Current location:	Los Angeles County
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Entry tags:	abandoned places, industrial, pacific coast us, photography

Abandoned Places – US Hwy 395 (Part 2a)
Like I said in previous posts, I was extremely busy this summer exploring and photographing places new and old. Normally I don’t like going back to old sites as I prefer to keep the image of the place locked from the first visit. On this trip, my partner and I visited 4 locations on and close to US Highway 395 in the western Mojave Desert.


1. The Hawes Communications Bunker (Visit #4 because she wanted to see it);
2. The Atolia Tungsten Mines (4 miles square – 100+ mine openings);
3. Randsburg, CA (A Class C “living” ghost town – 300 houses, 78 residents);
4. XXXXX Minimum Security Federal Prison Camp (This required two visits)

The Atolia Mine District could be easily described as a vast but unnoticed wasteland on the edge of US Hwy 395. To the untrained eye, the passerby on the highway would only see a few towers and a small, care-worn industrial complex. In fact, these few visible sites don’t truly indicate the extent of a nearly 40 square mile district that once included a town (west of the highway) and over 400 mine shafts or shallow drifts which employed nearly a thousand personnel.

The area that we explored lay on the east side of the highway and required extreme caution. This area contained probably between 100 to 200 pits, shafts and drifts; numerous unstable piles of debris and mine tailings; equipment, and industrial waste. Boys and girls, this is a very dangerous place. Subsequent to our visit, I learned that the property is privately owned and that owner is well known for calling the county sheriff on anyone she sees in the complex.

Atolia (The Wasteland – Mines and exteriors)






These are the ruins typically visible


Mine towers and equipment lay crumpled and rusted between 6 to 8 foot high piles of mine tailings (scraps)


Just around a pile of tailings, was a steep angled pit leading to this drift mine entrance


Nearby was one of dozens of vertical shaft mines that dropped away into the inky darkness


This is looking straight down.. Kids, don’t try this on your adventures




Literally behind many of the various piles of debris were mine shafts or drifts angling into the depths




Looking towards the ore processing buildings and warehouses










Steel strapping and casing ribbons.. Spools of these by the score spilled out like tapeworms from the corpse of a nearby support building










Settling tank – settling in more ways than one

Folks, I really can not stress enough just how dangerous this site is. Besides the deep, dark holes in the ground (you can see as many were covered), there is large amounts of unidentifiable waste, chemicals and decaying machinery, rusty sharp things and such. The nearest help is 30 miles away, assuming you can even get ahold of them.

Links:
http://vredenburgh.org/mining_history/pages/west_mojave_desert.htm#ATOLIA
http://www.high-desert-memories.com/atolia.html
http://www.goldledge.com/history/docs_html/metals_san_bernardino.html

Next - The ore sorting and assaying house