Ballarat Ghost Town

From 1897 to 1917 Ballarat served as a supply and recreation center for miners in the Panamint Mountains and Death Valley. Ballarat springs, cemetery, and remaining ruins of adobe, tin and wood buildings are featured. At its peak the remote outpost boasted 7 saloons, one school, and no churches. The ghost town is included in the list of Death Valley ghost towns but is not located in the park.

Ballarat

Around 1897 another town in the vicinity of Panamint rose to prominence. This was Ballarat, named for an important Australian gold camp near Melbourne. It was located one-half mile north of Post Office Spring, which had served as a communications center and overnight stop for prospectors during the Panamint boom. The main mine, the RadcHffe, produced 15,000 tons or more of ore from 1898 to 1903. From 1927 to 1942 its tailings were cyanided with a reported recovery value of one quarter of a million dollars in gold. 2 In 1941 the Ballarat Mining and Milling Corporation, a Nevada company, bought property in the Slate and Panamint ranges in San Bernardino and Inyo counties. A Los Angeles company intended to make exhaustive metallurgical tests, paving the way for a projected modern fifty-ton reduction mill south of town to perform custom work. An assay office and metallurgical laboratory were to be part of the complex, 3 and once again Ballarat would see a resurgence of mining activity.

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Ballarat, in the process of heavy construction, held much commercial importance in the area because of its central location and accessibility to miners in the adjacent mountains, its good water supply, and its proximity to the railroad. Mines in the Panamints were producing ore that could be easily milled or on which cyanide treatment was effective.

HISTORIC RESOURCE STUDY A HISTORY OF MINING IN DEATH VALLEY NATIONAL MONUMENT
VOLUME I OF 11
Part 1 of 2
By
Linda W. Greene

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