Various Places of Interest: California Edition Part II (Electric
Boogaloo)
1.
Garlock/The Ghost Town of Garlock
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| Garlock jail in the back. Allegedly Charles Manson inscribed his initials in there. |
An
unincorporated town in Kern County, CA, Garlock was also known as El
Paso City, Eugeneville, and Cow Wells. Garlock is close to the Burro
Schmidt tunnel as listed in the previous blog post. The story goes
that a Eugene Garlock hauled an eight stamp mill (a mill for
essentially grinding ore) from the town of Tehachapi. This was due to
there being a water supply and its central location for the various
mining districts in the area (there are over 14,000 mines surrounding
Garlock!). Apparently one of the places they supplied water to was
Randsburg around 1896.
Garlock’s
mill was flooded with ore, and other mills appeared in the area in
towns such as Visalia, Kelly, Smith, and more. It’s success mostly
came from the Yellow Aster Mine, and processing cyanide. At its
height, Garlock had two bars, two hotels, a stage depot, laundry,
dentist’s office, bakery, several blacksmiths, and a school...and
more! As business went up, a man named John Kelly was hired, a man
known for disliking carrying a gun on him, and was able to talk men
into surrendering without one. There was a “crossroads” of tents,
frames, and adobe buildings. There were as many as 300-700 hundred
people that lived in the town.
Apparently,
the town officially died the day the constable’s wife (Ida Kelly)
became postmistress. This was on April 10th, 1896. I am
not sure why this is, but if this woman’s name is still remembered
today, I can only guess the people really hated her. But this is not
the only reason Garlock went on a downhill. Nearby, Barstow and
Yellow Aster Mine built larger mills and railway, which I’m sure
attracted more people. But overall, once Eugene Garlock himself died
in 1907, the town was completely abandoned.
Interestingly,
the post office operated from 1896-1904, and then again from
1923-1926.
If
you go to Garlock today, there is very little left standing. Many of
the buildings are dilapidated and fallen to the ground, which
honestly isn’t surprising considering they are over 100 years old.
What is interesting is that, back in 1898, there was a fire in the
nearby town of Randsburg. The fire destroyed many of the buildings in
their business district, so many of the buildings in Garlock were
moved to Randsburg. I can see why many people left Garlock, since in
a way, their town was in a whole other place.
Two
last things that I found really interesting was that the old jail in
Garlock was apparently visited by Charles Manson at some point, where
he carved his name in to the wall.
And
post heyday Garlock’s school was turned into a brothel during the
1920’s.
There
is a really good blog post by secretmines.com that I’ll link below.
It has really interesting information about the town.
Today,
Garlock seems to be privately owned. From pictures I’ve seen, there
are many parts fenced off, which is probably for the best, since
people love to vandalise things.
It
is landmark number 671 in California’s Historical Landmarks.
2.
Saltdale/Koehn Dry Lake
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| The salt from the lake has dilapidated any buildings that were left |
Another
unincorporated town in Kern County, Saltdale (a moist play
geographically) was founded for the basis of salt harvesting from the
Koehn Dry Lake beside it, in 1914; though the Diamond Salt Company
started development between 1911-12. Supposedly, back in the day
desert Natives would store the salt from the dry lake. There were
various salt companies that worked in the area, from Diamond to
Consolidated Salt, to Fremont Salt (1919-1927), and Long Beach Salt
(1928, who still works there today. In its heyday, the town boomed
and there were tons upon tons of salt shipped to the local areas.
Saltdale had a key location in being so close to Los Angeles and San
Joaquin Valley. Under the Consolidated Salt Company, business did
especially well, though there was a problem with getting salt
transported with South Pacific, shipments would be delayed five
months at a time. By 1924, business started to go into a slump, and
with a water shortage, the salt output went from a previous 240 tons
a week in 1914, to 6 tons a day (or 48 tons a week).
Very
interestingly, the school from the aforementioned Garlock was shipped
to Saltdale, though it turned out to be a pretty bad idea. The
building itself was “little more than a shack”, the school had
the highest rate of absences in the whole county.
In
1925, Saltdale’s output was the lowest so far, at 6900 tons that
year. In 1927, the output went back up to 17,000 tons. That same
year, the Long Beach Salt Company took over. By the time they did,
there was only a school, post office, company store, and service
station in the area. Things started to look up. The school was
repaired, repainted, and set record attendance rates.
There
were still problems though with the area. Saltdale itself was pretty
isolated, the nearest amenities such as a jail was still 16 miles
away (which was really far back then before modern cars) in
Randsburg. The nearest hospital was in Red Mountain. Many women gave
birth at home, and, “during the same week that a boy was born to
one family, in December, 1931, the infant daughter of another family
died.”
There
was proposal in 1931 to merge the school disctricts of Saltdale and
Cantil, though it wouldn’t happen for another 20 years. Despite the
30’s being the decade of depression, the company was prosperous.
The 40’s was a decade that essentially shut everything down. From
gypsum being found in the salt, limiting their business to lack of
rain, by 1949, there were only three workers left. The post office
closed in 1950, and school district was done in 1951. The mill that
was there remained and was mechanized. The mill still stood in May of
1980, but a year a half later it was gone.
There
were various claims for the area, but essentially were all ruled null
and void in 1975 by the IBLA. By this time, there were four workers,
and none lived in Saltdale.
The
dry lake itself is at the base of the El Paso Mountains near the Last
Chance Canyon. Years later, the area of the lake was used for filming
Star Wars, but I don’t know how true that is.
Pictures
of the Salt Lake can be found on the digital desert website, which
I’ll link here: http://digital-desert.com/a/trona/sd01.html
For
a very thorough history, please read the post on this site:
https://vredenburgh.org/mining_history/pages/saltdale.html
Atlas
Obscura page with more pictures:
[SOURCES]
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