Warm Springs Camp and the Gold Hill Mill

The famous swimming pool was clearly built by a
professional firm.

 The Warm Springs Camp is one of Death Valley's most well known and most well preserved ghost towns. It truly is a ghost town, with empty buildings and complete silence. The ghostly wind in the cottonwoods and the willows makes the atmosphere a perfect setting for ghosts. Warm Springs is also home to Death Valley's famous pool, filled seasonally with rainwater.

The Warm Springs camp dates back seventy-five years, back to the 1880s when water rights were first issued for this dependable water source. It was first permanently settled in the early 1930s when it appeared as Indian Ranch on USGS maps. Louise Grantham, to be the owner until the closure in the 1980s, patented a claim here in February 1933 to build a small gold mill to process gold ore from nearby Gold Hill and its associated mines. It was at this time the Gold Hill Mill was built; a stranger amalgamation of equipment is hard to come by. More on this later.

Trabuco Canyon Tin

Santa Ana Tin Mining Co. Mill as it was.
(Historic pictures from USC Library)

Unknown to most, Trabuco Canyon in the Santa Ana Mountains was a hotbed for underground activity.

Just in the backyard of suburban Orange County, the Santa Ana Mountains are a haven for those wishing to escape the concrete jungle into something a bit more concrete free.

Trabuco canyon is one of the major canyons of the San Juan Creek watershed and holds a natural stream that flows almost all the time in certain places. All through this canyon are remnants of the past; be they old fences, historic cabins, or ancient oak trees. While many people visit this canyon with its dirt road and numerous hiking opportunities each day, most are not aware of the history that lay just off the road.

The Ruth Mine

The Ruth Mine is probably the most intact mining camp left in the Argus Mountains, just north of Trona, California. Several mines have been located here, all meeting the same imminent fate. The first mine here was the Grahm-Jones Mine, located in 1889 by Doug Grahn and S.S. Jones. The duo worked the mine until 1917, when Jones pulled out. Grahm worked alone until 1930 when two speculators gave Grahm a hefty grubstake fund from Fred Austin and one Dr. Evans to save the mine from the tax bill. Unfortunately Grahm was robbed of his money and died a week later.

Eureka Dunes

The Eureka Dunes are some of the highest dunes in North America, rising more than 680 feet above the floor of Eureka Valley, and are an imposing mountain of sand against the stark Last Chance Mountains. These dunes are the highest in California and are unique for the otherworldly tone they produce.  In certain conditions these dunes hum or boom with a sound that resonates through the entire valley, an etherial vibration that appears out of the arid desert.

A Forgotten WWII Bunker

Looking inside

Recently I have started summer work at a local park, and eventually I heard rumors of a forgotten World War Two bunker up in the park's hills. After brief research I found it did exist, but finding the location was all up to me.

It took some time but was not terribly difficult once I figured out what to look for. Today (the day this post was written) myself and a friend made the steep hike (430+ vertical over half a mile) up the ridge to find this forgotten relic of chaos.

Hungry Bill's Ranch: A Guide

View up to Sentinel Peak from Hungry Bill's Ranch

The Eastern Panamint Mountains are rather barren and hostile to easy living. Every so often, however, is a lush paradise for all weary travelers. The springs in some of these major canyons off West Side road are fairly high yield and can maintain year-long streams in the canyon bottom. Johnson Canyon is one of these canyons.

The Tucki Mine

The remaining Tucki Cabin

The scenery overtakes you long before the road reaches the site. Towering canyons and broad vistas are far more attractive than any artificial feature of the Tucki Mine road. The road begins by slithering off of Emigrant Canyon Road along the base of Tucki Mountain, a rather stand-alone peak of the Panamints, providing unique view of the valley below. Soon enough the driver is engulfed by the orange whirls of Telephone Canyon, so named for the Skidoo-Rhyolite telephone line that ran though it. The driver splits off into a side canyon, and enters a towering and broad gorge separating Tucki from the rest of the Panamints. Cresting the pass, the view of Furnace Creek dominates the horizon and the road descends into the head of a canyon that contains various mining relics.