Who Was Marshal South?
For 17 years, from 1930 to 1947, poet, artist, and author Marshal South and his wife Tanya lived on Ghost Mountain—a remote, waterless, windswept mountaintop in Blair Valley on the western edge of the Colorado Desert, now part of the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park. Over a period of nine of those years, South chronicled his family’s controversial primitive and natural lifestyle through monthly articles written for Desert Magazine. His articles were the reality entertainment of the day—a sort of early version of Survivor with thousands of readers awaiting the next installment.
South wrote with lyric quality, painting word pictures that only a poet or artist could. He wrote with passion about the desert, its beauty and natural history, the desert’s healthful qualities, its silence and beauty, and he praised its early inhabitants and their lifestyle. He advocated a return to simplicity and a close relationship with nature.
In his lifetime Marshal wrote over 90 poems, 70 short stories and essays, 12 novels, and 102 articles and poems in Desert Magazine. His works were published in Australia, Great Britain, and the United States. He was also the poet laureate of Oceanside and received praise for his poems from Theodore Roosevelt.
Today Marshal South remains as controversial as he did when he was living with as many praising him as there are those who vilify him. His story is a mix of fact and fiction, truth and rumors. This website provides the facts about Marshal and Tanya South, including published articles about the Souths and a listing of their complete known works.
When you register on this website, you will have access to some of Marshal and Tanya South’s published and unpublished works, including Marshal’s artwork, poetry, and rare photographs of the family. Included in the poetry selections are some of his love poems.
Click here for some general background information originally printed in the Borrego Sun in two installments in 2005:
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