The story
Eagle Mountain was Henry Kaiser's company town for the largest iron mine in the West, feeding his Fontana steelworks from 1948. At its height about 4,000 people lived in its neat desert grid with schools, a hospital, pool, and bowling alley at the edge of what is now Joshua Tree National Park's wilderness.
The mine died with West Coast steel in the early 1980s. Since then the town has cycled through half-lives — a private prison in some buildings, decades of litigation over a giant landfill plan, and now ownership tied to a pumped-storage energy project — while streets of empty mid-century houses bake behind a guarded gate. It is emphatically closed to visitors.
What remains today
Hundreds of houses, schools, and civic buildings in various decay, plus the vast mine pits and tailings — all private and gated.
Questions from the field
- Can you visit Eagle Mountain?
- No — it's private, gated, and patrolled, with active industrial plans. Trespassing gets prosecuted; view the mine complex from public vantage points near Desert Center.
From the field
The most valuable part of this record is the part only visitors can write.
Stamp your passport
Check in at Eagle Mountain — 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 Eagle Mountain's permanent record.
No field reports yet — sign in to file the first.
Sources consulted
- — USGS GNIS feature 1660573
- — Kaiser Steel corporate records / Riverside County archives
- — Eagle Crest Energy project filings