On the edge of Joshua Tree National Park, there’s a town that once housed thousands of people and now sits completely empty. It’s called Eagle Mountain, and it remains one of America’s largest, best-preserved ghost towns, with homes, a hospital, and entire streets still standing decades after the last resident left.
The story of Eagle Mountain
Eagle Mountain was built in 1948 by Kaiser Steel Corporation to house workers for its adjacent iron mine. At its peak, the town supported around 4,000 residents, with more than 400 homes, plus trailer spaces, boarding houses, and dormitories. It functioned as a fully self-sufficient community, complete with three schools, a mall, a swimming pool, an auditorium, churches, and sports courts.
The mine itself grew into Southern California’s largest iron mine, connected to Kaiser’s Fontana steel mill by a 51-mile railroad. By 1977, it had shipped its 100 millionth ton of iron ore. Environmental regulations and cheaper foreign steel imports gradually squeezed the operation. Population dropped to under 2,000 residents by the late 1970s, and in November 1981, Kaiser announced it would shut the mine down entirely. The town’s final high school class graduated in June 1983, marking the effective end of Eagle Mountain as a living community.
Failed attempts at revival
Since the mine’s closure, several entities have attempted to repurpose the site’s extensive land footprint and infrastructure. In 1988, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation opened a low-security facility, the Eagle Mountain Community Correctional Facility, converting the town’s former shopping center into cell blocks. The private prison operated until a fatal riot in 2003, after which the state permanently closed the facility.
For over two decades, developers proposed turning the massive open pits into a regional landfill for Los Angeles County waste. Surrounding property owners, community organizers, and environmental groups opposed the initiative, citing contamination risks to neighboring ecosystems and Joshua Tree National Park. Lengthy court challenges ended the landfill project in 2013. In 2023, a private entity acquired the site for $22.5 million, leaving the immediate future direction of the property undisclosed.
