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Noonday Camp, also known as Mill City, Noonday City, and Tecopa, is a ghost town located in the Mojave Desert east of Tecopa in Inyo County, California.
Upper Noonday Camp is located at 35°48′39″N116°06′15″W / 35.81083°N 116.10417°W , while Lower Noonday Camp is located just south of it at 35°48′01″N116°06′05″W / 35.80028°N 116.10139°W .
The Finley Company built the town in the 1940s support the nearby War Eagle, Noonday, and Columbia lead mines. It was later used by the Anaconda Copper Company, who constructed the lead ore concentration mill during 1947–1948. The town was abandoned in 1972. Compared to other mining ghost towns in the region, Noonday Camp became a ghost town quite recently.
Lead mining ended in 1957 when the U.S. government reached its strategic stockpile goal. The Tecopa and Darwin lead mines - which worked three shifts during the war years - closed.
The remains of the mining operation can be found, collapsed timber structures, foundations, slabs, rock walls, and equipment pads.
The mill's large water tank marks the location. Near the now rapidly deteriorating mill and debris pool is the site of Lower Noonday Camp or "Married Mans Camp". 18 to 20 foundations can be found buried in the brush, along with a small graveyard, slag from the 1870s lead smelter, and a few adobe buildings.
Across the Western Talc Road and up the arroyo is a cliff-side dugout dwelling. A water pipe ran from the well to Upper Noonday Camp or "Single Mans Camp" on Furnace Creek Road, used by Anaconda's employees from 1949 until 1957, and then Western Talc's employees until 1972. It was abandoned, scavenged by the locals, and torn down in 1978.
Foundations of the supervisors and guest houses, several slabs that supported the kitchen, boarding house, and bunkhouses are evident, along with a lot of debris. Prominent is the cinder block vault that held the script currency the miners could use at the company commissary.
Roads from the site of Noonday Camp go to the Noonday and War Eagle mines. The large white open pit of the talc mine is on Western Talc Road. Talc went out of favor due to its asbestos content. Visible from Highway 127 and the Old Spanish Trail are the landmark Tecopa bins, built in 1944. One was for lead, the other talc. The lead ore was trucked to the UP siding at Dunn and shipped to smelters in Utah.
Tecopa is a census-designated place (CDP) in the Mojave Desert in southeast Inyo County, California, United States. Originally occupied by the Koso and Chemehuevi Indians, Whites began populating what would become the CDP in the late 19th century to support nearby mines. It is now better known for the natural hot springs in the northern part of the CDP. It was the subject of an article by John Gregory Dunne published in the Saturday Evening Post and reprinted in Dunne's book, Quintana & Friends, published by Dutton in 1978.
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.
Swansea is a former settlement and unincorporated community in Inyo County, California. It is located 8.5 miles (14 km) south of New York Butte, at an elevation of 3,661 ft (1,116 m).
Swansea is a ghost town in La Paz County in the U.S. state of Arizona. It was settled circa 1909 in what was then the Arizona Territory. It served as a mining town as well as a location for processing and smelting the copper ore taken from the nearby mines.
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 Calico Mountains of California are a mountain range located in the Mojave Desert. The range spans San Bernardino and Inyo counties in California.
Ivanpah was a short-lived silver mining town located in San Bernardino County, California, United States. It was founded in 1869 and existed until at least the mid-1880s.
The Cerro Gordo Mines are a collection of abandoned mines located in Cerro Gordo in the Inyo Mountains, Inyo County, near Lone Pine, California. Mining operations spanned 1866 to 1957, producing high grade silver, lead, zinc ore, and more rarely gold ore and copper ore. Some ore was smelted on site, but larger capacity smelters were eventually constructed along the shore of nearby Owens Lake.
Rochester was a silver-mining town in Pershing County, Nevada, USA, approximately 110 mi (180 km) east of Reno. It is now a ghost town. Lower Rochester is still accessible to visitors, but was largely destroyed by a wildfire in 2012; Upper Rochester has been buried under mine tailings of the more recent Coeur Rochester open pit mine.
Aldridge is a ghost town in Park County, Montana, United States. According to the book Ghost Towns of the Montana Prairie, the town was incorporated as Aldridge in 1906 but was earlier named Horr, and later Electric. Aldridge is a mining town that supplied coke and coal to the smelters for the Anaconda Copper Mining Company. Aldridge is located two miles north of the northern entrance to Yellowstone National Park.
Ibex Pass [el. 2,072 ft (632 m)] is a mountain pass in the Sperry Hills of Central-Southern California in the United States.
Kearsarge or Kearsarge City is a former mining settlement in Inyo County, eastern California. It was located high on the east slope of the Sierra Nevada, near Kearsage Pass, 8 miles (13 km) west of present-day town of Independence, California.
Carbonate, also known as Carbonate Camp, West Virginia, Virginia, and Carbonate City (1881-1939), is a ghost town located in Lawrence County, South Dakota, United States.
Etta, also known as Etta Camp and Etta Mine, is a ghost town in Pennington County, South Dakota, United States. It was a successful mining town, known for its discovery of the largest spodumene crystal ever found.
Roubaix, formerly known as Perry or Lewisville, is an unincorporated community in Lawrence County, South Dakota, United States. It is not monitored by the U.S. Census Bureau.
Terraville is a ghost town in Lawrence County, South Dakota, United States. It was founded in 1877 as a mining camp and later evolved into a town. It was purchased by the Homestake Mining Company and was destroyed in 1982 to make way for a new mine.
The Cripple Creek Gold Rush was a period of gold production in the Cripple Creek area from the late 1800s until the early 1900s. Mining exchanges were in Cripple Creek, Colorado Springs, Pueblo and Victor. Smelting was in Gillett, Florence, and (Old) Colorado City. Mining communities sprang up quickly, but most lasted only as long as gold continued to be produced. Settlements included:
Potosi or Potosi Camp, was called Crystal City in the 1870s, a mining ghost town in Clark County, Nevada. It lies at an elevation of 5705 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.
The International Smelting and Refining Company was a subsidiary of Anaconda Copper that operated primarily out of the International Smelter near Tooele, Utah. The International Smelter began operation in 1910 as a copper producer handling ores from Bingham Canyon and was expanded into a lead smelting operation in 1912. Copper smelting finished at International in 1946, and the lead smelter shut down in January 1972. The closure of the smelter would lead to the associated Tooele Valley Railway to be shut down ten years later in 1982. The company also handled several other Anaconda owned interests. After the shut down of several of the International Smelting sites, environmental reclamation has been performed by Anaconda Copper's successor company ARCO and the EPA Superfund program.
Municipalities and communities of Inyo County, California, United States | ||
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