Three hours outside of the hustle and bustle of Los Angeles is a lot of desert land, largely uninhabited for the past two decades. The ghost town is known as Eagle Mountain, and though it hasn’t been the site of much in the way of quotidian goings-on, a mysterious buyer known as Ecology Mountain Holdings saw fit to scoop up the vacant property for a whopping $22.5 million late last month, according to SF Gate.
Despite the zip code’s relative lack of action in recent years, it does have some interesting ties to its movie star neighbor to the west: Christopher Nolan filmed scenes from his mind-bending 2020 thriller Tenet in the ghost town. SF Gate reports that several foreman still live in the area to keep watch over the dusty lot, in case of any trespassers. Eagle Mountain has attracted a number of bloggers in recent years. Many have posted videos to YouTube recounting their illicit trips into the uninhabited plot for curious viewers, giving an eerie look into the town’s abandoned railroad tracks and empty streets.
Though the area itself has proved haunting enough to inspire a bit of intrigue from internet denizens, its new owners have only added to the ghost town’s spooky lore. The intentions behind Ecology Mountain Holdings’ purchase are shrouded in mystery. Public information about the buyer reveals very little; SF Gate notes a business address in Cerritos, California—a three-hour drive from Eagle Mountain—as one of the few publicly available details about the LLC.
Formerly a mining town, the majority of the area’s 4,000 residents were employed by Kaiser Steel in its heyday. It was founded by industrialist Henry J. Kaiser in 1948 and, over the years that followed, saw three schools, a community swimming pool, several churches, and a baseball diamond set up for the families of those working to extract iron ore from the nearby mountains.
