Gold Town (on topographic maps) or OarVilleno title, ''Daily News,'' April 8, 1923 p1; "Goldtown Again on Mine Map of Kern," ''Los Angeles Times,'' May 20, 1935 p10; "Near Mojave Old Town is Coming Back," ''Los Angeles Times,'' May 20, 1935 p5 is a former settlement in

Kern County Kern County is a county located in the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 census, the population was 909,235. Its county seat is Bakersfield. Kern County comprises the Bakersfield, California, Metropolitan statistical area. The county sp ...

California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...

. It was located north of

Rosamond Rosamond is a feminine given name, which may refer to: People *Rosamond Carr (1912–2006), American humanitarian and author *Rosamund Clifford (before 1150 – c. 1176), English mistress of King Henry II * Rosamond Langbridge (1880–1964), Irish ...

, at an elevation of . Today, Goldtown exists only as a grid of dirt roads and a few abandoned buildings and mines in the desert off the California State Route 14. Silver Queen Road is the main paved road that connects Goldtown to the California State Route 14. Fleta, California is 0.62 miles northeast of Goldtown.

Mojave, California Mojave (formerly Mohave) is an unincorporated community in Kern County, California, United States. Mojave is located east of Bakersfield, and north of Los Angeles, at an elevation of . The town is located in the western region of the Mojave D ...

is 1.44 miles (2.3 km) to the north. Gold mines exist within 2 miles to the north and south of Goldtow

These mines include: the Golden Queen Mine and Elephant Eagle mine on Soledad Mountain south of Goldtow

and Whitmore Mine and Exposed Treasure mine on Standard Hill north of Goldtown. KHXT-FM (Mojave) radio tower, at an elevation of above sea level, is 1.56 miles (2.5 km) southeast of Goldtown. The

California Aqueduct The Governor Edmund G. Brown California Aqueduct is a system of canals, tunnels, and pipelines that conveys water collected from the Sierra Nevada Mountains and valleys of Northern and Central California to Southern California. Named after Califo ...

Road is located about 5 miles (8.1 km) to the west of Goldtown.

Golden Queen Mine

From the early 1900s to 1980s, the Golden Queen Mine was active on and off, using open pit, underground works, and

heap leaching Heap leaching is an industrial mining process used to extract precious metals, copper, uranium, and other compounds from ore using a series of chemical reactions that absorb specific minerals and re-separate them after their division from other e ...

. About +100,000 tons of

tailings In mining, tailings are the materials left over after the process of separating the valuable fraction from the uneconomic fraction (gangue) of an ore. Tailings are different to overburden, which is the waste rock or other material that overli ...

were created over the years. Due to erosion since, some of these tailings reached the

alluvial fan An alluvial fan is an accumulation of sediments that fans outwards from a concentrated source of sediments, such as a narrow canyon emerging from an escarpment. They are characteristic of mountainous terrain in arid to semiarid climates, but a ...

surface. The tailings contain elevated levels of

arsenic Arsenic is a chemical element with the symbol As and atomic number 33. Arsenic occurs in many minerals, usually in combination with sulfur and metals, but also as a pure elemental crystal. Arsenic is a metalloid. It has various allotropes, ...

. ''"Significant potential human health risks to the community and regional environmental impacts may have resulted from release of arsenic-bearing tailings into the waters of the state and airborne sources."'' according to the Bureau of Land Management. Construction has begun to re-open the Golden Queen Mine. Commissioning is planned for 2015. This is part of the Soledad Mountain Project. Open pit mining,

cyanide Cyanide is a naturally occurring, rapidly acting, toxic chemical that can exist in many different forms. In chemistry, a cyanide () is a chemical compound that contains a functional group. This group, known as the cyano group, consists of ...

, and Merrill-Crowe processes will be used to recover gold and silver from crushed, agglomerated ore. The heap leach pad for the mine will be located near Goldtown, according to Kern County Planning and Community Development Department. https://web.archive.org/web/20140814193441/http://www.goldenqueen.com/i/maps/approved_project_boundary.jpg

References

External links

goldenqueen.com
{{authority control Former settlements in Kern County, California Mining communities in California Mojave, California Populated places in the Mojave Desert