A few weeks ago, I made the trek out to southeast Arizona to visit my parents. As I traveled the over-crossing at the old Eagle Mountain Railroad tracks west of Desert Center, I immediately noticed huge piles of railroad ties stacked along the clearing for the tracks as far to the north as I could see. On the way home, I took a closer look and it was very clear that the tracks had been removed, and the ties are stacked in preparation to be hauled away by trucks.
For those who don't know, the Eagle Mountain Railroad line runs (ran?) between the Union Pacific line and old Kaiser Steel Mine at Eagle Mountain. The line originates along the east short of the Salton Sea in a small area known as "Ferrum", about halfway between Bombay Beach and Mecca. From there, the line travels northeast through the desert, almost 52 miles, before terminating at the old town of Eagle Mountain. The line was constructed by and fully owned by Kaiser Steel, and first became operational in 1947. It was used to haul iron ore from the mines to Kaiser's processing facilities in Fontana, CA, and to haul supplies and equipment back to the mine.The mine ceased operation in 1986, and the rail lines went neglected and fell into disarray over the next decade with several sections of track becoming fully washed out by desert storms. In the late 90s / early 2000s, there was an investment group attempting to turn the old Eagle Mountain Mine into a large landfill facility that would accept garbage via rail (via the Eagle Mountain Rail line), but these efforts were eventually halted by lawsuits over environmental concerns. The line continued to be owned (along with all of the land around the Eagle Mountain Mine and the town of Eagle Mountain) by Kaiser Ventures LLC, which was a spin-off of Kaiser Steel to maintain some of their assets after filing for bankruptcy. The company has never really been able to find a viable financial use for the land (always facing massive opposition from the environmentalist community), and has even made efforts to sell the land back to the government to be absorbed into Joshua Tree National Park. Today, the town of Eagle Mountain and the mine site sit vacant, rotting away in the desert climate. The occasional filming of a movie scene brings some action to the site, but the onsite caretaker doesn't allow access for any exploring, due to liability concerns.
Those who have run the Bradshaw Trail will be very familiar with the Eagle Mountain Railroad tracks, as they traverse a large portion of the same canyon as the road. The infamous Eagle Mountain Railroad trestle bridge has been ever popular with offroaders in the area, and even made for a wonderful shaded lunch stop on Jayrat's Bradshaw Trail run earlier this year. Based on what I've researched, it's unclear if the bridge structure is also being removed, or if it will remain in place.
According to some web searching I've done, some railroad enthusiasts bumped into survey crews along the line during March of this year who informed them that the line was being pulled up and scrapped. Some deeper searching has revealed that Kaiser Ventures recently sold its remaining assets and cashed out its stakeholders. The mine site property and the railroad were purchased by a company called Eagle Crest Energy. Eagle Crest is only interested in building a power storage facility at the mine site and didn't need the railroad. The terms of the deal required that they either restore the railroad line to functional status, or scrap and remove the entire line. Not needing the line, they chose the latter.
It was always a bucket list item of mine to travel the full length of the railroad line and explore some of the old remnants, including switching stations, service facilities, old buildings, and even some old railroad cars. I guess I'll never have the chance to do that now.
Sadly, the history of our area disappears as fast as it was written. I'm going to use this as a lesson to get out there more and explore the things that I want to see, because one day they'll be gone and we'll never have that chance again.
