©"Eagle Mountain Ruins"

"Eagle Mountain Ruins" - A Desert Ghost Story in Pencil

Deep in the Mojave Desert, where the wind whispers through abandoned dreams, stands the skeletal remains of Eagle Mountain Mine's commercial buildings. This haunting 1993 pencil on canvas drawing captures one of Southern California's most evocative ghost towns.

Created during an artistic pilgrimage to the ruins of what was once the largest iron ore mine in Southern California, this piece freezes a moment in desert time. The Eagle Mountain Mine, operated by Kaiser Steel from 1948 to 1983, once bustled with industrial life. Now, only these concrete skeletons remain, standing sentinel in the vast Mojave landscape near Joshua Tree National Park.

The deliberate unfinished quality of this work mirrors the incomplete story of the abandoned town itself - a place where time stopped in the 1980s, leaving behind only architectural ghosts and desert silence. Each empty window frame speaks of lives once lived, dreams once pursued, and the inevitable return of all human endeavors to the eternal desert.

Pencil on canvas, 19" x 14", 1993 A meditation on impermanence and the haunting beauty of abandonment.