Bessie was one of the main characters who provided the impetus for the construction of Scotty's Castle in what is now Death Valley National Park in California.

After Mat Roy's family lost their moderate fortune in the Panic of 1893, Bessie was forced to break off her engagement to him, and immediately transfer to Cornell University.

Among the tasks she undertook was taking women of ill repute into her own home in the hope that exposure to genteel surroundings would provide them with moral rehabilitation.

In 1915, Albert Johnson decided to visit Scotty in Death Valley in the hopes of seeing the mine he had been promised a one-third share in.

After a few years, Bessie grew curious about the appeal of Death Valley and began joining her husband on his annual outings with Scotty.

Because of a lack of heirs, when Albert died of cancer in 1948 he left their Death Valley properties to the Gospel Foundation, a charitable organization that he had created in 1946 for that very purpose.