A DESERT LEGEND.

Byline: - Holly Andres

For all her colorful flying exploits in her own barnstorming shows and involvement in Hollywood stunt flying in the late 1920s and early 1930s, Florence Lowe ``Pancho'' Barnes may be best remembered in stories surrounding the golden age of experimental jet plane testing in the High Desert.

Barnes - whose nickname is said to have been a corruption of Sancho Panza, Don Quixote's travel companion - roamed Mexico dressed as a man and learned to fly in 1928. Two years later, she broke the women's air speed record that Amelia Earhart had set.

In 1935, Barnes bought a remote working ranch outside Rosamond and provided the nearby Muroc Air Base - now Edwards Air Force Base - with pork and dairy products.

Evolving into the Rancho Oro Verde Fly Inn Dude Ranch, her desert hacienda complex included a bar, restaurant, lodging and air strip. It became an oasis for pilots in Muroc's Army Air Corps Fighter Test Section.

Barnes endeared herself to the pilots because she could talk flying and had a ribald sense of humor that they appreciated. In his autobiography, Chuck Yeager said Pancho's place was ``the only place in sight to unwind and have a good time.''

Barnes lost her ranch in the mid-1950s, when the government expanded the air base, and later battled cancer. But long after her 1975 death from a heart attack, Barnes is still remembered each year at the site of her former oasis on the base.

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no caption (Florence Lowe ``Pancho'' Barnes)