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.



The Warm Springs Camp was said by many visitors to be "the finest camp in Death Valley" and was indeed a luxury to have in the middle of the desert. It consists of five buildings, a few shacks, and a chicken coop. Oh and the famous swimming pool of Death Valley. For nearly fifty years it was the center of southern Death Valley and kept the last remaining prospectors in Butte Valley alive as a supply depot. The superintendent of Death Valley National Monument wrote in 1955 that

Looking into the center of the camp

Mrs. Grantham has undoubtedly the finest mining camp of any in the Monument. Her residence, the mess hail, shop, and generator building are all of substantial cement block construction and there are four frame buildings including a dormitory and two small houses. There are eight employees at present and this number may be increased to twelve or fifteen. The buildings are equipped with flush toilets, estimated at six, and shower baths.

Chicken Coop under a willow tree.

This camp was built to house workers for the nearby Grantham Talc Mine, of which it and the nearby talc mines was one of the largest talc producers in the country for a while. About eight workers lived here for most of the camp's life, which may have been extended to twelve or fourteen occasionally. By the mid 1970s the star had gone, leaving only a caretaker and a watchman of the mines and their families. Most of the mine workers had moved into Shoshone but the mine office still operated at the mines near Warm Springs.

The actual Warm Springs is about an eighth of a mile up a small canyon behind the camp, but provides enough water to allow a small stream to run through the camp. Many trees, some not native, are sustained by this water and at times the stream flows over a half mile down the canyon. This desert oasis is a pleasant place at all times of the year.

Looking at the foliage of Warm Springs Camp

Looking into the porch of the mess hall.

The industrial kitchen

Freezer in the Mess Hall

Retaining wall reinforced with old mine rail

The mess hall is in good shape, as in most of the buildings. They don't have much in the way of artifacts, but are all structurally sound and will stand for many years. Louise Grantham's old house has been maintained much in the way the Adopt-a-cabins have and is kept stocked with food.

Burned out cabin

Diving Board

Nearby Pit mine just down canyon.

Oil-burning engine.

The Gold Hill Mill did not operate very long, but does still have on site the following list from the DVNP Historic resource study:

The mill setup contains a power-driven arrastra; an oil-burning hot-shot engine that drove an elaborate arrangement of flywheels, a belt and pulley system, and drive shafts that operated the mill machinery; a Blake jaw crusher; a cone crusher; bumping and concentrating tables; a cylindrical ball mill; an ore bin and chute; an unloading platform; a conveyor system; and other related mining paraphernalia.

Again, such a random assortment I have not seen a parallel of.  The mill was apparently a problem from the start, which is what urged Louise Grantham to move into the talc industry.

Backside of this massive oil-burning engine.

Crankshaft

Mechanism

This was part of the ball crusher seen below

Gears and the like from the Ball Crusher

The Jaw crusher is seen in lower middle.

Old mechanical gold arrastra with dragstones still in place

Odd gearing

This was the ball crusher. Large drum with steel balls
inside to mash the ore.

Concentrating Table: basically a mechanical sluice box.