Hidden in the remote Inyo Mountains is the ghost town of Cerro Gordo, (Spanish for “Fat Hill”). Although isolated by the barren Death Valley to the east and the formidable Sierra Nevada to the west, Cerro Gordo was once one of the busiest mining districts in California. These mines produced the largest amount of silver and other minerals in the state.
Believe it or not, Mexican prospectors discovered silver there in 1865, but it took two years before anyone staked a claim. Miners from the Comstock Lode in Virginia City, Nevada, flocked to the region when they got wind of the strike. Cerro Gordo was born and boomed.
Numerous mining ventures sprung up. The largest investors built the steep Old Yellow Grade Toll Road. They charged exorbitant passage fees that bankrupt smaller claims. Although hard to envision today, the large mining companies even developed a ferry system to freight silver over Owens Lake. A violent 1872 earthquake altered the bed of Owens Lake, which is completely dry today.
Cerro Gordo is accessible today along a well-graded, steep dirt road, which follows the route of the old toll road from the town of Keeler on California Highway 136. More 4-wheeling excitement can be found by accessing the remote town site from another ghost town, Swansea, also located on Highway 136.
Swansea was once the site of three smelters that processed the huge amounts of ore extracted from Cerro Gordo mines. Little remains at the town site except some foundations and a crumbled stone building that was once a stagecoach stop. The thrilling single-lane trail leaves Swansea and heads toward the Inyo Mountains.
This remote, rugged trail climbs into a canyon and follows a moguled, loose, gravelly wash into a corridor through the Inyo Mountains Wilderness. Use caution navigating steep sections of loose shale and narrow, rough segments of shelf road you will encounter climbing to the ridge tops. Summitting the Inyo Range, you are rewarded for your 4-wheeling skills with spectacular views of the Owens Valley, Sierra Nevada, and surrounding landscape.
Following the rim of Craig Canyon presents a dizzyingly sheer drop-off and overlook into Saline Valley. Old aerial tramway towers also come into view, standing out starkly on the crests of the hills. They are the well-preserved remains of an ambitious salt works at Saline Lake.
During its time, the 14-mile tramway was the longest in the world. Twenty tons of salt per hour in 300 buckets ran from the salt works in Saline Valley, up 7,000 feet over the Inyo Mountains and down 5,000 feet to Swansea. The salt was reportedly so pure that it was sold at market in an unrefined state.
The trail winds down off the mountain range and ends at Cerro Gordo ghost town. The town is private property but tours can be arranged by calling ahead.
Imagine yourself traveling the daunting distance from Kansas City to Sacramento…on foot. Now imagine your journey with no cars, no roads or bridges, no hotels or restaurants, no reliable maps—and certainly no GPS!
Over rugged mountains and barren deserts in hostile Indian Territory, your only mode of transport is horsepower—of the animal variety. Your only means of navigation is the sun.
Think it sounds impossible? In the 1830s and 40s, tens of thousands of people from the East didn’t. They risked their lives to claim free, fertile farmland in Oregon or hit the mother lode in California.
The Oregon Trail is the original and best known of all emigrant trails. Farmers established the route migrating west to Oregon. The other well known is the California Trail. A few settlers diverged from the Oregon Trail and headed south to California, establishing a southerly track.
In July 1846, Jacob Donner made a fateful decision. He led the Donner Party on a shorter, less traveled version of the California Trail. The legendary, disastrous expedition trekked through Utah’s Great Salt Desert. Amazingly, the group followed advice from a trail guide who had never attempted the route.
Unlucky and unwise, the group faced hardships day after day. They didn’t reach the towering Sierra Nevada Mountains until late October. They attempted crossing the range anyway. Early winter snows trapped the group in the mountains for the winter. Rescuers reached the debilitated party in March. Half of the original 87 had perished. Infamously, emigrants found alive committed cannibalism in order to survive.
As a result of such hazards, the California Trail was little used. In the mid-1840s, few migrants had settled in the Sacramento Valley. During the gold rush, traffic along the California Trail increased 50-fold. An estimated 30,000 to 45,000 emigrants traversed the trail that year.
You can experience sections of terrain crossed by the Donner-Reed Expedition today. Silver Island Mountains Loop Trail near Wendover, Utah crosses Donner-Reed Pass at its north end. This is an easy but remote track that illustrates the hardships the Donner Party would have faced. The beautiful and unusual scenery must have seemed hellacious to the party, struggling through the soft, muddy sand flats. Dozens of side tracks off the loop are interesting to explore.
An offshoot of the Oregon and California Trails was called the Applegate Trail. The Applegate family blazed this arduous trail after two family members drowned crossing the Columbia River. They swore they would find a faster and safer route into Oregon. The first emigrant party to use the track proved theirs was neither.
After the disastrous journey, Oregon settlers condemned the route. It was longer than the original and crossed treacherous Indian Territory over rugged and barren terrain. Emigrants abandoned the route. The only subsequent traffic was Oregon prospectors rushing south to the California goldfields.
Portions of the historic Applegate Trail can be driven today. One part of original trail is on the Surprise Valley Trail, in the extreme northeastern corner of California. This tricky piece of road climbs up and over a rocky ridge embedded with large boulders. Keep an eye out for wild mustangs that roam the area today.
The nearby Fandango Pass 4WD Trail also crosses the original Applegate Trail. Many settlers and miners lost their lives here, attempting to cross the Warner Mountains. Historical markers indicate these stretches of historic trail.
Henness Pass Road presented migrants with a better way to cross the Sierra Nevada Mountains. This new pass crossed into California further north than Donner Pass, avoiding harsh terrain around Truckee Lake. Henness Pass was such a good alternative that it was later improved into a wagon road.
Most of the original route of Henness Pass Road can be driven today. For high clearance 4wd vehicles, Henness Pass Road is a long, easy, and scenic drive. Along the trail are many historic emigrant campsites and stage stop sites. Although most are little more that sites, the large number of them reveals how busy the road must have been.
Lesser known, is the Mormon migration. The religious group pressed west searching for a home free of religious persecution. Salt Lake Valley was the perfect place. Soon overpopulation forced settlement expansion. Blazing a route across south Utah, they encountered Hole-in-the-Rock Pass: a 1,200-foot gorge to the Colorado River.
With no feasible way around it, they had to pass through it. They blasted boulders, widened the crevice walls, and graded a path, creating a series of roads along the cliff edges. An amazing feat of engineering, they tacked a road onto the sheer face of the gorge by chiseling holes into the rock and inserting log supports. The result was a 50-foot wooden road. They planned 6 weeks for the expedition. It took them more than 6 months.
A long, interesting 4-wheel drive trail in Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument travels sections of the historic Mormon Pioneer Trail. Slickrock sections in the trail’s last 5 miles require short, steep climbs and careful wheel placements. It’s only a short scramble at the end of the trail to the Hole-in-the-Rock site. The enormity of the work of the early pioneers is still obvious. You can still see scrapes from the wagons that descended through the Hole-in-the-Rock on the sides of the passage.
Choosing one Colorado 4-wheel trail is hard, but Hancock Pass from St. Elmo ghost town has it all: challenging sections, well-preserved mining era ruins, location near the Alpine Tunnel and Station, and perfect for my stock truck, which is powerful and has good off-road tires.
This trail starts in St. Elmo ghost town, located 24 miles southwest of Buena Vista off Highway 285, is easy to find and accessible by car. Buena Vista is the closest town for lodging, gas, food, and supplies.
One of Colorado’s best-preserved ghost towns, St. Elmo sprang up in 1880 from activity at the nearly 150 gold and silver mines nearby. During summers these days, vehicles lining the dirt road through town seem out of place next to the run down buildings. Because new businesses are popping up here, the best photo ops are on the west side of town where the buildings rest undisturbed. Visit the old general store to rent 4×4s and buy neat antiques, gifts, cokes, and snacks.
From St. Elmo, we head east toward Hancock Pass. The unmaintained dirt road is rough with potholes. Soon we notice an old building and some other ruins in a clearing below near mile 2.5. This is Romley town site. After following a short rerouted section of road around an unsafe trestle bridge, we turn off to Pomeroy Lakes and the Mary Murphy Mine.
Climbing the steep, rocky grade we see dilapidated miner’s cabins and old aerial tramway towers. Even the thick, steel cable from the old tramway still remains beside the road. The ramshackle Mary Murphy Mine building also still stands. In sections along this steep and narrow road, I must find a line through groups of large, awkwardly positioned rocks. The obstacles become increasingly challenging until the turn around near Pomeroy Lakes parking lot after 2.7 miles.
Returning to the main trail, another 2 miles stretch out just below timberline where we can see naked 13,000-foot peaks darting in and out of view above the trees. Next appears the famous old building, once used for storing paydirt from the Allie Belle Mine, teetering precariously on the slope beside the road. Although in this position for years, the structure rests menacingly over the road and most don’t linger below.
We pass hills of tailings, more abandoned mining structures, and Hancock town site. One-time residents of Hancock constructed the amazing Alpine Tunnel. Denver, South Park & Pacific Railroad needed a tunnel under the Continental Divide in order to reach St. Elmo by rail. The ill-fated project also required constructing a road on a sheer mountain slope among other construction feats. From the Alpine Tunnel Trailhead, near Hancock town site, it is a three-mile hike up the old railroad grade to the east end of the Tunnel.
We immediately begin a rocky climb to Hancock Pass, encountering early summer snowdrifts at elevations where it still snows in mid-June. The road gets increasingly challenging with more rocks, potholes, and ruts, but the view is worth the effort.
Hancock Pass is a spectacular overlook of Brittle Silver Basin, enclosed by walls of towering peaks, which Tomichi Pass shelf road clings to alluringly. I marvel at how similar the view must have been back in the mining days. Descending over the low-traction rocky trail into the basin, we continue our incredible drive along Alpine Tunnel Road to explore the location of the remote railway outpost.