Cottonwood Charcoal Kilns

Cerro Gordo burned every tree within reach of itself, so its furnaces had to import their fire. In June 1873 Colonel Sherman Stevens built a sawmill high on Cottonwood Creek and a flume to bring the wood down to these two kilns, where it smouldered for about ten days into charcoal. Wagons carried it to Stevens Wharf; the steamer Bessie Brady crossed Owens Lake in three hours rather than the three days it took to drive around; mule teams hauled it up the Yellow Grade.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Owens Lake — 8.3 mi
  Patsiata, the lake Los Angeles drank, and the most expensive dust in America.
• Alabama Hills — 11 mi
  Rounded golden granite under the Sierra wall, and Hollywoods oldest outdoor set.
• Mount Whitney — 19 mi
  At 14,505 feet, the highest summit in the contiguous United States, eighty miles from the lowest point.
• Manzanar National Historic Site — 23 mi
  A concentration camp on twice-taken ground, where the United States imprisoned more than eleven thousand of its own.

More markers nearby

• Furnace of the Owens Lake Silver-Lead Company — 9.6 mi
• Farley's Olancha Mill Site — 9.7 mi
• Grave of 1872 Earthquake Victims — 14 mi
• Manzanar Relocation Center — 23 mi