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.
Atolia (The Wasteland – Assayer and old foreman’s houses)
( Miles and miles, of miles and miles (12 behind the cut) )