Across the river, you will get a delicious triple scoop of history: the Red Apple, the ghost town of Owensville and the Laws Railroad Museum. From the Owens River, backtrack your route about 400 feet and turn north (right) to access US 6, or you can turn left off the grade at the road end and make your way back to US 6.
Once there, turn east (right) and drive across the river to Silver Canyon Road, 1/4 mile. Turn right here, and drive to the sign advertising the Laws Railroad Museum. There will be a dirt road paralleling Silver Canyon Road on your right. Pull onto this road and access an obvious gate in the fence.
Going through the gate brings you into the site of Owensville, one of the first towns in the Owens Valley. It takes a sharp eye to find anything of the 1860s era town, but people did once live here.
Finding anything of Owensville is very difficult. Going through the gate will land one instantly in a dense sea of chest-high sagebrush, rabbitbrush and grass. About 200 feet southeast of the gate, one can find stones scattered under the sage, encircling a sunken area filled with dense grass and water plants. This is the remains of the stone corral, central in Owensville's history, as it more than once provided a protection for settlers at war with local Indians. Otherwise, other than a couple of depressions and some shards of heavy brown glass, Owensville has been erased from the floor of Owens Valley.
As for the grade of the Owens River Valley Electric Railroad through Owensville, the line crosses the ghost town 450 feet south of the access gate. Walking to the grade you will find the line covered in dense sage, but unmistakable due to the deep drainage ditches and decayed right-of-way fence posts. The line continues east about 900 feet, where it abruptly ends at a leveled area east of the Laws complex. No physical interchange with the Southern Pacific narrow gauge was ever built.
No trip to this area is ever complete without a visit to the Laws Railroad Museum. The Laws railroad complex was donated to Inyo County by Southern Pacific when the narrow gauge line was abandoned in 1960. The county as kept the railroad yards intact, along with one complete train, tanks, side tracks, turntable, shop buildings and other items of interest.There is also a motor car from the Death Valley Railroad on display. In the years since donation, the museum has added several historic buildings from other parts of the valley and has filled them with displays. There are two research libraries on the premises
EXPLORING THE RED APPLE LINE
Main Street, Bishop to Williams Slough
Williams Slough to Owens River
Owens River Area
Owens River Red Apple Railroad Introduction
Why Owens Lake is Red
