In 1966 I began exploring the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park while working on my degree in history from San Diego State University. I continued in the graduate program leading to my master’s degree and the publication of my thesis in 1973 by Copley Books – a division of the Union-Tribune Publishing Company – as Our Historic Desert: The Story of the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park. Part of that history included what was known then about the Marshal South family and their "experiment in primitive living." At the time I was doing the research for my thesis, I attempted to interview Tanya South who was living in east San Diego near SDSU. It was a short interview and very memorable. I went to the door of her apartment and knocked. She opened it a crack, secured by a chain. I explained that I was doing historical research about the park and wanted to ask her a few questions about her Ghost Mountain experience. She immediately slammed the door as she angrily exclaimed that she would give no interview, had nothing to say, and added, "Don’t bother me again!" From that day on, I felt there was much more to the story than what was previously written. Meanwhile, my husband Lowell and I wrote a new guidebook for the park in 1978 that was published by Wilderness Press. The Anza-Borrego Desert Region: A Guidebook to the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park and Adjacent Areas of the Colorado Desert is now, 30 years later, in its 5th edition and still the premier guide to the area. Interest in publishing led to the founding of Sunbelt Publications in 1984. Several of our publications have focused on Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, including those that I have personally authored or edited, such as Anza-Borrego A to Z: People, Places, and Things and Marshal South and the Ghost Mountain Chronicles. Also in 1984, I became more involved with the park through its supporting non-profit partner, the Anza-Borrego Foundation. I have since served twice as president of that organization. Through the years I managed to gather everything I could find about Marshal and Tanya South. I called the oldest son, Rider South, on one occasion asking him if he would consent to an interview, and he declined. I had heard that his mother Tanya had passed away in 1996 at almost 100 years of age. I toyed with the idea of calling him again and asking for an interview, which I finally did in 2001. Rider disclosed that he always wanted the truth about his father to be known, and since the passing of his mother, he offered that possibility, but he wanted time to think about it. A year later, he agreed that the Desert Magazine articles should be reprinted. Then he agreed that the articles could be preceded by a Foreword and Introduction that would provide the reader background and details about the family and their time on Ghost Mountain. So, the adventure began. Or so I thought it would. Rider had been well-trained by his mother neither to disclose anything about the family nor to trust those who were prying into the family’s affairs. It would take awhile to build up trust. The research began by my asking why his father was called the "hermit poet" when he wrote the articles for Desert Magazine while his mother included a poem with each published article. Rider’s response was simply to loan me a large binder filled with poems written by his father that were published in major newspapers and magazines around the country. It was left to me to make sense of it. As I flipped through the published poems I noticed that all of the poems published in the Los Angeles Times were also published in the Oceanside Blade a few days after they appeared in the Times. It was time for research collaboration. I called Kristi Hawthorne from the Oceanside Historical Society and asked her to check each edition of the Blade in which a poem appeared to see if there were any possible editorial comments. It was the beginning of a most interesting journey, for we discovered that the poems were actually written by someone named Benjamin Richards. It was back to Rider to ask him if Marshal South was actually a pen name, and he said, "Yes!" And so the cat and mouse game continued like this for almost a year with one discovery after another and a confirmation by Rider and little else. Marshal was not from England. He was born in Australia. And, his name was not Benjamin Richards. It was Roy Bennett Richards. Of course Rider knew this all along and had fun at my expense (literally)! It took sleuthing from a research team in Adelaide, South Australia, to dig up Marshal’s background and that of his parents. Only after I began feeding Rider information that he did not have did I feel we had enough to proceed with the publication of Marshal South and the Ghost Mountain Chronicles. The Foreword included this new information while the Introduction, written by Lucile South, captured Rider’s early memories of Ghost Mountain. The publication of Marshal South and the Ghost Mountain Chronicles in January 2005 generated tremendous interest in the South family. Among the many that were fascinated by the story was John McDonald, an independent filmmaker. He was on a tour that I led up to Ghost Mountain when I mentioned that there were plans to produce a short film for the park’s visitor center using short silent film clips of the family taken in 1946 with historical photos of the family and an audio interview with Rider. When John realized that we had not begun the project, he immediately volunteered to take on the project himself, which developed a life of its own including an unbudgeted expense account.
Thus began Phase 2 of the research project and the discovery that there was still a lot to learn about the story. What followed were many filmed interviews and more information provided, now willingly, by Rider and through new collections that were discovered, including files that belonged to Myrtle and Jeri Botts. The film plan was to create a short 15-minute film for the park visitor center that did premiere in October 2005, and then to create a much longer documentary film that possibly would receive funding and would appear on national television. The longer film is still looking for funding and is not in its final form, although it is available for purchase. Purchase of the film helps to offset the many dollars involved in the cost of production. Part of the reason for this website is to make available to the public the research materials about Marshal and Tanya South. This will allow individuals to draw their own conclusions about the Souths. There are today, unfortunately, just as many rumors and misconceptions about the family as there were before all of this research began. There continues to be just as many who are fascinated about the Ghost Mountain experiment as there are those who feel that Marshal does not deserve the recognition he receives. Certainly the "Director’s Cut" of the longer film has made it so by not expanding on the Myrtle Botts story and her relationship with the town of Julian and Marshal’s relationship to the entire Botts family. Without proper background to incidents that really happened, it is easy for someone watching the film to draw the wrong conclusions. There is little time also to analyze South’s "romantic" psyche and to see how it has driven many of his actions throughout his life. The film itself is beautifully made and well worth viewing. It has appeared in several film festivals. It is hoped that this site will round out the missing pieces in the ongoing saga of the South family. Diana Lindsay
