24/7 Biohazard and Crime Scene Cleanup in Darwin, CA

Darwin is an unincorporated former mining community and census-designated place in Inyo County, sitting at 4,846 feet on the western edge of Death Valley, 22 miles southeast of Keeler.

The town is named for Dr. Erasmus Darwin French, a rancher, miner and explorer who prospected the area in 1850 and led a party into Death Valley in 1860 searching for the mythical Gunsight Lode - not for naturalist Charles Darwin.

Silver and lead discoveries led to the founding of the settlement in 1874, and a post office opened in 1875 that, apart from a brief closure in 1902, remains open today.

Darwin boomed almost overnight: by the end of 1875 it had two smelters, some 20 operating mines, about 200 frame houses and more than 700 residents, with the Defiance Mine as the district's principal producer.

By 1877 Darwin's population peaked at roughly 3,500 people, making it the largest town in Inyo County at the time.

After the Anaconda Copper Mining Company bought up the area mines in 1945, Darwin's operation became California's number one lead mine, producing about two-thirds of the state's lead until mining ended in the 1970s.

The town prospered again when the Eichbaum Toll Road opened Death Valley from the west in 1926, but a new highway cutoff bypassed Darwin in 1937 and left it isolated.

Just 36 people lived in Darwin at the 2020 census, spread across 24 households averaging only 1.5 people each - and not a single resident was under the age of 18.

Darwin is a strikingly old community: the median age in 2020 was 61.5 years, and nearly half of its households consisted of one person living alone.

The near-ghost town was the subject of the 2011 documentary film 'Darwin,' and in 2012 BBC News featured its residents campaigning to replace dial-up internet with broadband.