Laws Railroad Museum, California

Laws was the name of a stop on the old railroad, and though the railroad is gone, the stop is now a railroad museum. The rail line that once connected the Owens Valley to the world, the Carson and Colorado, was built in the 1880s, primarily to service the mines of the valley. It ran from Carson City, Nevada, to Keeler, and was originally going to continue south and east to the Colorado River. Instead, a Southern Pacific route terminated at Owenyo, just north of Lone Pine, connecting the valley to the south. The Owens Valley line was abandoned by the 1960s, and the steel rails removed for scrap. Many of the historic looking buildings moved to the museum at Laws are old movie sets. Like much of the Valley, the museum is on land leased from the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.