Eagle Mountain is a ghost town in the California desert in Riverside County founded in 1948 by industrialist Henry J. Kaiser. The town is located at the entrance of the now-defunct Eagle Mountain iron mine, once owned by the Southern Pacific Railroad, then Kaiser Steel, and located on the southeastern corner of Joshua Tree National Park. The town's fully integrated medical care system, similar to other Kaiser operations in California, was the genesis of the modern-day Kaiser Permanente health maintenance organization.
Four-fifths of the Kaiser Steel U30C fleet is visible in this photo of their shops at Eagle Mountain, in California's Colorado Desert. Built in 1968 for Kaiser's Eagle Mountain Railroad, which hauled iron ore from the company's Eagle Mountain Mine, U30Cs 1030 to 1034 were constructed pretty much to the specifications used on Southern Pacific's U30Cs. These five, however, each weighed six-tons more than a standard U30C. Trains originated here in Eagle Mountain, and then traveled fifty-one miles to Ferrum Junction, where the cars were interchanged with the Southern Pacific. SP would then haul the ore cars another 110 miles to the Kaiser Steel Mill in Fontana, California, for the production of steel. Ore trains from Eagle Mountain ceased operations on March 24, 1986, and the U30Cs were reportedly scrapped at Fontana in 1995. In early 1984, Kaiser began winding down operations at their Fontana mill. A reduced mill, now owned by California Steel Industries, is still in operation and profitable. Today, however, the steel is imported and arrives at the mill on special steel slab cars owned and operated by BNSF Railway.
