Tropico Gold Mine
Rosamond, California
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Exterior of buildings at the abandoned Tropico Gold Mine in Rosamond, California. Photo by Leon Worden, 10-23-2007.Rosamond (est. 1877) is located in the Mojave Desert. Out of Santa Clarita, take Highway 14 north past Lancaster. The Tropico Gold Mine opened in the 1890s as the Lida Mine. It thrived throughout the first decades of the 20th Century until the late 1950s, by which time the cost of extracing the gold nearly equalled the fixed market price of the yellow metal ($35 per ounce). Its owners turned it into a touristy ghost down but shut it down in the mid-1980s, again amid rising costs this time in the form of insurance premiums. Today the privately owned property is fenced off (NO TRESPASSING these photos were shot from outside the fence) and is occasionally used for filming ("Ocean's Thirteen," George Clooney, 2007).
LW102307a: 9600 dpi jpeg from digital image
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