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StrangeOutdoors 2/18/18 StrangeOutdoors 2/18/18

The Strange disappearances from Donnell Vista Point in the Stanislaus National Forest

Nita Mayo, 2005, Patricia Sue Tolhurst, 2014, Breck Phelps, 2016, Donnell Vista Point, Highway 108, Stanislaus National Forest, Tuolumne County, California.

Revised July 2024

Background the Donnell Vista Point disappearances

Three people, Nita Mayo, Patricia Tolhurst, and Breck Phelps, have mysteriously disappeared in the area of California's beautiful Donnell Vista Point since 2005. Though the area has dangerous terrain, it seems possible that foul play was involved in one or more of the cases. To date, no sign of these missing visitors has ever been found despite huge searches in the area.

Summit District Ranger Molly Fuller said, “It is dangerous, but there’s a lot of dangerous places in the forest. There’s really no explanation for why people have parked there and disappeared. I have no explanation.”

The Donnell Fire ripped through the area in 2018, destroying 135 buildings and burning 36,450 acres, potentially destroying any evidence. Fortunately, the fire spared most of the area around the vista itself.

Where is the Donnell Vista point?

Donnell Vista is 15 miles east of Strawberry and 12 miles west of Kennedy Meadows Vista Point in Tuolumne County, California. Between them is the backcountry,y with Highway 10 situated close to it.

The viewing vista is down a winding quarter-mile trail from the parking lot and is surrounded by meandering tracks of pines and cedars, granite rock formations. It is a picturesque location where you can catch amazing views of the Dardanelles, the Middle Fork Stanislaus River Canyon, and the Donnell Reservoir. At the top is a steep, rocky slope with slippery rock areas. It’s a day-use area, not a campground, so you can’t stay there overnight.

The tract of land around Donnell Point is described as “large and vast” with “extreme changes in elevation, deep canyons with heavy foliage and cold, fast, running water that filled crevices and ledges."

The Donnell Point disappearances

The disappearance of Nita Mayo - 2005

Nita Mayo, 75, was born and raised in England and married an American soldier in the Air Force. The couple moved to the States and settled in Oklahoma. Mayo was employed as a licensed practical nurse at the Mt. Grant General Hospital Clinic in Hawthorne.

She enjoyed the outdoors and would often drive over to Yosemite or go over the pass to Tuolumne County and take a picnic basket. She was physically and mentally healthy.

Nita left her home in Hawthorne, Nevada, on Monday, August 8, 2005, and told a friend she was going on a shopping trip over the Sierra Nevada Mountains to the western side of the mountain range. She said she would go over Sonora Pass on State Route 108, return by evening, and go to work the next day. She is believed to have left her home at 11:00 a.m., but she did not arrive at work as planned.

Nita was 5'0 - 5'2, 140 pounds, with brown hair with highlights and brown/hazel eyes. She was wearing a gold mother's ring with a peridot stone, a pink stone, a blue stone, a purple stone on her right ring finger, and possibly a Celtic-style silver necklace with one blue and two pink stones in a small pendant. Clothing was unknown, but she usually wore cotton shirts, jeans or capri pants, and white sneakers or white sandals. She spoke with an English accent and wore prescription eyeglasses with oval-shaped lenses and gold wireframes.

When Nita didn’t report for work on Tuesday, August 9, her co-workers at Mount Grant General Hospital called the Mineral County Sheriff’s Department in Hawthorne and the Tuolumne and Mono County Sheriff’s departments.

On Wednesday, August 10, a Tuolumne County sheriff’s sergeant spotted Nita Mayo’s 1997 Mercury Sable station wagon at Donnell Vista and began a search of the immediate area before nightfall.

The keys were locked inside the car, which could also be opened with a keypad. Nita had bought souvenirs from the Strawberry General Store near Pinecrest on August 8th that were found in her locked car, along with her purse, wallet, and glasses. Missing from the car were her camera and prescription sunglasses. There was no sign of her at the scene, nor any evidence of foul play.

A Caltrans (California Department of Transportation) worker saw Nita’s car on the 8th and 9th at the Vista parking area, but because backpackers often parked there overnight, the worker didn’t think too much of it.

By then, Mayo’s children, Cindy, Shelley, Tracy and Pete, had flown in from Oklahoma, Tennessee and North Dakota. When they heard she was missing, they figured she had run off the road somewhere, but then they got the call her car was found at Donnell Vista on Sonora Pass, which caused even more concern for her safety.

When dogs searched the Vista Point area, they picked up no scent of her other than right at the car. Nita Mayo’s children searched for her for three or four months. Large, organized searches with volunteers were held every weekend, and Pete Mayo said he was out every day searching for his mom.

In September 2005, authorities announced they were seeking Jewel Jeanne Rice concerning Nita’s disappearance. In Mayo's case, she was not a suspect, but investigators believe she may have valuable information. Police stated Rice's vehicle had mechanical problems in the Sonora area on the day Mayo disappeared, and she was asking people for help. On August 12, she left Sonora without the car.

The family thinks that Nita met with foul play and has always suspected a man who had been a patient at Nita’s clinic in Hawthorne who showed up there claiming he’d heard Nita Mayo had disappeared but had been found. The man later failed a polygraph, but no arrest was ever made. Her daughter, Tracy, said, “They hadn’t even started the searches yet. He was really weird.”

Tracy drove 21 hours from her home in North Dakota to Midland, Texas, where the person of interest now lives. “I didn’t tell him I was coming,” she said. “I went alone, which probably wasn’t too smart. When I had some questions that needed answers.” She went to his place of work, sat there and waited for him. “When he saw me, I didn’t say a word,” she said. “He said, ‘Hello, Tracy. How are you?’ ” He was nervous as they talked, she said. But she extracted no new or potentially incriminating information from him.

Her family maintains that Nita was scared of heights, and so wouldn't have likely ventured to a precarious point for photographs.

News reports about Nita Mayo’s disappearance appeared in California, Nevada, Oklahoma and on news wires, and her sister in Cornwall, England, was interviewed by British news agencies. The search was also broadcast on “America’s Most Wanted” television show.

Pete, her son, said, “I know she’s not right around Donnell’s Vista. I crawled on my hands and knees around that place for weeks and found not one scrap of evidence. I know that place better than most locals. I scoured it for months. It’s hard to live with the fact that you let her down.”

She was declared legally dead in 2013. A bench was installed at the Vista dedicated to Nita, located on the rock overlooking the Vista point, which took over two years of work and organization to have installed. There is, additionally, a dedication plaque for her outside the Strawberry Store, which she visited on the way to Donnell Vista.

Patricia Sue Tolhurst - 2014

Patricia "Patty" Sue Tolhurst, 48, owned Patty’s Shack, a restaurant in East Sonora. She was last seen in Twain Harte on April 18, 2014.

On April 20, she mailed a letter to some friends saying she was going to Kennedy Meadows to "put her feet in the water."

On April 22, her white Toyota 4-Runner was found abandoned at Donnell Vista Point on Highway 108. Tolhurst's purse and other belongings were inside it.

Her loved ones stated she was having financial problems and may have been distraught over them at the time of her disappearance.

A search lasting over seven days yielded no clues to Patty’s whereabouts, and her case remains unsolved.

Thomas F. Kelley, Patty’s father, said Pat had been raised in the Bay Area but always had a fascination with nature. “She loved that whole area up there ever since she was very young,” he said. “She liked everything that had to do with the outdoors.”

She has never been heard from again.

Breck Phelps - 2016

Breck Phelps Donnell Vista disappearance

Breck Phelps, 68, disappeared from Donnell Vista while on a fishing trip in early October 2016. Near a trail leading down to the Stanislaus River, his Nissan Versa car was found a quarter-mile away. On October 5, the search was officially “scaled back” after a four-day search.

His cellphone had been powered down so searchers could not track him. Tuolumne County Search and Rescue was assisted by the National Guard out of Sacramento, a Black Hawk helicopter, an unmanned Stanislaus County aerial vehicle, heat-sensing equipment, California Highway Patrol helicopters, and six dog teams, over the course of the search. Boats were used to search the Donnell Reservoir.

Search and Rescue Sgt. Jeff Hunt said his crew approaches each search using the same procedure, but the terrain at Donnell Vista does “make it difficult to search. That area has extreme elevation changes within short distances, which can limit areas people can travel in due to cliff faces and trying to access areas over the top of large sections of granite to search. So access does pose a challenge."

No sign of Breck was ever found.

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