Keeler is practically a ghost town. Many of the buildings are falling apart, the lake it sits on is dry, the mines the town was built to support have been played out, there is about fifty people live in the town. We visited this place on our way out of Death Valley into the High Sierras.

History: Owens Lake use to be filled with water until the Los Angeles Aqueduct drained it. Back when it was filled with water, the town of Keeler, then called Cerro Gordo Landing, was first used as a stop for steamer ships such as the Bessie Brady and the Mollie Stevens in the 1870s and early 1880s. Silver mined from Cerro Gordo would be hauled down to Keeler and loaded up on the steamer ships for transport across the lake on its way to Los Angeles. For more information about the mining operation, Owens Lake, and the steamer ships, please see the Cottonwood Charcoal Kilns which were located on the other side of the lake and provided charcoal for the mining operations up at Cerro Gordo.

The town was eventually renamed to Keeler after Julius M. Keeler who owned the mill there. In 1883 a rail line was built to Keeler, with the last stop of the Carson & Colorado Railroad being in the town. Sadly, the silver had played out by then, which meant there was little freight for the railway to haul. After zinc was discovered up at the mine in 1911, the railway found some new life, but the zinc deposits ran out about 1930. The last train left Keeler in 1960. The train that use to run on the line was known as the "Slim Princess".