Furnace of the Owens Lake Silver-Lead Company

Colonel Sherman Stevens built this furnace and mill in 1869, and James Brady took over the following year and laid out the town of Swansea beside it. Between this works and the one at Cerro Gordo the district turned out around 150 silver bars a day, each weighing 83 pounds, and the bullion went south by freight wagon to a pueblo that grew rich handling it — Los Angeles has been called the child of Cerro Gordo. The 1872 earthquake wrecked Swansea and shipping moved to Keeler.

What the plaque says

The Owens Lake Silver-Lead Furnace and Mill was built here by Col. Sherman Stevens in 1869 and used until March 1874. James Brady assumed its operation in 1870 for the Silver-Lead Company and built the town of Swansea. During the next few years the output of this furnace and another at Cerro Gordo was around 150 bars of silver every 24 hours, each weighing 83 pounds.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Owens Lake — 6.3 mi
  Patsiata, the lake Los Angeles drank, and the most expensive dust in America.
• Alabama Hills — 10 mi
  Rounded golden granite under the Sierra wall, and Hollywoods oldest outdoor set.
• Manzanar National Historic Site — 19 mi
  A concentration camp on twice-taken ground, where the United States imprisoned more than eleven thousand of its own.
• Mount Whitney — 21 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 — 9.6 mi
• Grave of 1872 Earthquake Victims — 11 mi
• Farley's Olancha Mill Site — 18 mi
• Manzanar Relocation Center — 19 mi