Noonday Camp, also known as Mill City, Noonday City, and Tecopa, is a
ghost town
A ghost town, deserted city, extinct town, or abandoned city is an abandoned settlement, usually one that contains substantial visible remaining buildings and infrastructure such as roads. A town often becomes a ghost town because the economi ...
located in the
Mojave Desert
The Mojave Desert (; ; ) is a desert in the rain shadow of the southern Sierra Nevada mountains and Transverse Ranges in the Southwestern United States. Named for the Indigenous peoples of the Americas, indigenous Mohave people, it is located pr ...
east of
Tecopa in
Inyo County, California
Inyo County () is a County (United States), county in the Eastern California, eastern central part of the U.S. state of California, located between the Sierra Nevada and the state of Nevada. In the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, the po ...
.
Upper Noonday Camp is located at , while Lower Noonday Camp is located just south of it at .
History
The Finley Company built the town in the 1940s support the nearby War Eagle, Noonday, and Columbia lead mines. It was later used by the
Anaconda Copper Company
The Anaconda Company, also known historically as the Anaconda Gold and Silver Mining Company (1881–1891), Anaconda Mining Company (1891–1895), Anaconda Copper Mining Company (1895–1899), Amalgamated Copper Company (1899–1915), and Anacon ...
, who constructed the lead ore concentration mill during 1947–1948. The town was abandoned in 1972. Compared to other mining ghost towns in the region, Noonday Camp became a ghost town quite recently.
Lead mining ended in 1957 when the U.S. government reached its strategic stockpile goal. The Tecopa and Darwin lead mines - which worked three shifts during the war years - closed.
Site
The remains of the mining operation can be found, collapsed timber structures, foundations, slabs, rock walls, and equipment pads.
;Lower Noonday Camp
The mill's large water tank marks the location. Near the now rapidly deteriorating mill and debris pool is the site of Lower Noonday Camp or "Married Mans Camp". 18 to 20 foundations can be found buried in the brush, along with a small graveyard, slag from the 1870s
lead smelter
Plants for the production of lead are generally referred to as lead smelters. Primary lead production begins with sintering. Concentrated lead ore is fed into a sintering machine with iron, silica, limestone fluxes, coke, soda ash, pyrite, zinc, ...
, and a few
adobe
Adobe (from arabic: الطوب Attub ; ) is a building material made from earth and organic materials. is Spanish for mudbrick. In some English-speaking regions of Spanish heritage, such as the Southwestern United States, the term is use ...
buildings.
;Upper Noonday Camp
Across the Western Talc Road and up the arroyo is a cliff-side dugout dwelling. A water pipe ran from the well to Upper Noonday Camp or "Single Mans Camp" on Furnace Creek Road, used by Anaconda's employees from 1949 until 1957, and then Western Talc's employees until 1972. It was abandoned, scavenged by the locals, and torn down in 1978.
Foundations of the supervisors and guest houses, several slabs that supported the kitchen, boarding house, and bunkhouses are evident, along with a lot of debris. Prominent is the cinder block vault that held the script currency the miners could use at the company commissary.
;Talc mine
Roads from the site of Noonday Camp go to the Noonday and War Eagle mines. The large white open pit of the talc mine is on Western Talc Road. Talc went out of favor due to its asbestos content. Visible from Highway 127 and the Old Spanish Trail are the landmark Tecopa bins, built in 1944. One was for lead, the other talc. The lead ore was trucked to the UP siding at Dunn and shipped to smelters in Utah.
See also
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References
External links
Ghosttowns.com: Noonday Camp
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Ghost towns in Inyo County, California
Lead mines
Mining communities in California
Populated places in the Mojave Desert
Former settlements in Inyo County, California
Former populated places in California
History of the Mojave Desert region