1 - Desert Magazine of the Southwest

the district.
El Triumfo today is an almost deserted
town about an hour's drive south of La
Paz on the highway to Cabo San Lucas.
Most of the buildings are still standing,
including the town hall and the church.
Among the unique features of some of
the buildings are wooden floors of
tongue and groove planks and roofs of
redwood shingles. Both the flooring and
the shingles are nailed with square nails.
Besides the town there are the extensive
ruins of the milling operation. Although
the actual mill is gone, the large
furnaces and the towering brick smoke
stacks are still standing and the rusted
remains of an old steam engine and
other equipment are strewn around.
Continuing on over the mountain to
San Antonio the old narrow gauge railroad
bed can be seen where, in many
places, it parallels the modern highway.
One of the curiosities of the old railroad
course are the arched trestles, constructed
entirely of brick, where the tracks
were forced to cross the narrow gorges.
They can be seen from the highway in
several places.
Desert/ December 1976
Scattered rubble
and old
slag piles
almost hide
the old church
[right]
from view.
San Antonio, although the older of the
two towns by a hundred years, still has a
fair-sized population. The old stone
church on the plaza is the one that was
built by the orders of Galavez and its
founding date precedes that of the oldest
of the Upper California Missions by a
few months. Although most of the buildings
look as though they were built during
the boom times of the El Triumfo and
Progreso companies, some of the older
ones off the plaza appear to be from the
colonial era.
Both towns are on a paved, well-traveled
highway, but they are seldom visited
by tourists. For the ghost town and
mining camp buff, they are well worth
the time it takes to stop and look around.
The towns are picturesque, both in
setting and construction. The thick-walled,
straight-faced Mexican buildings are
unique for anyone who is used to the
false front and brick structures of areas
like the Mother Lode country, or the few
tumbled-down shacks and bare foundations
that unfortunately are all the remain
of so many of our Southwestern
ghost towns. •
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12152 Downey Avenue
DOWNEY, CALIFORNIA 90242
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