Ballarat, California

Last updated

Ballarat
Ballarat California.jpg
Ballarat, California
California Locator Map with US.PNG
Red pog.svg
Ballarat
Location in California
Usa edcp location map.svg
Red pog.svg
Ballarat
Ballarat (the United States)
Coordinates: 36°02′52″N117°13′24″W / 36.04778°N 117.22333°W / 36.04778; -117.22333
Country United States
State California
County Inyo County
Elevation
[1]
1,079 ft (329 m)
ZIP code
93592
Area codes 442/760
FIPS code06-03680
GNIS feature ID252847 [1]

Ballarat is an unincorporated community in Inyo County, California. [1]

Contents

Today, Ballarat is a virtual ghost town. It was founded in 1897 as a supply point for the mines in the canyons of the Panamint Range. A quarter-mile to the south is Post Office Springs, a reliable water source used since the 1850s. George Riggins, an immigrant from Australia, gave Ballarat its name when he proposed it should be named for Ballarat, Victoria.[ citation needed ]

History

Early mining days

The town was founded in 1897. [2] In its heydayfrom 1897 to 1905Ballarat had 400 to 500 residents. It hosted seven saloons, three hotels, a Wells Fargo station, post office (that opened in 1897), [2] school, a jail and morgue, but no churches. Ballarat was a place for miners and prospectors to resupply and relax.

The town began to decline when the Ratcliff Mine, in Pleasant Canyon east of town, suspended operations. Other mines nearby also began to play out, and in 1917 the post office closed [2] and all that remained were a few diehard prospectors and desert rats.

After the mines, "colorful characters" and a hippie festival

Highway marker 3.5 miles West of Ballarat Ballarat-main-highway-plaque.jpg
Highway marker 3.5 miles West of Ballarat

Seldom Seen Slim (Charles Ferge) was the sole resident of Ballarat from approximately 1918 until his 1968 death at the nearby Trona Hospital, where he died of cancer. Slim claimed not to have bathed in twenty years except for sloshing water on his naked body while standing outdoors. After the town's one remaining adobe building degraded beyond liveability, Slim lived in a Volkswagen and house trailer. Slim was the 28th and final person to be interred at Ballarat's boot hill. He used to say, "Just bury me where the digging's easy." [3]

In the 1960s, Charles Manson and the "Manson Family" of killers moved into a ranch south of Ballarat, and left graffiti in the town. It is theorized that the green pickup truck left in Ballarat belonged to him. The 1969 movie Easy Rider has a scene filmed in Ballarat. After arriving in the town, Peter Fonda's character, Wyatt, removes his Rolex watch and throws it away before he and Dennis Hopper's character, Billy, head east on their motorcycles towards New Orleans.

On Easter weekend, 1971, about two thousand people attended a "hippy" celebration at Ballarat, [4] when about two hundred of the attendees contracted hepatitis from contaminated drinking water. [5]

Early 21st century

Former Ballarat resident George Novak Ballarat's resident.JPG
Former Ballarat resident George Novak

In the year 2018 Ballarat had three full-time residents, Rocky Novak and his two dogs, Potlicker and Brownie. On afternoons and weekends Rocky would run the general store, which primarily catered to tourists. Novak was featured in the 2018 film vignette "The Mayor of Ballarat" by Mickey Todiwala and Monika Delgado. [6] The five-minute character piece featured a montage of various Ballarat locations with a voiceover narrated by Rocky describing his life in the town, while interjecting his various musings on human nature. [6]

Current

At some point ca. 2020 Novak moved to nearby Trona CA, and Ballarat's general store was then managed by other nearby residents. There are currently approximately two fulltime town residents. [7] [8]

Ballarat is used as a meeting point for four-wheel-drive expeditions into the Panamint Range and Death Valley, and in winter up to 300 people camp in the grounds of the town. The town was recently used as a set to tell the story of the Ballarat Bandit.

Ballarat was featured in an episode of Top Gear USA and the movie Obselidia.

The town has a ZIP Code of 93592, and is inside area codes 442 and 760.

Ballarat in fiction

Ballarat has featured in Western fiction including Hellbound for Ballarat (1970) by Nelson C. Nye and Bounty Hunt at Ballarat (1973) by Clayton Matthews.

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Death Valley National Park</span> National park in California and Nevada, United States

Death Valley National Park is an American national park that straddles the California–Nevada border, east of the Sierra Nevada. The park boundaries include Death Valley, the northern section of Panamint Valley, the southern section of Eureka Valley and most of Saline Valley.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Calico, California</span> Place in California, United States

Calico is a ghost town and former mining town in San Bernardino County, California, United States. Located in the Calico Mountains of the Mojave Desert region of Southern California, it was founded in 1881 as a silver mining town, and was later converted into a county park named Calico Ghost Town. Located off Interstate 15, it lies 3 miles (4.8 km) from Barstow and 3 miles from Yermo. Giant letters spelling CALICO are visible, from the highway, on the Calico Peaks behind it. Walter Knott purchased Calico in the 1950s, and rebuilt all but the five remaining original buildings to look as they did in the 1880s. Calico received California Historical Landmark #782, and in 2005 was proclaimed by then-Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to be California's Silver Rush Ghost Town.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Panamint Range</span> Mountain range in Death Valley, California, U.S.

The Panamint Range is a short rugged fault-block mountain range in the northern Mojave Desert, within Death Valley National Park in Inyo County, eastern California. Dr. Darwin French is credited as applying the term Panamint in 1860 during his search for the fabled Gunsight Lode. The orographic identity has been liberally applied for decades to include other ranges.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Places of interest in the Death Valley area</span>

Places of interest in the Death Valley area are mostly located within Death Valley National Park in eastern California.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Freeman Junction, California</span> Former settlement in California, United States

Freeman Junction, a ghost town in Kern County, California, USA, was first homesteaded in the early 1870s. Freeman S. Raymond built a stage coach station here to accommodate travelers between the desert mines and Los Angeles. A group of Native Americans who were defending their homes and families in 1909 killed off the homesteaders and burned the stage station, after which the property lay dormant for several years. It was re-homesteaded in the 1920s by Clare C. Miley, who was born in 1900, and his wife. By the 1930s their small stone cabin became a gas station/car repair and later, a restaurant and some mining activities dominated the site. In 1953 a post office was planned, but never materialized and residents had to travel seven miles to Inyokern to collect their mail. By June, 1978, the town had died once again and the remains of the town have since been removed by passersby. Today, the site has reverted to its natural state and nothing remains.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Panamint City, California</span> Unincorporated community in California, United States

Panamint City is a ghost town in the Panamint Range, near Death Valley, in Inyo County, California, US. It is also known by the official Board of Geographic Names as Panamint. Panamint was a boom town founded after silver and copper were found there in 1872. By 1874, the town had a population of about 2,000. Its main street was one mile (1.6 km) long. Panamint had its own newspaper, the Panamint News. Silver was the principal product mined in the area. The town is located about three miles northwest of Sentinel Peak. According to the National Geographic Names Database, NAD27 latitude and longitude for the locale are 36°07′06″N117°05′43″W, and the feature ID number is 1661185. The elevation of this location is identified as being 6,280 feet AMSL. The similar-sounding Panamint Springs, California, is located about 25.8 miles at 306.4 degrees off true north near Panamint Junction.

The Timbisha are a Native American tribe federally recognized as the Death Valley Timbisha Shoshone Band of California. They are known as the Timbisha Shoshone Tribe and are located in south central California, near the Nevada border. As of the 2010 Census the population of the Village was 124. The older members still speak the ancestral language, also called Timbisha.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sandon, British Columbia</span> Place in British Columbia, Canada

Sandon is in the foothills of the Selkirk Mountains in the West Kootenay region of southeastern British Columbia. The near ghost town lies off BC Highway 31A, and is at the confluence of Sandon Creek into Carpenter Creek. By road, the place is about 14 kilometres (9 mi) east of New Denver and 43 kilometres (27 mi) west of Kaslo.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Panamint Valley</span> Basin in the Mojave Desert, California

The Panamint Valley is a long basin located east of the Argus and Slate ranges, and west of the Panamint Range in the northeastern reach of the Mojave Desert, in eastern California, United States.

<i>Desert Rat Scrap Book</i> Former humor publication in California (1945-1967)

The Desert Rat Scrap Book was a (roughly) quarterly, southwestern humor publication based in Thousand Palms, California. DRSB was published in editions of 10,000 to 20,000 copies, whenever its creator, Harry Oliver had sufficient material, and money enough to pay the printer. Forty-six issues were printed and distributed via Southern California bookstores and newsstands, and by mail worldwide. DRSB was devoted to lore, legends, lies and laughs of the American Southwest region, especially featuring prospectors and other desert rats. The publication was launched in late 1945 and ran through early 1967.

Leechtown is at the confluence of the Leech River into the Sooke River in southern Vancouver Island, British Columbia. The ghost town, off BC Highway 1 is about 59 kilometres (37 mi) by road northwest of Victoria.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Searles Valley, California</span> Census-designated place in California, United States

Searles Valley is a census-designated place (CDP) in the Searles Valley of the Mojave Desert, in northwestern San Bernardino County, California.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Trona, San Bernardino County, California</span> Unincorporated community in San Bernardino County, California, United States

Trona is an unincorporated community in San Bernardino County, California. In 2015 it had a population of approximately 1,900. Trona is at the western edge of Searles Lake, a dry lake bed in Searles Valley, southwest of Death Valley. The town takes its name from the mineral trona, abundant in the lakebed. It is about 170 miles (274 km) northeast of Los Angeles, on State Route 178. The ZIP code is 93562.

Lookout City is a former settlement in the Mojave Desert, in Inyo County, California. It lay at an elevation of 3579 feet.

Norton's Landing or Norton's, was a steamboat landing on the Colorado River, in what was then Yuma County, Arizona Territory. Today it is in La Paz County, Arizona. Nortons Landing is 52 miles upriver from Yuma, Arizona 4 miles above Picacho, California and 18 miles below the Clip, Arizona landing. It lies on a rocky point of land next to the river at 215 feet of elevation just east of Red Cloud Wash and Black Rock Wash, where roads to the district mines in the mountains met the Colorado River.

Hedges, later renamed Tumco, is a locale, a ghost town, site of a former mining town, in Imperial County, California. It lies at an elevation of 617 feet / 188 meters along the Tumco Wash in the Cargo Muchacho Mountains. Nearby is the Hedges Cemetery at an elevation of 643 feet, at 32°53′04″N114°49′52″W.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lake Panamint</span>

Lake Panamint is a former lake that occupied Panamint Valley in California during the Pleistocene. It was formed mainly by water overflowing through the Owens River and which passed through Lake Searles into the Panamint Valley. At times, Lake Panamint itself overflowed into Death Valley and Lake Manly.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Potash wars (California)</span> Conflict over potash deposits in the Searles Valley of California between 1910 and 1915

The Potash wars were a series of events that took place from 1910 to 1915 in the Searles Valley near Searles Lake, a dry lake, near the current town of Trona in the San Bernardino County of California. The Potash wars gained national and international news at the time due to the involvement of famous lawman Wyatt Earp and the importance of the valley's supply of potash at the time. Potash is an important crop fertilizer and the Searles Valley was a major supplier in the 1910s.

References

  1. 1 2 3 U.S. Geological Survey Geographic Names Information System: Ballarat, California
  2. 1 2 3 Durham, David L. (1998). California's Geographic Names: A Gazetteer of Historic and Modern Names of the State. Clovis, Calif.: Word Dancer Press. p. 1145. ISBN   1-884995-14-4.
  3. Smith, Dave (August 18, 1968). "Seldom Seen Slim Laid to Rest in Boot Hill". Los Angeles Times . Retrieved February 24, 2022.
  4. "Death Valley Gets Hippie Rock Mob". The Desert Sun. USA Today. April 5, 1971. p. 3. Retrieved February 24, 2022.
  5. Wild West: Ballarat P&G Society. By L. Rick. Sep. 22, 2005. Retrieved Aug. 19, 2023.
  6. 1 2 Todiwala, Mickey (June 26, 2018). "The Mayor of Ballarat". Vimeo.
  7. Highlights of Ballarat, California – May 2020 Dave's-Travel-Corner. By Dave Levart. Nov. 24, 2020. Retrieved Aug. 19, 2023.
  8. Ballarat - A Ghost Town DesertUSA. By Len Wilcox. 2023. Retrieved Aug. 19, 2023.