2006 01 NV CA

2006 02 25 Salton Sea to Lone Pine, Atolia

This morning I left Calipatria very early, thinking I would get back to Truckee late, but today. I didn't. On 395 about 20 miles south of Ridgecrest is the ghost town and mine at Atolia. Here is a bit of history. Here is some more history, and a few photos.

This was a tungsten mine, and as that article said, there were once 2000 people living here. Now the property is for sale and it is hard to tell that anyone lived here. (This was another site that made me glad I had a cell phone and could get a cell. I called the number on the sign, talked to the owner, got permission to go in and photograph, and got a nice history all at once, all within 30 minutes of first stopping.)

The white building with the yellow tank is probably the newest mill building. It contains one crusher and a lot of other bits and pieces. It does not look as if it has operated in 30 or 40 years. The floor was littered with small ceramic cylinders which were loaded into the crusher to pulverize the ore.

The right photo in the above row and the left below show what is left of the large concrete piers that must have held the previous generation of crushing machinery.

The left photo above and the right photo below are in what must have been a relatively recent residence. Nicely trashed.

The right two photos above are in what must have been a lab or some sort of assay facility. There were thousands of bags of powdered ore strewn around, and there are the remains of a lot of machinery and equipment about.

I don't know what the building with no roof must have been, but there were dozens of these barrels around, many of them stamped "olive oil". I don't think they were using much olive oil here.

The right two photos above are another more recent lab. Ovens, equipment, storage..

Last is the large and newest mill building. One rolling crusher is left, and the remains of a lot of other ore moving and handling equipment.

So after spending about 6 hours here I went on about 80 miles to Lone Pine, arriving well after dark.