Picacho, California

Picacho, now a ghost town, was an early mining town on the Colorado River in Imperial County, California. It was named Picacho (Spanish for "big peak") after a nearby mountain of the same name.

The townsite itself is beneath Imperial Reservoir, but remains of some of the ore mills are above the lake level. The area is within Picacho State Recreation Area

History

Spaniards probably mined placer gold in the area as early as 1780. The area became very active when prospector Jose Maria Mendivil discovered gold veins in the nearby hills in the early 1860s. Mendivil laid out the townsite of Rio, which was soon renamed Picacho. The town had a population of 2,500, three stores, three elementary schools, numerous saloons, and was served by steamboats that connected the mining towns along the Colorado River. The gold mines closed by around 1910, and the filling of the lake behind Imperial dam flooded what was left of the town in 1938.

Geography

The townsite is at , at an elevation of 203 feet (62m) above sea level.

Picacho in fiction

Picacho was the setting of Zane Grey’s 1923 novel Wanderer of the Wasteland, later made into a silent film.

References

See also

List of ghost towns in California

External links

• Picacho State Recreation Area
• Ghosttowns.com: Picacho