Joe: How do we make our scary underground hotel entrance look less like a portal to hell?
Sam: I got it! Geraniums!
Minutes later, the place filled up with hungry tourists. With the white manʼs government shut down, this is about the only food available in this part of Death Valley.
Sam: Now that the borax mine is tapped out, nobody needs our railroad anymore. What should we do?
Joe: Letʼs build a four-diamond hotel at the end of the line to lure rich people from Los Angeles into the middle of nowhere, then start a big media campaign to convince Congress to make the land around it a national park so people wonʼt be scared to come to a place named Death Valley.
Sam: Sounds good to me!
And thatʼs pretty much what happened.