Emergency Crime Scene and Biohazard Cleanup in Tecopa, CA

Tecopa is a tiny census-designated place in the Mojave Desert of southeastern Inyo County, California, about 9 miles south-southeast of Shoshone at an elevation of 1,339 feet, on the southeastern edge of Death Valley.

Tecopa is named for Chief Tecopa, a respected Paiute-Shoshone leader of the region.

The town was founded in 1875 as Brownsville by brothers William D. and Robert D. Brown, who had struck rich lead and silver ore near Resting Springs; when Jonas Osborne bought out the Browns, he renamed the town for Chief Tecopa.

The present townsite grew up along the Tonopah and Tidewater Railroad, which reached Tecopa in 1907 to serve the area's mines.

The Old Spanish Trail, the great 19th-century trade route between Santa Fe and Los Angeles, passed just east of modern Tecopa by way of Resting Springs and Willow Creek.

Long before miners arrived, the Tecopa area was occupied by Koso and Chemehuevi people, who made use of its mineral springs.

Today Tecopa is best known for its natural hot springs — the county maintains public soaking pools by its campground, and private resorts such as Delight's Hot Springs Resort and the Tecopa Hot Springs Resort offer their own mineral pools.

The Tecopa Ecological Reserve protects an undeveloped natural hot spring and habitat of the Amargosa vole, a rare desert rodent.

Just outside town, China Ranch is a working date farm set in a lush desert oasis along Willow Creek, first established in the late 1800s to supply the local mining camps.

The 2020 census counted just 120 residents in Tecopa, down from 150 in 2010, spread across 18.7 square miles — a density of only about 6.5 people per square mile; as of the 2000 census the community had only 60 households.