Today, Leadfield is nothing more than a scant collection of collapsing buildings and open mines. But once, the Death Valley town held great promise for copper and lead mining. Prospectors flocked to the city, filling it with flashy modern amenities. 

But it didn’t last. The whole town was built on an illusion. 

A promoter with a dubious reputation took to a largely ignored corner of California, about 22 miles from Beatty, Nevada, and built up its allure as a land of untapped riches. The problem: There were actually no riches within Leadfield’s ground. Within a year, C.C. Julian had made and lost a fortune, and the poor miners who had decamped there abandoned the town, leaving behind the ruins that still exist today. 

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“The mining town sparked to life but briefly, like a flame from a damp match,” the 1974 application for Leadfield’s entry into the National Register of Historic Places read. “Julian disappeared and the inhabitants soon became disillusioned and quickly drifted away.”

The National Park Service recommended preservation of the site on the grounds of significance in “industry” and “fraud,” with the application saying the crumbling town represented “one of the get-rich-quick schemes of the wild 1920s.” (The preservation cost, it’s worth noting, was $900 — close to $6,000 today.) 

Don't let Google decide who you trust.

Today, you can access the ghost town that was once Leadfield via a 27-mile dirt road through Titus Canyon, which the Park Service describes on its website as “the most popular back-country road in Death Valley National Park.” 

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Of Leadfield, “All that is left today are a few shacks and a number of mines. Many of the mines are open, but enter at your own risk,” the Park Service adds. “Loose rocks, rotten timbers, unexpected vertical shafts, and animals seeking shelter are potential hazards.”

An aging structure is seen in the Leadfield ghost town, in Death Valley National Park in California.

Coming off some unsavory oil prospecting farther west in California, Julian headed to the desert, landing on Leadfield as a place ripe for development. He bought into the Western Lead Mines company early and sold shares in it, and sold prospects in the town itself. Julian undertook a big, splashy PR campaign to get the word out. 

But it was all concept and no proof. Without having prospected the land himself or having strong prospecting claims to cite, Julian brought his experience as a........

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