I had a post about a historic California ghost town randomly pop up on my Facebook feed Tuesday morning, and the name sounded familiar to me — so I went into Chapman University’s archives and found this episode of California’s Gold, originally aired in August 2008. The town was named after the Rand Mountain gold strike, at the Yellow Aster, or Rand, mine, which also brought in a stage line from Mojave, some 40 miles to the southwest. The supply town of Johannesburg, located one mile east of Randsburg on Highway 395, developed in 1896. Both names were adopted from the profusion of minerals resembling those of the ranch mining district in South Africa.

The historic mining town of Randsburg in eastern Kern County was established after the discovery of gold in 1895. Huell spends the day learning about the town’s history and getting to know some of the colorful characters living there now — from IMDB.com

(Click on the linked image below to see the video.)