Showdown in the desert: the small town fending off a new California gold rush
by Griffin Jones, published in The Guardian, 18 June, 2026
A prospecting company’s search for gold has the town of Lone Pine and Indigenous leaders on edge, as the Trump administration greenlights new projects across the American west. Lone Pine, population 1,882, lies along a stretch of California highway framed by the vast Inyo mountains and a sweeping desert landscape of sagebrush and dunes …