Ghost Towns and Abandoned Mines

 November 2024

Being the size of Connecticut provides for a lot of space for a lot of things.  There are plenty of abandoned mines and a few ghost towns in all this space.  This post is going to look at a couple of those.

To the north and east, nearly at the park's eastern boundary thirty miles from Furnace Creek lies the ghost town of Rhyolite.  Only a little more than 100 years ago this was a thriving and prosperous community.  Rhyolite began showing on the map in early 1905 but was done for by 1910.  The gold mine that sparked Rhyolite to life was owned by Charles Schwab but even this financial genius couldn't keep the mine from playing out in a short time.

It's amazing though, how developed the town was within just two years of its inception.  The bank, a cornerstone of the community was built from the git-go.  It was a three-story, poured concrete and brick structure with a basement that housed the post office.

Even with its remoteness the bank, and others, had modern conveniences such as electricity and indoor plumbing.  But the town was a one horse operation.  The playing out of the mine by 1910 was a death nell for the whole community.  The one and only economic engine was dead.  By 1920 Rhyolite wasn't even a shell of its former self.  Just a few fragments here and there.  Most buildings were moved and repurposed or scavenged of construction material and scattered who knows where.

Hard to believe that this derelict once had Italian marble stairs, stained glass windows and brokerage offices in addition to its core function as a bank.  When the bank was built it cost (in today's dollars) $3,050,000.

What got stripped and what was left seems to have no rhyme or reason.  Nothing was left of the interior and even some of the poured concrete structure was parsed out while leaving seemingly expensive brick.

A building that was left more intact and actually had restoration work done on it (probably in the 1980/90's) , the train depot, still looks pretty good.  It is easy to tell that a lot of pride went into the construction of the depot.  It must have felt almost like a work of art when it was "alive".  Now there is not even the slightest hint of the railroad track that ran along its platform.

A hold-over from the active rail days was a caboose that had been converted into a gas station.  How this thing hasn't collapsed in on itself is nothing short of a miracle.

And as further evidence that Rhyolite was a real town is the remains of the former jail house.

And lastly, the remains of a mercantile directly across the street from the bank.

As we began our return trip, south on highway 374, we turned onto a dirt track of several miles that weaved its way through the desert to the foot of the Funeral Mountains and the Keane Wonder Mine.  Death Valley is littered with hundreds of mines, abandoned and mostly hand-dug horizontal shafts.  But the Keane Wonder Mine was a large commercial operation with significant machinery carrying out the mining of both horizontal and vertical shafts.  But it too is abandoned and like most abandoned mines it was just walked away from, leaving equipment where it sat.

Above is highway 374 looking south, down the valley towards Furnace Creek.  Funeral mountains to the left.

Our son and tour guide, Chad, standing on the edge of the mine's parking area looking south, down the valley.  It's late afternoon and we are getting bathed in a golden glow of light.

The Keane Wonder Mine was made of several shafts whose ore was carted to a central collection point for transporting over the mountain to the railroad via a tram.

The rails are gone but it easy to see where ore carts trolleyed their load up the ramp to the tram gondolas.

Even after all these decades the wooden structures of the tram look like they are ready to go to work.  While the desert is an extremely harsh environment it also is good at preserving.  Nature does reclaim things, but at an incredibly slow rate.

Miner weren't exactly a tidy crowd.  Discarded machinery parts, pipes and whatever lays where it fell.  It is amazing how much of this landscape is a junkyard.  Fortunately you don't see it unless you are right on top of it.  Most visitors never have a clue all this stuff is out here.

Click on the pic to enlarge and see all the junk.

Chad and I are going to hit a couple of canyons tomorrow.  More on that later.