SQUATTERS NOW OWN PIECE OF THE ROCK IN GHOST TOWN.

Byline: Associated Press 

Ghost towns are supposed to be dead, but on the Fourth of July, this one came to life.

For Randsburg, age 102, population about 60, Independence Day really was a day of independence. In a never-tried compromise, the federal government decided to deed 56 lots overlying old gold claims to squatters who have been living on them for years.

Squatters no more; now they are settlers.

``Now I have something that I can either leave to my children or my grandkids, or I can sell,'' said Bob Pruett, owner of the 1896-vintage Mercantile Store and former owner of the Lexington claim underlying much of this picture-book frontier town.

Pruett and his wife, Ann, made the ``Randsburg solution'' possible by agreeing to give up their claim.

The Bureau of Land Management, in turn, is signing land patents over to occupants for roughly $500 an acre - enough to cover costs of the project so taxpayers don't have to, said Linn Gum, the BLM geologist who engineered the solution. For its part, the government is getting rid of a 100-year-old headache.

The Mercantile Store, one of about 40 Randsburg buildings, was designated official patent bureau for the day. One of the government fellers from Washington (BLM Assistant Director Hord Tipton) even came out to sign the papers.

``There's never been a patent issued anywhere but a state capital or Washington, so it's pretty significant, historically,'' Gum said.

Using satellite data, surveyors this spring staked claims originally marked by rocks or buildings, whittled by the eternal wind.

Some land was in private hands, some on federal land, some on both. Some, no one knew for sure.

When gold was discovered in 1895, miners named it for the rich Witwatersrand of South Africa.

A year later, when the booming camp needed schools and a post office, they built the service town of Johannesburg a mile downhill.

Why cling to a treeless mountain, surrounded by mine tailings, baked by 110-degree temperatures, whipped by wind? Pruett seemed surprised by the question.

``Why, the whole town is right on top of a gold mine,'' he said.

And what might raw gold look like, just in case a tourist finds some in the wild?

``Well, son, it looks like gold,'' Pruett said.

Behind her counter, Clara Salwasser held up a vial of it: 9.2 grams of flake, about enough to fill a take-out packet of sugar. She paid about $10 a gram for it.

``That's not one person's work. That's many persons' work,'' she said. ``Your modern-day prospector is a lot like the older-day prospector. They're poor.''

Every week or so, a prospector drifts in with a trace of flake, which Salwasser buys to package and resell. Deal done, the prospector is off again to parts unknown.

``You either love it or you hate it,'' Salwasser said. ``Most of us love it. We've paid for our plot over at the cemetery in Joburg. We're lifers.''

CAPTION(S):

4 Photos

Photo: (1--color) Prospectors' homes dot the barren hillsides of Randsburg, where gold was found in 1895. Squatters became settlers on the Fourth of July when they were given deeds to land over old gold claims.

(2--color in AV edition only) Clara Salwasser, owner of the Little Ore House in Randsburg, shows a sample of the town's gold dust she buys from local prospectors.

(3) Antique collector Gene Walker, above, holds a rifle that used to grace the counter of the Old Owl brothel. Walker has preserved the building as a bed and breakfast now called the Old Owl Inn. (4--ran in AV edition only) Right, locals of the 102-year-old ghost town belly up to the bar at the White House saloon.

Associated Press