Wikipedia
Cow Camp, located in Joshua Tree National Park, was associated with cattle rustling in the 1880s and 1890s. It was then later used as a line camp for cattle ranching. A stone chimney, two small dams, watering troughs and a well remain. One dam was built by local rancher and character William F. Keys.
The camp was first established by the "McHaney Gang" in the late 1880s. Cattle rustlers used the camp into the 1890s. Jim McHaney reputedly murdered the discoverer of the Desert Queen Mine before losing it to a bank, then sold Cow Camp in 1894 to George Myers. McHaney eventually was convicted of counterfeiting $20 gold pieces in gold-plated lead and was sentenced to seventeen years in jail. In the 1920s Bill Keys, who had inherited McHaney's holdings, took over Cow Camp as part of his ranching operation.
Usage examples of "cow camp".
There was a cattle trail along it, leading to an alpine pasture with what, on his map, seemed to be a cow camp.
Why, two, three days ago, I et at a cow camp run by Nelson Storey, who was takin' cows to Montana.
For long years afterward I missed the stillness of the Big Cypress, the slow time of those horseback days, the hunting and fishing for the cow camp, the slow cooking fires, the simple sun-warmed tools of iron, wood, and leather, the resin scent of the pine ridges, the stomp of hoof and bawl of cattle, the wild things glimpsed, wild creatures, the echoing silence pierced far and near by the sharp cry of a woodpecker or the dry sizzle of a rattler, and always the soft blowing of my woods pony, a small short-bodied roan.
So a mountain man or cow camp cook could make a tolerable mug of Arbuckle Brand in a tin can, over an open fire, a mile or more above sea level with alkali water.
I recall a man in a cow camp who was a-reading to us about some old battle the Greeks had fought a time long ago, and suddenly I was all asweat and my breath was coming hard, and I could feel a knife turning in my guts.