April 21, 2013 — Owens Lake, sucked dry 100 years ago (1913) by William Mulholland for the City of Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.

The view is looking to the west from half-way up Cerro Gordo Road.

Four decades earlier, from 1868 to the late 1870s, an average of seven tons of silver and lead ore, in ingot form, were sent down this rugged mountain road every day from the Cerro Gordo mines and ferried across the lake, 5,000 feet below. From there, Remi Nadeau's mule teams hauled the ore across the desert, passing through the Santa Clarita Valley via Lang (Stage) Station and Beale's Cut to Los Angeles, where it was refined. (After 1874, when the Southern Pacific came as far north as San Fernando, the mule teams stopped there and the ore went the rest of the way by train.)

Tiburcio Vasquez, his lieutenant Cleovaro Chavez, and other highwaymen made trouble for Nadeau's Cerro Gordo teamsters now and then.