Salt Springs
Salt Spring (sometimes “Salt Springs”) was a spring on Salt Creek, a tributary of the Amargosa River, in the Mojave Desert of San Bernardino County, California.
In the Old Spanish Trail era, Salt Spring mattered as a practical water hole on the Armijo-route line across the western Mojave. Sources summarize it as a stopping place established on the trail beginning in 1829, which is another way of saying it was one of the points that made an otherwise dry corridor workable for people, pack animals, and trade traffic.
In 1849, Jefferson Hunt led Mormon wagons along the Old Spanish Trail (Mormon Road, Santa Fe and Salt Lake Trail) and camped at Salt Creek. Hunt's party discovered gold at Salt Creek and soon gold fever hit southern California.
In the later overlap phase, Salt Spring becomes a wagon-road stop on the Mormon Road / Los Angeles–Salt Lake Road. The road-distance lists (based on the 1851 “Mormon Waybill” measurements) place Salt Spring 14.125 miles beyond Willow Spring (on the Amargosa River) and downstream in the same southwest-moving chain that continues to Bitter Spring and then to the Mojave River at Fork of the Road.
Salt Spring also picked up a brief mining afterlife tied to 1849 wagon travel. The National Park Service feasibility study notes that gold discovery in the Salt Spring Hills triggered a short-lived rush often referred to as “Mormon Diggings,” with abandonment reported within a few years even though physical traces remained.
Taken together, Salt Spring is a clean example of how the Old Spanish Trail and the later Salt Lake Road can share the same ground without being the same “trail”: different eras and traffic, but the same hard rule of desert travel—water decides the map.
In 1849, Jefferson Hunt led Mormon wagons along the Mormon Road.
During the winter of 1850, the Chessman wagon train passed through.and noted that miners were working a quartz ledge 1/8 mile from the road. Mining here was sporadic. The Salt Springs Mining Company pulled out after selling to foreign capitalists in July 1852. The Desert Mining Company and other mines had ceased operations by August 15, 1853.
In September 1860, three arrastras were operating at the location and ore was yielding $2500 a ton (30 men working). The Amargosa Gold & Silver Mining Company of San Francisco acquired the mines in fall of 1863 and installed a new mill. During the mid-1860s a new company took over and operated the mine and a five-stamp mill. This operation had closed by 1870. In September 1881, J. M. Seymore sold the mine to the South Pacific Mining Company of New York. An attempt was made to reopen the mine in 1920, but the venture was abandoned.
Also see: Historic Salt Creek Mining District
