Keeler

Keeler postmark - 1887
(Photo courtesy of Jeremy Warner)

Keeler, CA

See USE NOTICE on Home Page.

Main Street Keeler - circa 1933
(Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress)

Inyo Development Works -Soda Ash plant on Owens Lake just south of Keeler, CA
(Photo courtesy of the Rich McCutchan)

Crude Soda at Inyo Development Company, Keeler circa 1912
[Forbes photo, Lippencott Collection - FID4]

Top & bottom photographs courtesy of the Joseph Barlow Lippincott Papers, LIPP, The Water Resources Center Archives, University of California, Berkeley

Furnace & Mill at Inyo Development Company, Keeler circa 1912
[Forbes photo, Lippencott Collection - FID4 2]
(Photo courtesy Calisphere)

Inyo Development Company soda ash operations on the shores of Owens Lake, Keeler, CA (Photos courtesy of the University of Nevada, Reno Digital Collections )
Men working on a brick building at the Inyo Development Company	Men at work inside the Inyo Development Company
Men at work inside the Inyo Development Company	Men at work inside the Inyo Development Company
Inyo Development Company - Keeler CA
New furnace at the Inyo Development Company	Soda plant & soda bricks at the Inyo Development Company
01/22 Inyo Development Company operations on the shores of Owens Lake (Photo courtesy of The Huntington Library Digital Collections)
01/22 Inyo Development Company operations on the shores of Owens Lake (Photo courtesy of The Huntington Library Digital Collections)
01/22 Inyo Development Company operations on the shores of Owens Lake (Photo courtesy of The Huntington Library Digital Collections)
Evaporation vats at the Inyo Development Company	Evaporation vats at the Inyo Development Company
Inlet canal & channel at the Iyo Development Company	Inyo Development Company - Furnace #1 in operation
Inyo Development Company and soda pile - Keeler CA	Men working on the Inyo Development Company property
Evaporation vats at the early Inyo Development Company	Inlet canal at Owens Lake for the Inyo Development Company
Early Inyo Development Company soda works at Keeler CA	Inyo Development Company furnace
Shack & equipment at the Inyo Development Company	Inyo Development Company equipment
Soda crushing plant at the Inyo Development Company	Soda dumps and train at the Inyo Development Company

Japanese Worker Killed at Soda Works - February 1907
(Article courtesy of Hal Eaton)

Coroner's Inquest into Japanese Worker's Death - February 1907
(Article courtesy of Hal Eaton)

Soda Works at Keeler Shut Down - March 1906
(Article courtesy of Hal Eaton)

Murder in Keeler - December 1907
(Article courtesy of Hal Eaton)

The Trial of Ajel Canneolopelus - February 1908
(Article courtesy of Paul Gomez)

Inyo Development Company- 1915
(Courtesy Calisphere - Report XV of the State Mineralogist, Mines and Mineral Resources of Portions of California, Inyo County: 1915-1916)

Proceedings of the First International Soda Ash Conference:
Volume I - 1998
by John R. Dyni and Richard W. Jones

The Inyo Development Company plant north of Keeler, CA - Circa 1910

Workers using picks and shovels to harvest the crude trona from the evaporation ponds at Owens Lake.

Jeanne Pitts of Sweet Home, Oregon writes:

Your web pages are wonderful and very informative. We lived in Keeler, CA in 1947-1948 where my mother taught school at a two-room schoolhouse and my father worked at a soda ash plant. We lived in a housing project owned by the company. The buildings were long multi-family dwellings. I have a few pictures from that time and I'm sure my memory is faulty as I was only about 5 years old. Thanks for all your time and effort in compiling these great web pages.

May 2004

Keeler Hotel circa 1925
[Picture from "From this Mountain - Cerro Gordo"
by Robert C. Likes and Glenn R. Day (1975)]

Cerro Gordo smelter vat ruins located at the town of Keeler.
[Russ Leadabrand photo]

For More Keeler pictures see my pages on the Carson & Colorado RR

The following images and text were taken from the April 1989 issue of "The Album" furnished to me courtesy of Rich McCutchan.

Keeler crouches on the eastern shore of Owens Lake, with the brooding Inyo Range as a backdrop, before water disappeared from the lake.
[photo: Eastern California Museum collection]

Locally built Keeler pool, August 9, 1929. People gathered from miles around to admire the area's bathing beauties.
[photo: Eastern California Museum collection]

Keeler swimming pool (Photo courtesy Susan Frazee-Kurner)	Keeler swimming pool (Photo courtesy Susan Frazee-Kurner)
Keeler swimming pool today - 2012 (Photo courtesy Ray DeLea)
02/22 Keeler "Swimming Club" pool sign (Photo courtesy Irv Dierdorff)	02/22 Keeler Beach sign (Photo courtesy Lara Hartley)

Until it burned to the ground, Hotel Keeler, operated by Mr. and Mrs. George Mates, provided for travelers at the southern terminus of the former Carson and Colorado Railroad, as well as those in the stage coaches bound for Mojave or nearby mining towns. [photo: Eastern California Museum collection]	Keeler"Doc" Irving Wooden only medical doctor in many hundreds of miles in Inyo County. Lillian Hilderman was his nurse in Independence before she married Mr. Hilderman. [photo: Eastern California Museum collection]
Steam locomotive pauses while crew thinks about thawing out in Keeler's Desert Club. Snow and icicles were not uncommon in this winter of 1933. [photo: Eastern California Museum collection]

Lillian Larson Hilderman's Keeler
by Henry Raub

House owned by the Cerro Gordo Mine, May 1929. The old fashioned "public convenience outhouse" appears just behind the building on the left.

Paul Cederburg of Yreka, California shared that he was born in this house.
[photo: Eastern California Museum collection]

Photo Cards courtesy of Rich McCutchan
Keeler in 1912	Keeler matchbook cover
Keeler Carson & Colorado Railroad Depot in 1969.	Keeler, CA. (date unknown)
Keeler in 1930	Keeler Carson & Colorado Railroad Depot
Keeler Carson & Colorado Railroad	Keeler Carson & Colorado Railroad
Keeler - Saline Valley tram terminus building	Keeler- Old Carson & Colorado Railroad boxcars

Keeler Carson & Colorado RR Depot in 2005.

Famous ABC Beer Sign in Keeler" (Photo courtesy of Ashley Olive)	Keeler - Slim Princess SPNG train depot (Photo courtesy of Ashley Olive)
Keeler Market sign - Keeler, CA ( Photo courtesy of Ashley Olive)

Gilbert Marquez of Victorville, CA writes:

Ray,

I was born in NSP (National Soda Products) in 1927. This town was built by the Soda company for the workers and their families. The town was built on the edge of the Owens dry lake's eastern side. My father worked thee from 1923 until 1937 when we left for Los Angeles. My older brother, my sister, and I attended school in Keeler. I have a group photo taken in 1934.

Gilbert Marquez
September 2009

Keeler class of 1934.

Back Row (L to R): ?,?,?,?,?,?,?,Gasper Manuz,?,?,?
Middle Row (L to R): ?,Kenneth Lee Sainz,?,?,?,?,Prince Lyle Smith Jr.,?,Gilbert Marquez,?,?,Raymond Marquez
Front Row (L to R): ?,?,Anne Bolonese,Josephine Marquez,?,?,?,?,?,?

Gilbert Marquez in front of the Keeler school (house owned by the Cerro Gordo Mine) in 1959.

Keeler Sierra Talc Company loading station in 1959.
(photo courtesy of Gilbert Marquez)

Keeler Carson and Colorado Train Depot in 1969.
(photo courtesy of Gilbert Marquez)

Keeler National Soda Products operation in 1959.
(photo courtesy of Gilbert Marquez)

Keeler National Soda Products operation from the 1942 film "Saboteur"
(DVD screen capture courtesy Ray DeLea)

11/24

California Alkali Company stock certificate to Thomas Treanor - 1920
(Photo courtesy of eBay)

Keeler Natural Soda Products Company
(Photo courtesy "Inyo 1866 - 1986)

01/22

Photos courtesy of The Huntington Library Digital Collection
Keeler - National Soda Products Reduction Plant	Southern Sierra's Power Company step-down transformer at the N ational Soda Products Plant - Keeler, CA

Ray,

My name is Marshall Fuller I was born in Keeler in 1956 I also went to school in the old school house and also remember the train running and the Desert Club was owned by Agnes Hinton as kids there we would go to the pool and play around the talc mill and play around the train yard there was a gas station a general store a fire station post office and family homes the picture you have of the old train depot has the wrong date on it it should be around 1969 because the train stopped running in 1964.

I wish i had some pictures, but that was so long ago. I remember the tram house that ran up to the Morning Star mine on Cerro Gordo. If you go up and watch the canyons to the south you might still see one of the tram cars still hanging on a cable. The boy Mrs Hilderman was talking about was my brother Garry, not Gary, and the dogs with the quils in them was our dogs and the Osborn's dog Jake. I still have arrowheads I found as a kid at NSP and also my brother Garry was born in NSP. I was born in Keeler. I remember the train running. It was called the Slim Princess. The talc mill was in full swing and it was great growing up there we was the first house below the gas station

Marshall Fuller
June 2015

Courtesy California Geological Survey Collection and Larry Vredenburgh Report XV of the State Mineralogist, Mines and Mineral Resources of Portions of California, Inyo County: 1915-1916
Natural Soda Products plant south of Keeler
Mill and tramway terminal of Owens Valley Salt Company, 3 miles north of Keeler
Sacking salt inside the Owens Valley Salt Company, 3 miles north of Keeler (Photo courtesy of Calisphere) Report XV of the State Mineralogist, Mines and Mineral Resources of Portions of California, Inyo County: 1915-1916
Soda Works Plant circa 1952 (Photo courtesy of UC Davis Digital Library)	Old ore wagons near Keeler - 1952 (Photo courtesy of UC Davis Digital Library)
01/22 Natural Soda Products Co. - Keeler, CA (Photo courtesy of The Huntington Library Digital Collections)

Photo Cards courtesy of Rich McCutchan
Saline Valley Salt Tram terminus at Swansea	Postcard from a miner at Cerro Gordo
Hotel Keeler - Keeler, CA	Mule teams arriving in Keeler, CA
Keeler Soda Works - Keeler, CA	Keeler Soda Works - Keeler, CA
Carson & Colorado RR - Keeler, CA Larger Image
"Slim Princess" - Keeler, CA - circa 1948	Keeler Carson & Colorado RR Depot - Keeler, CA - circa 1967

Photos courtesy of UC Riverside Library Archives
First train crossing the Nevada/California boarder on the Carson & Colorado Railroad - circa 1883 (Loyola Marymount Archives)	Candelaria Depot on the Carson & Colorado Railroad - circa 1883 (Loyola Marymount Archives)
Borax works at Keeler - November 1945 (Cal State Library photo)
Engine No. 9 heading towards Keeler (Photo courtesy of John West)
Southern Pacific Narrow Gauge Engine #8 - circa 1938 (Sonoma County Library Archives)	Southern Pacific Narrow Gauge Engine #17 (Courtesy Rich McCutchan Archives)

The Many Facets of Tom Boland of Keeler (Courtesy Hal Eaton)
Planting Salt Cod in Owens Lake	Codfish Commissioner
Keeler Boom Town	Tom Boland's Aligator Ranch
Tom Boland's New Boat

Photo Cards courtesy of Rich McCutchan
Crude Soda at the Inyo Development Company's well in Keeler, CA	The Keeler stage at Darwin
The Mojave stage at Keeler	Keeler, CA - 1941
Keeler S&P Depot - 1940	Keeler S&P Depot - 1940
Keeler, CA - 1940	Keeler, CA 1940
S&P Engine #8 and #9 in Keeler - 1940	S&P Engine #14 and #17 in Keeler - 1940
S&P Engine #8 and #9 in Keeler - 1940
S&P Engine #14 and #17 in Keeler - 1940
Deputy Sheriff Harry Hill and Maud the burro - circa 1910	Freight wagons arriving in Keeler, CA
Freight wagons arriving in Keeler, CA
S&P railroad yard in Keeler, CA - 1916	S&P engine #17 in Keeler, CA - 1940
Soda works at Keeler, CA	Soda works at Keeler, CA
Southern Pacific steam locomotive pausing in front of the Desert Club in Keeler - 1933. The winter of 1932-1933 was unusually cold, with nighttime temperatures in the Owens Valley dropping to around nine degrees below zeror for six weeks in a row. Every water tank but the one at Keeler froze, and train service was erratic. (Eastern California Museum - Virtual Transportation Museum photo)	Wagon and team at the railroad terminus at Keeler picking up cargo transported in boxcars on the Southern Pacific narrow gauge line - 1913. Keeler was also known as Hawley. (Eastern California Museum - Virtual Transportation Museum photo)
Long ago, when there was actually a beach at Keeler. - 2003 photo (Photo courtesy of David Wayne Bailey)	A more recent (2012) photo of the Keeler Beach sign. On my visit to Keeler this year (2019), I found all of the writing almost completely gone. (Photo courtesy of Lawrence Goldman)
Keith Skelton photo of the Keeler Beach sign.

Photos courtesy of Calisphere
Al Staudinger (Father-in-law of J.D. Black) Marble Works - Keeler, CA	Al Staudinger (Father-in-law of J.D. Black) Marble Works - Keeler, CA
Abandoned Staudinger Marble Works - 1952 (Photo courtesy of UC Davis Digital Library)

	To the Top of Mt. Whitney
	Independence
	The Wonacott Family
	More Keeler NSP and the Olds Family
	Aberdeen
	Keough's Radium Hot Springs
	Allie Robinson Pack Trains

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This page was last updated on 30 November 2024