The story
Darwin roared first in the 1870s — silver-lead ore, two smelters, perhaps 3,500 people, and a murder rate that alarmed even 1870s Inyo County. When the ore and water gave trouble, the town shrank, then re-boomed for copper around World War I and again for lead-zinc in the 1940s, when the Anaconda company ran the hill.
The last mine closed in the 1970s, leaving Darwin's grid of cabins to a famously private community of a few dozen artists, retirees, and desert people at the end of a dead-end road — one of the West's best examples of a town that outlived its own economy.
What remains today
Occupied and empty cabins, mill terraces and headframes above town, and the cemetery. The mine property itself is fenced and private.
Questions from the field
- Do people live in Darwin, California?
- Yes — a few dozen residents, mostly artists and longtime desert dwellers. The town is welcoming but private; treat it as a neighborhood, not a museum.
From the field
The most valuable part of this record is the part only visitors can write.
Stamp your passport
Check in at Darwin — GPS-verified visits earn an inked stamp.
File a field report
Road conditions, what's still standing, what's gone — your report joins the record.
Add photographs
Credited, dated, and preserved as part of Darwin's permanent record.
No field reports yet — sign in to file the first.
Sources consulted
- — USGS GNIS feature 241269
- — Inyo County records — Darwin district
- — Eastern California Museum, Independence