This past weekend, we returned to Owens Valley for some ghost town hunting. We struck it rich with visits to Cerro Gordo and to the Saline Valley aerial tramway.
We'll focus on the tramway this time.
The Saline Valley tramway tranported salt from the production area in Saline Valley up and over the Inyo Mountains and down to Owens Valley where it was shipped to market. The salt was apparently so pure that it could safely be packaged and brought to market without any sort of processing.
The tramway operated from 1913 to 1930. The price of salt was too cheap which meant that the salt operation and its spectacular tramway failed to turn a profit despite high salt production.
From the floor of Saline Valley the loaded tramway cars rose 7,000 feet to the crossover station situated at almost 9,000 feet above sea level. Once the cars crossed over the top it was a 5,000-foot descent to the bottom of the tram at Swansea. It was a 14-mile journey.
The dry environment of the Inyo Mountains has preserved the tramway exceptionally well. In addition to the crossover station pictured here, there are several intermediate towers still standing on both sides, and cable still spans many of the sections.
Efforts are ongoing to preserve the remnants of the tramway and to somewhat restore the tram stations.
A close look at the photo shows our '04 Toyota 4Runner getting dwarfed by the immensity of the tramway station. There are two roads that lead to this point, and neither is an easy one. The remote location and the sheer girth of the building materials takes one aback. It's hard to fathom the effort needed to transport and assemble such machinery. Clearly, the builders and operators of the tramway were tough people.