When most Australians hear the name ‘Ballarat’ they think of the gold mining town in Victoria. What most Australians don’t know is that Ballarat has a copy cat town in the middle of Mojave desert in California. A copy cat town that suffered a very different fate to its namesake down under. On our recent road trip through the California desert to Nevada, we heard about this ghost town and immediately decided to take a detour to visit.
We pulled up to a ramshackle little visitors centre and were greeted immediately by a darling of a man who welcomed us warmly. His name is Rock. He’s been living in Ballarat for the past twelve years and is the sole resident of the ghost town.
His trailer out the back is solar powered and he has a mobile, replenish-able water supply. He heads into Ridgecrest, the nearest town, about once a week for supplies. As we were wandering around looking at the old photos, he offered us a sip of his apple pie flavoured, homemade moonshine.
It was just about the smoothest, most delicious home made whisky I’ve ever tasted. He asked where we were from and we said Australia, pointing out that we live near a town called Ballarat in Victoria. His face lit up and he said that his Ballarat was named by an Australian miner who happened to be there when they named the town and he was from Ballarat in Australia. The cheeky bugger went and stole the name. I bet he thought no one would ever find out.
Rock’s Ballarat was founded in 1897 but was completely abandoned, save a handful of residents, by 1917. In its hey day it had 400 to 500 residents and like all good prospecting towns of the early 1900s it boasted a decent high street with booming businesses including seven saloons, three hotels, a school, a jail, a morgue and a post office.
As the nearby mines dried up and closed towards the late 1910s, The Other Ballarat slowly became desolate, except for a few determined prospectors.
The town remained empty for decades until the 1960s when Charles Manson (who by the way is still alive – is that weird to anyone else? edit – he has now died after I published this) and his ‘family’ stopped by for a short time when they were hiding out in the desert. The infamous murderer even carved his name into the door frame of the Ballarat town morgue.
Inside the visitors centre, Rock has pictures on the wall of the town when it thrived. It’s such an eerie feeling looking at a photograph of a bustling saloon and seeing the crumbled remains of the building standing just outside the door.
There are around thirty working towns and cities in the Mojave desert to date and it’s baffling why some towns survived and others disappeared. Ballarat died because of nearby mine closures but Ridgecrest is just 40 miles away and the census in 1950 reported a population of 2028 people – why did Ridgecrest flourish while Ballarat quietly slipped away?
I guess it doesn’t really matter. Ballarat is now a place for drinking apple pie moonshine with Rock.
Have you ever been to a ghost town? If you’ve ever visited one, let me know. I’m keen to add more to my list!
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15 Comments
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Bodie in CA (near the Mammoth area) is a great “ghost town”. It’s a state park now so there is a gift shop & such but still some eerie aspects to it. There are tons of ghost towns over northern NV that we’ve poked around but many of them aren’t easily accessible. (When I was a teacher living in Reno, we took a CEU course that required we get out to visit quite a few of them)
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Technically this one has a gift shop but it’s super basic. We were going to hit up some of the ones in Northern NV but the state is enormous and we’d already spent so long in the desert, we were starting to dry out! 🙂
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Thanks Carly! As a resident of beaUruguay Ballarat, Victoria I’d heard about the US Ballarat but didn’t know anything about it. Just showed Mr 7 and we agreed that this would make a great school project topic.
I have been to Cook – a largely abandoned town in the Nullabor. The Indian Pacific stops there on the trip between the East Coast and Perth. It’s quite haunting. x-
I’m so glad the people of Ballarat have been enjoying this – I thought it would be super interesting. I’m so glad I asked Rock all about it – he was so happy to talk about it. I have lots more photos so let me know if you’re son ends up doing a project on it I’m happy for him to use my images!
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BeaUruguay?? What does autocorrect think it’s doing? ‘Beautiful!’
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That’s one hell of an autocorrect!
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I think it’s definitely a mining thing although I’m fascinated as to how some towns survive mining busts and others don’t. There doesn’t seem to be a rhyme or reason which is really cool. Rock loved having visitors all day but he loved having quiet nights. I think some people just enjoy the solitude and it’s lovely that there are places like that for them to live.
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What an eerie, interesting place – beautiful photos. America must be full of these boom-and-bust former mining towns, and a similar pattern obviously exists in Australia. I used to live in central Queensland, in a town called Theodore. About 50kms away is a town called Cracow, which used to be a gold mining town. In its heyday it had a school, hospital, post office, five cafes, two butchers, a picture theatre… While not exactly a ghost town now there aren’t many permanent residents anymore, although the town is surrounded by excellent grazing country and there are plenty of properties. Mining has been re-established but workers are housed in temporary accommodation on site and are ‘FIFO’ – or more usually ‘DIDO’ (drive in, drive out). Obviously the closure of the original mine contributed to the town’s decline but it is interesting how the remaining residents like the isolation – perhaps in the same way that Rock does.
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Isn’t it fascination when people hang around even though there’s nothing there? I love hearing about these towns – I wish I could talk to residents from all them during their boom times.
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I read the title and I’m all “Hmm, I was in Ballarat a few years ago and it seemed reasonably prosperous, what’s with the sudden decline . . . oh, RIGHT!” How cool you stumbled upon such a place! Fascinating history. I’m from country SA and I’ve seen places just about turning into ghost towns before my eyes as the population shifts and businesses no longer become sustainable.
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I’m so glad we figured it out because I was like ‘Ballarat’ is such an Australian sounding word – how cool is the story? That cheeky Australian stealing the name. So funny.
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Oh I love ‘ghost’ towns! I’ve spent quite a bit of time exploring around Kalgoorlie and the Kanowna townsite and wondered the same thing, why did Kalgoorlie survive and Kanowna not?
Thanks so much for sharing and this is something to add to the US wishlist!-
That’s totally it – I’m like what happened to make people move to another city? How did Vegas survive? It’s not really any different to any of the other desert towns of the era. It’s just bizarre.
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I love this! After seeing your instagram post about this town I was so intrigued to hear its story – thanks for sharing!!
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[…] I’ve been to some very far flung places – Balispur in India, Kanchannaburi in Thailand, Ballarat in California – places my parents wouldn’t have even heard about, let alone have had the means to […]
[…] I’ve been to some very far flung places – Balispur in India, Kanchannaburi in Thailand, Ballarat in California – places my parents wouldn’t have even heard about, let alone have had the means to […]
