The lost ship of the desert

Two years ago, I received a mysterious phone call to my office in Palm Springs.

A man on the line told me he needed to speak to the editor of Dezert Magazine, John Grasson. 

"I don't know anyone here by that name," I said.

 The confusion was understandable. Out here in the California desert, there's a historic regional publication Desert Magazine, now defunct, as well as my publication, DESERT magazine, which I oversee as part of the USA TODAY Network.

 That day, I learned of a third version: Dezert Magazine, published from 2010 to 2014. 

 The man asked if I knew about the lost ship of the desert. I didn’t. He said he had a picture of himself sitting on the vessel as a kid. 

 I had absolutely no idea what he was talking about, and he wouldn’t offer more information since I wasn’t John Grasson. So, we hung up. I haven’t spoken to him since. 

 But I did track down Grasson — and the legend of the lost ship.

It sounds implausible at first: a ship in the middle of the desert? And yet local lore abounds.

Could it be buried beneath the Salton Sea? Imperial Valley?

Theories range from Spanish to Viking, and everything in between. 

 But what started as a chance encounter eventually turned into a two-year journey across Southern California and down to Baja, as I discovered oral tradition shapes this story differently, depending on where – and who – you are.

Read the ‘Lost Ship of the Desert’ series:

Read my interview with USA Today:

“A phone call sent Desert Sun Features Editor Kristin Scharkey on a two-year search for a lost ship in the desert. Some say it's a Viking knarr, a merchant vessel, abandoned by Norse explorers who veered far south after navigating the Northwest Passage. Others think it's a Spanish galleon, full of black pearls, that made its way up the Gulf of California during the era of conquistadors. The quest took Scharkey longer than she intended, to places she hadn't imagined going. You can read the subscribers-only story here. And here's our Q&A: 

We often get calls about intriguing stories. What drew you to follow this particular one?

After that phone call, I started poking around John Grasson’s website lostshipofthedesert.com. I got lost in the tales, the yarn he’d been unraveling for more than a decade. John catalogs references to the ship in books, newspapers and the like – I couldn’t believe the sheer number. I wanted to know more about how this paradox could be so persistent.”

Read the rest from In California, a roundup of stories from newsrooms across the USA TODAY Network and beyond.