Gateway to Death Valley and the Ghosts of Ballarat

Ridgecrest calls itself a gateway to Death Valley, and it earns the name. Drive north on the Trona and Trona Wildrose roads and you cross the empty floor of the Panamint Valley, walled in by the tall Panamint Range, whose highest summit, Telescope Peak, reaches above eleven thousand feet. Beyond lies Death Valley National Park, one of the hottest, driest places on the continent.

Along this lonely route sit the bones of a ghost town called Ballarat. Founded in eighteen ninety-seven as a supply stop for miners working the canyons of the Panamints, it was named by an Australian immigrant after a gold town back home. At its peak it held four or five hundred souls, seven saloons, three hotels, a school, and a jail, but not a single church.

The post office closed in nineteen seventeen. Colorful prospectors with names like Seldom Seen Slim and Shorty Harris lived and died here. And in the nineteen sixties, the Manson Family holed up at nearby Barker Ranch.

An old truck said to be tied to that dark chapter still rusts in the dust where the town once stood.