Panamint City, California

01A Silver Strike Born of a Stickup

Silver and copper were found in the upper canyon in 1872 by three prospectors—William Ledlie Kennedy, Robert Polk Stewart, and Richard C. Jacobs. According to accounts preserved in the town's Wikipedia entry and repeated in regional mining histories, the three were trailed back to their claim by a gang of six stage robbers, who forced the discoverers into an uneasy partnership rather than give up the location. It was an origin story fitting for what became one of the most lawless boomtowns in the American West.

Word reached EP Raines, an early investor who persuaded a group of Los Angeles businessmen to finance a wagon road into the canyon. Raines then traveled to San Francisco and pitched the strike to Nevada Senator John P. Jones, already wealthy from Comstock silver. Jones and his fellow Nevada senator, William M. Stewart, organized the Panamint Mining Company, bought up the major claims, and gave the camp the capital it needed to explode into a full-blown city by 1874.

02The Town That Cast Its Silver Into Cannonballs

Panamint's main street ran a full mile along the narrow canyon floor, lined with mills, saloons, stores, a red-light district, and a cemetery that filled quickly. The Panamint News reported on shootings, claim jumping, and the constant churn of miners arriving from Nevada and southern California. A post office operated on and off from 1874 to 1895, with the first stretch—1874 to 1877—covering the boom's peak.

The camp's reputation for robbery created a genuine logistical problem. Wells Fargo, which handled most mining-district bullion shipments in the West, refused to open an office in Panamint. The senators' solution has become one of the enduring legends of California mining: they reportedly ordered the refined silver cast into 450-pound cannonballs, which were then loaded onto unguarded wagons and hauled down the canyon to Los Angeles. The logic was simple—no road agent could lift, move, or fence a quarter-ton silver ball, so no one bothered to try. Surviving records suggest the scheme actually worked.

Long before the silver rush, Surprise Canyon had belonged to other people. The walls above Panamint City hold the largest and most elaborate concentration of Coso Painted Style pictographs anywhere in the region, indicating that Shoshone and Kawaiisu groups used the canyon long before prospectors arrived.

03What Happened to Panamint City, California?

The end came quickly and from above. On July 24, 1876, a thunderstorm over the Panamint crest sent a flash flood roaring down Surprise Canyon, sweeping mills, stamp machinery, and most of the wooden town out onto the floor of Panamint Valley. The Panamint Mining Company had already begun scaling back as ore grades dropped, and the flood finished what falling silver prices had started. Small crews returned sporadically over the next century—the post office reopened briefly in 1882–1883 and again from 1887 to 1895—but the city never rebuilt.

A final chapter played out in the late twentieth century, when a handful of modern miners and off-road enthusiasts kept the Surprise Canyon route open with four-wheel-drives and winches. In May 2001, following a lawsuit by the Center for Biological Diversity, the Sierra Club, and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, the Bureau of Land Management closed the road with a locked gate, citing damage to a rare desert riparian ecosystem. The canyon's last residents—a scatter of weekend miners still active as late as 1994—left for good.

04Can You Visit Panamint City Today?

You can, but you have to earn it. From the locked gate, the route runs about 7.5 miles up Surprise Canyon and climbs some 4,000 vertical feet, most of it above the ruins of Chris Wicht Camp, crossing waterfalls, willow thickets, and long stretches of loose rock. The hike is strenuous even for experienced backpackers, and the canyon has no reliable cell signal. Most visitors camp overnight in the old townsite, which sits on a mix of BLM and state land just outside Death Valley National Park's western boundary.

Water runs year-round in the upper canyon, and summer temperatures on the approach can exceed 110°F. Late fall through early spring is the only reasonable season.

05What Remains of Panamint City Today

The defining landmark is the tall brick smokestack of the Surprise Valley Mill and Water Company, still standing more than 150 years after the first furnace was fired. Scattered around it are stone mill foundations, rusted boilers, collapsed cabins from the 20th-century revival, tailings piles, and the faint grid of the mile-long main street. A small cemetery lies downslope, its wooden markers long gone but depressions still visible. Above the townsite, the Coso-style pictographs remain on the canyon walls, predating the silver rush by centuries and likely to outlast every human trace of the boom.