Ballarat Ghost Town

Located in an ancient lakebed in the Panamint Valley at an elevation of 1,079 feet, Ballarat Ghost Town was once a thriving gold mining camp and home to 400 people following its establishment in 1897. Radcliffe was the name of the main mine, which produced some 15,000 tons of ore worth nearly $1 million between 1898 and 1903. The town itself was named by an Australian immigrant, prospector George Riggins, after a famous boomtown in the state of Victoria, where gold was discovered in 1851.

Today, all that remains of Ballarat are a few ruins of adobe buildings. There once was a school here, a post office and a jail, but no church. The weathered and deteriorating structures still make for fine photography. Occasional feral burros can be seen here, too, left to run wild after the town was abandoned.

A masonry sign located 3½ miles outside the town at the turnoff from Trona Wildrose Road points the way to Ballarat. It was erected in 1992 to commemorate "Seldom Seen Slim," the town's last resident, who was buried in Boot Hill Cemetery in 1968. The sign also mentions an automobile, a Thomas Flyer that passed through here in 1908 as part of the World's Longest Race (New York to Paris), which is now on display at Harrah's Museum in Reno.