Monolith revisited
DesertRat
Posts: 1,791 ✭
I was responding to the "determining location of old structures" thread and realized it would have been rude to post all this in that thread so created a new one.
I posted this once before here but we have quite a few new people that might get a kick out of the site that remains untouched.
I was looking for local sites to hunt a couple years ago and learned of a town that used to house the workers of the cement plant at Monolith Ca. (now Tehachapi) but has all but disappeared.
Here is the research I did using old books with a very good hand drawn map and then overlaying the map on a recent satellite image.
This is a site near here that once was home to over 300 people, complete with school, store, houses, park etc... The town was named "Aqueduct" when the post office was established in 1908 since the cement made at the plant was used to construct the California Aqueduct. It was renamed to "Monolith" in 1910 and thrived until the 1950's when affordable housing in Tehachapi 4 miles west made it obsolete for the company to house employees in the town.
The town slowly died out over the years until all that was left was the general store which shut its' doors in 1971. In 1975 the Monolith Cement Company had the entire town demolished and removed all traces including the buildings, foundations, streets etc...
Unfortunately the land is all privately owned by a large Swedish company now who refuses to even entertain the idea of allowing me to hunt there. I even tried from the historical aspect of donating all finds to the local historical society and they refused.
some day.....Some day...
Hand drawn map from a library book on the area.
High altitude satellite photo of the site (the big industrial site across the road to the north is the cement plant which still operates)
Closer view of the site (trees)
High altitude view with my photoshop overlay of the map from the book.
Close up view of the map/satellite overlay
Here's even some old photos showing some of the residents and buildings. I know this site will produce!!!!!
I posted this once before here but we have quite a few new people that might get a kick out of the site that remains untouched.
I was looking for local sites to hunt a couple years ago and learned of a town that used to house the workers of the cement plant at Monolith Ca. (now Tehachapi) but has all but disappeared.
Here is the research I did using old books with a very good hand drawn map and then overlaying the map on a recent satellite image.
This is a site near here that once was home to over 300 people, complete with school, store, houses, park etc... The town was named "Aqueduct" when the post office was established in 1908 since the cement made at the plant was used to construct the California Aqueduct. It was renamed to "Monolith" in 1910 and thrived until the 1950's when affordable housing in Tehachapi 4 miles west made it obsolete for the company to house employees in the town.
The town slowly died out over the years until all that was left was the general store which shut its' doors in 1971. In 1975 the Monolith Cement Company had the entire town demolished and removed all traces including the buildings, foundations, streets etc...
Unfortunately the land is all privately owned by a large Swedish company now who refuses to even entertain the idea of allowing me to hunt there. I even tried from the historical aspect of donating all finds to the local historical society and they refused.
some day.....Some day...Hand drawn map from a library book on the area.
High altitude satellite photo of the site (the big industrial site across the road to the north is the cement plant which still operates)
Closer view of the site (trees)
High altitude view with my photoshop overlay of the map from the book.
Close up view of the map/satellite overlay
Here's even some old photos showing some of the residents and buildings. I know this site will produce!!!!!
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Comments
Is it fenced off?
Jerry
This looks better on the map site and you can drill down for a better look:
Jerry
<< <i>Danny, I remember that post! You did a fine job with the info and overlay!!!
Is it fenced off?
Jerry >>
Yes, Jerry. It is fenced off with barbed wire. Also the site is obviously directly across the road from the plant and anyone driving by would see someone out there with a detector if one was to try and sneak in (which I won't do).
Do you have a link to the maps you mentioned?
I also respect you very much for not "sneaking in" to that potentially lucrative area. It takes a good man to restrain himself. I would suspect there would be some antique artifacts as well as coins and jewelry. I feel sad for you that you cannot detect there.
The photo editing program I use won't do a transparent overlay like that. I gotta upgrade. Furthermore, I've always wondered how people did those when dealing with maps of different scale. I guess you can just shrink or expand the images until the common features like still-existing old roads or rivers/geographical features line up properly?
That's awesome.
The old photos are neat, too.
I wonder what the current owners are planning to do with the property. Maybe it’ll sell soon. I would love to have this tale completed with pictures of your finds.