devils Hole: the Desert Fishes Council in the West, and the Desert Pupfish Task Force in Washington D.C. By 1970, drastic conservation efforts had been undertaken: refugia populations were established, and a floating artificial shelf, artificially lighted, was suspended in Devils Hole to substitute for the partially exposed natural rock shelf. The fish never used the artificial shelf. In August of 1971 a federal court issued an injunction to halt further pumping, that threatened to completely expose the natural shelf. Further litigation finally resulted in the landmark Supreme Court decision of 1976 (Cappaert vs. U.S.). It recognized the prior water right of Devils Hole vis-a-vis its designation as part of a national monument. The permanent injunction did not halt pumping, but limited it to a level which guaranteed sufficient water to inundate the natural rock shelf.
Recovery
In their Devils Hole pupfish recovery plan of 1980 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service designated as essential habitat about 21,000 acres where the groundwater most influenced the water level in the Hole. One of the identified goals of the recovery plan was to maintain the aquifer at such levels that the population fluctuates from 300 in winter to 700-900 in late summer. The water source for the Devils Hole pupfish was now adequately secured, but the remainder of Ash Meadows was as yet unprotected. A land development company bought the Ash Meadows land from the farm corporation in 1977, planning to subdivide the area into 30,000 residential lots. This new threat to the Ash Meadows region prompted California Senator Alan Cranston to introduce legislation in 1981 which would establish a Desert Pupfish National Wildlife Refuge. Furthermore, in 1982 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service emergency-listed as endangered two more of the fish species in Ash Meadows, thereby conferring protection to all three levels of pools in the area. Finally, in 1984 Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge was established by Congress. The Nature Conservancy bought the bulk of the land from the development company and resold it to the USFWS. By 1986 the USFWS had drafted a recovery plan for the entire Ash Meadows area, including Devils Hole.
A Mysterious Decline
Starting in the mid-1990s, the Devils Hole pupfish population began what was to become a severe decline. Studies have been undertaken to better understand energy flow in the system, water chemistry, pupfish genetics, organisms living in the water, and other factors. Although the decline’s cause has not yet been determined, knowledge of the Devils Hole ecosystem has been greatly expanded. Efforts continue to save this species that has existed for ten thousand years.
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Agency biologists are excited to report increased numbers of one of the world’s rarest fishes. Scientists counted 263 Devils Hole pupfish, which is the most they’ve observed in 19 years.
In a surprising quirk of geology, Monday’s magnitude 7.6 earthquake in Mexico triggered four-foot-tall waves in Devils Hole. Video footage of the “desert tsunami” is available here.
Devils Hole pupfish, one of the world's rarest fishes, had the highest spring population count in 22 years. This comes on the 50th anniversary of population counts using SCUBA.
One of the world’s rarest fish species, the Devils Hole pupfish, has reached a population of 136 observable fish. This high spring season population count follows years of substantially lower spring population counts, which triggered concerns over the chances of survival of this critically endangered fish.
Wildlife biologists have good news to report about one of the world’s rarest fishes. Scientists counted 187 Devils Hole pupfish, which is the most they’ve observed in fifteen years.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office is making progress prosecuting men accused of harming an endangered species and vandalism of government equipment at Devils Hole, a unit of Death Valley National Park. Edgar Reyes of North Las Vegas and Steven Schwinkendorf of Pahrump pleaded guilty to destruction of government property for their actions at Devils Hole on April 30, 2016.
A powerful earthquake off the coast of Alaska caused water to slosh in Devils Hole, in Death Valley National Park.The magnitude 7.9 earthquake’s epicenter was in the Gulf of Alaska, approximately 170 miles south of Kodiak, Alaska, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The quake happened in the early morning hours of Monday, January 23, 2018. Minutes later, the earthquake’s impact was felt about 2,000 miles away in the Nevada desert.

P.O. Box 579

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,

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92328

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