Dr. Bentel spent many hours touring, photographing, and researching Death Valley and its inhabitants. He planned to publish a book on the subject using Shorty Harris (1856-1934), a long time Death Valley prospector, as a focal point. The bulk of Series III consists of personal notes, news clippings, magazine articles, and copies of books pertaining to various aspects of Death Valley. Outlines and manuscripts for the proposed book are also included. The materials created by Dr. Bentel in this series are mostly undated. Dates supplied generally represent publication dates for books published by others and included in this collection.

Dr. Bentel arranged these materials by subject, placing notes and commentary, articles, and portions of manuscripts surrounding a particular theme in the same folder. The materials in this series were left in original order within each folder and the folder labeled with either a title supplied by Dr. Bentel or with a title that suggests the subject of the majority of its contents.

The materials in this Series are subdivided into four groups: Correspondence, Project organization, Research files, Manuscripts, and Publications by others, followed by an alphabetic arrangement within each box. Where both manuscript pages and research materials were contained in the same folder, placement was based on the predominant format within that folder.

Materials in the “Publications by others” group consist of complete, or nearly complete, photocopies of published books. Published articles from periodicals and other small publications used as research material by Dr. Bentel were left with the research files and are not included in this section.