Barnwell, California
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Barnwell, originally a rail camp named Summit, then Manvel, was a former railhead serving local mining camps, now a ghost town, in San Bernardino County, California. It lies at an elevation 4806 feet in the New York Mountains.[1]
History
Manvel
A mining magnate from Denver, Isaac G. Blake, in April 1892, with an interest in the silver mines in Sagamore Canyon in the New York Mountains, built the Needles Reduction Company mill, in the town of
The gold mines at Vanderbilt and those discovered to the east at Searchlight, Nevada in the later 1890s, helped to sustain Manvel. Manvel supported a flour, grain, and lumber dealer, a general store, a hotel, a blacksmith, the post office, and a stage line running to Montgomery in 1898 and a school district in January 1900. In early 1902, the Nevada Southern completed a 15-mile extension into the Ivanpah Valley, to a new railhead at Ivanpah, to serve as the shipping point for the nearby Copper World Mine.[3]
At Searchlight, as production steadily increased, Manvel as its main rail shipping point for Searchlight, had a depot, telegraph office, a freight-forwarding house, and an agency of Wells, Fargo & Company. T. A. Brown, the co-founder of the Brown-Gosney Company store, largest in town, organized a telephone system; started several freight lines and a stage line; and opened branches in several nearby camps and towns.
Barnwell
In early 1905, the
Barnwell today
There is a homestead and water tank at the former location of Barnwell. The railroad bed is still there and is still good in many places.[4]
References
- ^ U.S. Geological Survey Geographic Names Information System: Barnwell
- ^ Vredenburgh, L.M.; Shumway, G.L.; Hartill, R.D. (1981), Desert Fever, an overview of mining in the California Desert, living West Press: Canoga Park, CA
- ^ a b Hensher, Alan, 2005, The Historical Mining Towns of the Eastern Mojave Desert in Robert E. Reynolds editor, Old Ores, Mining History in the Eastern Mojave Desert: California State University, Desert Studies Consortium and LSA Associates, Inc. pp. 22-27
- ^ Barnwell Siding, (Manvel) California! from robertwynn.com accessed July 12, 2015.