Eagle Mountain, California

Eagle Mountain, California is a modern day ghost town founded in 1948 by iron magnate Henry J. Kaiser. The town is located at the entrance of the now-defunct Eagle Mountain iron mine, once owned by the Southern Pacific Railroad, then Kaiser Steel, and located on the southeastern corner of Joshua Tree National Park. The town's fully integrated medical care system was the genesis of the modern-day Kaiser Permanente health maintenance organization [Rickey Hendricks, "A Model for National Health Care: The History of Kaiser Permanente" (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1993), ISBN 0813519292, 13-26] . Eagle Mountain is accessible by Riverside County Route R2, twelve miles (19 km) north of Desert Center, midway between Indio and the California/Arizona state line along Interstate 10. The town's relative youth and brief time of abandonment make Eagle Mountain among the country's best preserved ghost towns.

History

Founded in 1948 by iron magnate Henry J. Kaiser, Eagle Mountain is located at the entrance of the now-defunct Eagle Mountain iron mine. As the mine expanded Eagle Mountain grew to a peak population of 4000. It had wide, landscaped streets lined with over four hundred homes with as many as four bedrooms. Two hundred trailer spaces and several boarding houses and dormitories provided living space for Kaiser's itinerant workforce. Other amenities included an auditorium, a park, a shopping center, a community swimming pool, lighted tennis courts, and a baseball diamond. Businesses included a bowling alley, two gas stations, eight churches and three schools. In the late 1930's, Kaiser decided to build the West Coast's only fully integrated steel mill. In 1942, Kaiser built such a mill at Fontana, California which is located 112 miles (180 km) west of the Eagle Mountain Mine. Today the Fontana mill is the site of the California Speedway. Kaiser then purchased the idle mines from the Southern Pacific as a source of high-grade iron ore.

Production at Fontana began in 1948 and a mining town was constructed below what was soon to become Southern California’s largest iron mine. It connected to the Southern Pacific via a 51-mile-long (82 km) railroad branch known as the Eagle Mountain Railroad. It ran southwest from the mine to the northeast shore of the Salton Sea, just north of the Riverside/Imperial county line. Ore shipments to Fontana steel plant began in October, with five to eight 100-car trains running weekly.

End times

Increased environmental concerns in the 1970's led to a reduction in output and a reduction of the population to a low of 1890. In the summer of 1980 the mine shut down briefly, reopening on September 23. Only 750 workers were brought back to the town with an additional 150 in limbo in Indio, some sixty miles (97 km) west.

On November 3, 1981, Kaiser Corporation announced the phasing out of half the Fontana works and the entire Eagle Mountain Mine operation over several years. The population dwindled as layoffs began. The grocery store closed in October 1982 and the post office, which had been active since 1951, closed in January 1983. In June of that year the last official graduating class celebrated their commencement at Eagle Mountain High School, followed by closing of both the mine and mill. The old high school is now the current site of [http://www.greatschools.net/modperl/browse_school/ca/4282 Eagle Mountain School] , which continues in operation (as of 2008).

The ZIP Code was 92241 until Eagle Mountain shut down, mail is now sent to nearby Desert Center at 92239. The community is within area code 760.

Resurgence

Eagle Mountain experienced a resurgence in 1986 when the California Department of Corrections proposed placing a unique privately operated prison for low-risk inmates in the town. The shopping center was converted by 1988 into just such a facility which operated until State budget problems led to the closing of the prison in December 2003. Talks resumed in 2005 to reopen the prison facility.

1988 also saw a proposal to turn the gigantic 1.5 mile (2.4 km) long by half-mile (800 m) wide open-pit mine into a massive, high-tech sanitary landfill. The landfill, to be operated by a partnership of two privately operated trash collection firms and the successor to Kaiser Steel, Kaiser Ventures [ [http://www.ccaej.org/projects/desert_protection/pe_9_21_05.html Eagle Mountain ] ] , would ship trash by train from metropolitan Los Angeles area via the Eagle Mountain Railroad. A company subsidiary, Mine Reclamation Corp. of Palm Desert, is the landfill developer [ [http://www.pe.com/localnews/inland/stories/PE_News_Local_D_eagle22.184600bc.html Inland News | PE.com | Southern California News | News for Inland Southern California ] ] . Due to numerous lawsuits regarding the environmental effects of the landfill, the project was repeatedly delayed. The private partnership decided in late 1999 to give up on the project. Their share of the project was brought out by Kaiser Ventures, making it controlling owner of the project.

The Riverside County Board of Supervisors approved the project in October 1992 after EPA approval of the project. In August 2000, Kaiser Ventures reached an agreement with the Los Angeles Sanitation Districts, a public entity comprising of several Los Angeles public waste collection agencies, to purchase the landfill project to replace there Puente Hills Landfill, which would be nearing the end of its useful life shortly.Trash would be shipped by train from the metropolitan Los Angeles area via the abandoned Kaiser railroad line. However, since the sale agreement states that all lawsuits and claims regarding the project must be completed, the transaction has yet to begin. As of 2008, there was only one lawsuit still pending. However, much as changed since in the waste business since 2000. A reduction in waste generated because of recycling has made the new landfill less urgently needed. In addition, the Los Angeles Sanitation Districts has purchased another landfill site in adjacent Imperial County that is fulling licensed and ready to go. It is unclear if the Sanitation Districts still intends to make Eagle Mountain a landfill. As of 2006, the project has yet to begin.

As of July 18th, 2007, the town of Eagle Mountain is no longer openly-accessible. The perimeter of both the town and mine has been fenced and gated, with a site manager appointed to handle access requests. The fencing isn't presently visible from either Google Earth or Google Maps, so it's easy to mistakenly believe that the town can still be entered.

Schools

The Desert Center Unified School District operates the one current school within the district boundaries. The last official graduating class passing through Eagle Mountain High School was the class of 1983. [ [http://freepages.history.rootsweb.com/~gtusa/usa/ca/eagle-mtn.htm Eagle Mountain, CA ] ] However, the old high school site is now the current site of Eagle Mountain Elementary School [http://www.greatschools.net/modperl/browse_school/ca/4282] , (an on-going school since 1983) [ [http://freepages.history.rootsweb.com/~gtusa/usa/ca/eagle-mtn.htm Eagle Mountain, CA ] ] , housing students in the grades Kindergarten through 8th grade. Local high school students are bused to the high school in Blythe, CA, making the 120 mile round-trip every day.

Popular Culture

Film

*Films using Eagle Mountain locations [ [http://www.imdb.com/List?endings=on&&locations=Desert%20Center,%20California,%20USA&&heading=18;with+locations+including;Eagle%20Mountain,%20California,%20USA Titles with locations including
Eagle Mountain, California, USA ] ] :* "Tough Guys" (1986) :* "Terminator 2 3D Attraction, Universal Studios " (1998):* "Impostor" (2001) :* "The Island" (2005) :* "Unknown" (2006)

* A portion of the Eagle Mountain Railroad was used in the filming of the movie "Tough Guys", which is a 1986 comedy starring Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas, Eli Wallach and Dana Carvey."Tough Guys" was the final collaboration for Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas. They played a couple of released cons who plan the last great train robbery. At the end, they hijack a train, pulled by famed locomotive Southern Pacific 4449, and run it full throttle to the Mexican border. During the filming of the exterior shots of Southern Pacific 4449 the train was stored nightly at the Eagle Mountain rail yards. The local school children from Eagle Mountain School took a field trip in early 1986 to see and tour the train on the location of the shoot along the Eagle Mountain Railroad south of Interstate 10 [ [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092105/ Tough Guys (1986) ] ] .

* Also filmed in Eagle Mountain was Terminator 2's 3D Attraction, now showing at Universal Studios. The 3D film is an action sequence based on the original "Terminator 2-Judgment Day" movie-including Arnold Schwarzenegger on a motorcycle and the T1000 cop. Universal Studios in Los Angeles premiered its version of the Terminator 2 3D ride in 1999. The ride, which is also in Universal's Orlando, Fla., location, takes three-dimensional attractions to a new level-incorporating a story, real characters and beefed-up computer and robotics technology.The entire crew spent weeks at Eagle Mountain. This was the site for some big detonations, reportedly the largest explosion ever done in film.

References

http://www.popularmechanics.com/outdoors/sports/1283211.html

External links

* [http://www.pbase.com/roy/eaglem Classic and current photos of Eagle Mountain]
* [http://ghosttowns.com Info on Eagle Mountain]
* [http://freepages.history.rootsweb.com/~gtusa/usa/ca/eagle-mtn.htm History of Eagle Mountain]
* [http://www.ghosttowngallery.com/htme/eaglemountain.htm Pictures of Eagle Mountain]