Barnwell, California
| Barnwell, Manvel |
|
|---|---|
| Ghost town | |
 Barnwell,
Manvel |
|
| Coordinates: 35°17′35″N 115°14′09″W / 35.29306°N 115.23583°WCoordinates: 35°17′35″N 115°14′09″W / 35.29306°N 115.23583°W | |
| Country | United States |
| State | California |
| County | San Bernardino |
| Founded | 1893 |
| Time zone | Pacific (PST) (UTC-8) |
| • Summer (DST) | PDT (UTC-7) |
Barnwell, originally a rail camp named Summit, then Manvel, was a former railhead serving local mining camps, now a ghost town, in San Bernardino County, California. It lies at an elevation 4806 feet in the New York Mountains.
A mining magnate from Denver, Isaac G. Blake, in April 1892, with an interest in the silver mines in Sagamore Canyon in the New York Mountains, built the Needles Reduction Company mill, in the town of Needles and then in December 1892 began building the Nevada Southern Railway, toward those silver mines and the gold mining town of Vanderbilt from the Santa Fe Railroad station at Goffs, completing it to a rail camp with a post office, named Manvel, then later built it some miles on up nearer the mines, to a rail camp named Summit which was renamed Manvel when the post office relocated there, in July 1893. Manvel was the nearest railhead for nearby mining camps, including Vanderbilt, Goodsprings, Crescent, and Montgomery. However Blake's silver mines, mill and railroad empire was bankrupted by the crash of 1893 and tied up in litigation until after 1907.
Fortunately the gold mines at Vanderbilt and those discovered to the east at Searchlight, Nevada in the later 1890s, helped to sustain Manvel. Manvel supported a flour, grain, and lumber dealer, a general store, a hotel, a blacksmith, the post office, and a stage line running to Montgomery in 1898 and a school district in January, 1900. In early 1902, the Nevada Southern completed a 15-mile extension into the Ivanpah Valley, to a new railhead at Ivanpah, to serve as the shipping point for the nearby Copper World Mine.
At Searchlight, as production steadily increased, Manvel as its main rail shipping point for Searchlight, had a depot, telegraph office, a freight-forwarding house, and an agency of Wells, Fargo & Company. T. A. Brown, the co-founder of the Brown-Gosney Company store, largest in town, organized a telephone system; started several freight lines and a stage line; and opened branches in several nearby camps and towns.
...
Wikipedia