With the Gold Rush pulling prospectors in from all over America, many townships formed around the more active mines. Unfortunately, most towns collapsed after a few years. Here are just a few, whose remnants you might come across as you traverse Death Valey.

Rhyolite, or the "Queen City," was the largest town in the Death Valley area with a population of 5,000 to 10,000. From 1905-1911, Rhyolite contained 2 churches, 50 saloons, 18 stores, 2 undertakers, 19 lodging houses, 8 doctors, 2 dentists, a stock exchange and an opera, plus electricity and a mill to handle the 300 tons of ore that came from the Montgomery Shoshone mine. Today, the town contains many ruins including the Bottle House, Senator W.A. Clark's train depot, the remains of a 3-story bank building, which cost $90,000 to build, and the jail.

Named after a famous Australian gold camp, Ballarat was formed during the many gold strikes of 1897 in the Panamint Mountains and was home to 400 people in 1898. The Radcliffe mine alone produced 15,000 tons of gold ore from 1898 to 1903. Ballarat is now privately owned and contains the ruins of several adobe buildings.

Chloride City became a town in 1905 when the Bullfrog strike brought people into the area to rework old mining claims. It became a ghost town the following year. There are numerous adits and dumps in the area and one grave of a James McKay, of whom nothing is known.

Built around a copper strike in 1905, Greenwater grew to a population of 2,000 and was known for its funny magazine, The Death Valley Chuckwalla. Water was hauled into town and sold for $15 a barrel. By 1909, mining had collapsed without ever showing a profit and people left for other areas. There are no ruins left in Greenwater.

Originally named Harrisberry after the two men who found the gold that launched it in 1905, Harrisburg was renamed by Shorty Harris, who took credit for the original strike. Even though, Pete Aguereberry, one of the original strike finders, spent 40 years working his claims in the Eureka gold mine. Harrisburg was a tent city that grew to support 300. Today nothing remains of the town but Pete’s home and mine, which are located down the dirt road to Aguereberry Point.

Copper and lead claims had been filed in the Leadfield area as early as 1905 but it wasn’t until 1926 that the area was heavily mined. In February of that year, Charles C. Julian, a California promoter, became president of the town’s leading mining company, the Western Lead Mines. The financial downfall of Julian and the playing out of lead in one of the main mines, led to the end of the town. There are remains of wood and tin buildings, a dugout and cement foundations of the mill.

Panamint City was called “the toughest, rawest, most hard-boiled little hellhole that ever passed for a civilized town.” Its founders were outlaws, who, while hiding from the law in the Panamint Mountains, found silver in Surprise Canyon and gave up their life of crime. In 1874 the town was at the height of its boom with a population of 2,000 citizens. By the fall of 1875 the boom was over, and in 1876, a flash flood destroyed most of the town. The chimney of the smelter is the most prominent remnant of the town's heyday.

Founded in 1906, Skidoo began when two prospectors found gold on their way to the Harrisburg strike. The town reached a population of 700 and became famous as the only place in Death Valley to have a hanging. Nothing remains of the actual townsite.