Inside incredible Death Valley town that opened and shut within two years – and what’s left of it today

It was once a boomtown filled with prospectors drawn by the promise of copper and lead riches.

But now what’s left of Leadfield – a ghost town in Death Valley National Park about 22 miles west of Beatty, Nevada – stands as an example of one of the worst examples of mining speculation and fraud seen in the American West, according to the Digital Desert.

Leadfield boomed in 1926 and was effectively dead by 1927, after the lack of lead was exposed and the hype surrounding the town collapsed.

The National Park Service sign reveals it was a ”mining boom town founded on wild and distorted advertising” and has been preserved ”because of its notorious place in mining history.”

The remote settlement, reached via the 27-mile dirt stretch of Titus Canyon Road, collapsed almost as quickly as it rose.

Visitors can still make the rough drive to the site, where only a few dilapidated shacks, mine openings and scattered remains are still visible.

Some of the mines can still be entered – but at the visitors’ own risk, National Parks warns.

The man at the center of the frenzy was Charles C. Julian, the flamboyant promoter who became president of Western Lead Mines who sold the town as the next big strike.

A historical account by California-based nature photographer Walter Feller describes Julian as ‘‘deeply unsavory,” while a 1971 issue of Desert Magazine said he was the kind of man who “could have sold ice to an Eskimo.”

Julian sold shares, pumped Leadfield’s prospects and helped bring “great numbers of people” into the canyon.

But he greatly exaggerated the value of the mines, and was accused of using dodgy samples of the ore to make it appear of better quality than it actually was.

By February 1926, Leadfield had about 200 residents, with hotels, stores, a church and the construction of a school was underway.

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About 40,000 shares in Western Lead Mines had been sold, with the stock price climbing to $1.57 a share, according to a according to a historical resource study, fueling buzz about the town.

“The booming district is extraordinary because things are being done in it that are not done usually until mines and a mining town are far advanced from the date of their birth,” the Nevada State Journal wrote in February 1926.

Seven mining companies filed incorporation papers in March that year, while the Inyo Register reported that 1,000 prospecting claims had already been laid, with 5,000 expected in total.

But the money rush drew the attention of the California Corporation Commission, which alleged Julian had illegally sold shares before securing a permit, and ordered trading in his company stopped on the Los Angeles Stock Exchange.

Then in late October, the main tunnel of Western Lead Mine reached the spot where geologists believed the richest deposits would be and found.

Instead, there was nothing but low-grade ore.

Leadfield’s mines began shutting almost immediately, leaving Julian’s finances in freefall.

By July 1927, just seven desperate miners remained, working the area with hand tools.

Julian later faced indictment in Oklahoma in an oil fraud case, the SFgate reported. He then fled to Shanghai in 1933 and died by suicide there in 1934 at just 40.