Farley's Olancha Mill Site

Minnard Farley found silver in the Coso Range in 1860 and worked out the thing that shaped this whole valley: ore is cheaper to carry to water than water is to carry to ore. He put his stamps and furnace on a creek running off the Sierra, and the settlement around them became Olancha. It was finished in December 1862, with the valley at war and Camp Independence five months old — a furnace lit while the Nüümü whose country it stood in were being driven out of it. Cerro Gordo industrialised the idea a decade later.

What the plaque says

M. H. Farley, working for the Silver Mountain Mining Company in the Coso Mountains, conceived the idea in 1860 of building a processing mill on a creek flowing into Owens Lake. He explored and named Olancha Pass that year, and completed the first mill and furnace in the Owens River Valley by December of 1862. It was located on Olancha Creek about one mile west of this marker.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Owens Lake — 14 mi
  Patsiata, the lake Los Angeles drank, and the most expensive dust in America.
• Alabama Hills — 21 mi
  Rounded golden granite under the Sierra wall, and Hollywoods oldest outdoor set.
• Mount Whitney — 26 mi
  At 14,505 feet, the highest summit in the contiguous United States, eighty miles from the lowest point.

More markers nearby

• Cottonwood Charcoal Kilns — 9.7 mi
• Furnace of the Owens Lake Silver-Lead Company — 18 mi
• Grave of 1872 Earthquake Victims — 24 mi