Randsburg certainly lives up to its moniker as "California's living ghost town," offering tourists an opportunity to basically go back in time and truly experience what it must've felt like to be an extra on Back to the Future Part 3.
Located in Kern County, on a very rural stretch of land between Death Valley and the Sierra Nevada Mountains, this old school mining town is a total throwback to the gold rush days.
There are a few antique shops, a saloon, a desert museum (which sounds, umm, stimulating) an old jail, mining equipment, a church and one of the worst public restrooms I've ever seen. In all, this place is the closest you’ll get to a modern version of the old West and I was fully expecting a live gunfight to break out once the sun went down.
Aside from being a popular place to film commercials and movies (all centered around an old West theme, I assume?) their big claim to fame is the General Store in the center of town. Not much creative thought went into this and it's simply called General Store.
Built in the 1930s, this landmark has sodas, maps, memorabilia and some pretty decent food. Very popular compared to other shops on the strip, its big seller is the 'Black Bart' sundae, which is essentially a fancy way of saying banana split with fudge.
There's also a town slogan, though I'm not sure it's actually sanctioned by the local government.
A popular place for dirt bike and off-road enthusiasts to visit year round (you see a lot of neon biker suits meandering around), Randsburg isn't really a place to raise a family in. The population hovers around a paltry 69-77 a year; now that’s ghostly.
HOW THE HELL DID THIS HAPPEN?
The West in the 1800s was all about gold rush, and in 1895 Ransburg proved to be major player in the game.
Originally named Rand Camp after the mining region in South Africa, the town began to develop throughout the turn of the century, eventually settling on the aesthetic that still lingers to this day.
In fact, I don't think there's much else of a backstory here. Aside from electricity, the place hasn't really evolved or changed in the last hundred years, which is all part of the charm.
