Desert Gold Mining Days

The Story

The mural recalls prospectors Oran Booth and Bill Keys and the area’s gold-mining era. The 2021 brochure records that Booth arrived in 1928, filed a claim on the site that became the Wall Street Mill, prospected in Gold Park, and later worked the Paymaster Mine—a gift from his friend Bill Keys. In 1933 Booth filed on the 80-acre homestead pictured in the mural. Keys, who arrived in 1910, established more than 30 mining claims in what is now Joshua Tree National Park.