Skidoo

Skidoo was a gold mining town in the Panamint Range of Death Valley National Monument, Inyo County, California. Mining began in 1906, and a mill was built in 1907, burned, and was rebuilt in 1913. At its peak the town had more than 500 residents, stores, a saloon or two, a newspaper and a telephone line to Beatty, Nevada. Water reached the mill through a pipeline from Telescope Peak. The Tucki and Del Norte mines were the main source of wealth. Activity faded, then revived briefly in the 1930s. Today no town buildings remain, but a 15-stamp mill, water vats, a timber loading chute, concrete pads, shafts and test pits survive, mostly in poor condition. The site was recognized as a representative example of the early twentieth-century gold boom and of large-scale mining of narrow veins. Its surface mill and accessible workings illustrate gravity-feed ore processing and offer interpretive potential.