Old West Days

On the third Saturday of September, Randsburg Old West Days begins with pancakes at eight in the morning. In 2026, the 24th annual, that Saturday fell on September 19. Parade entrants were told to meet at the Santa Barbara church at 9:30. At ten the parade started and the street fair opened along Butte Avenue, running until four. The Rand Desert Museum’s events page lists the day in capitals: live music, food and drink vendors, a car and bike show, a petting zoo, Old West re-enactments, a costume contest, games, prizes, and the Hitchin’ Post, open from ten to four. The festival’s Facebook page credits the whole affair to “Rand Merchants & Volunteers.”

A band, a car show, and gunfights at the Opera House

Nick Slater & The Tulare Dust Band, billed as “California’s Rising Country & Blues Artist,” played the 2026 street from eleven until closing. The festival’s August notice said: “Grab your hat ... Grab your boots ... Grab the family ... Gather up the friends ... Bring your appetite .... Be ready to dance.” Two days after the event, Slater posted: “We had a great time this past weekend ... thank you for having us out and taking such good care of us!!! We can’t wait to come back and do it again next year!”

The Randsburg Rod Shop sponsored the car show. It called for hot rods, muscle cars, trucks, and off-road vehicles to line up by nine, and told everyone else to “just wander down the street and enjoy the show!” Down the block, the Antelope Valley Gold Prospectors kept a booth where visitors could learn a little about gold mining.

In 2026 the Old West gunfight re-enactments were held up at the Opera House. The shootouts have moved around town and changed casts from year to year. A 2023 newspaper photograph shows members of the Old West Mounted Lawmen’s Association staging a mock shootout at the 2022 event. In 2023 the main event was a “street gunfight” between the Randsburg Lawmen and the Wild West Outlaws in front of the White House Saloon. That year street re-enactments ran at 11:30, 1, and 3:15, with five burlesque dancers added. For 2025 the Old West Lawmen and the Sweetwater Gang were set to “square off once again” with gunfights and a showdown on gun safety.

Soda fountains, chili, and a copper ingot

The rest of the program has shifted from year to year as well. In 2023 the pancake breakfast was served at the Opera House until eleven. The parade carried mounted horses, cars, and riders in period costume, and a parade king and queen were chosen by vote. Angel’s Roost played by the park in the morning and Station Street followed at 2:30, while Total Chaos played all day at the Cottage Hotel. The General Store had been closed for several months and reopened for the day, selling soda and ice cream from its 100-year-old soda fountain.

For the 2025 edition, breakfast moved to the Cottage Hotel. The Randsburg General Store had moved into the Vault Building and planned burgers, chili, potato, macaroni and cucumber salads, and pie. That year’s program also listed a chuck wagon cook-out, pony rides, a mobile ATM “for adults,” and a costume contest among the merchants. The committee head owned one of those businesses, the Rand Motor Co.

SCV Camp 2048 came over from Tehachapi in 2025. It sold embroidered American flags to pay for veterans’ gravestones in Kern County and for Wreaths Across America at the Rand District Cemetery. The camp also raffled original watercolors of Doc Holliday and Wyatt Earp by the Tombstone artist James Morris. For the museum it made a one-pound copper ingot, cast for that year’s event and raffled at the museum booth. Lunar Lens Photography set up an old saloon backdrop with costumes.

The vendor rows have grown. “Back when I first started four years ago, there were 40 vendors, if that. Now there is 70, and I estimate more will come,” Hollie Shotwell, the old west coordinator, told a reporter in 2023. That year she expected people from Tehachapi, Bakersfield, Palmdale, and Ridgecrest. A 2025 article put the crowd at thousands, drawn “from around the country.”

Four inches of rain in two hours

The 2025 festival was set for Saturday, September 20. On September 18 a rainstorm dropped four inches on Randsburg in two hours. The Mojave Desert News reported that the whole community lost water and sewer service. Streets were damaged, mud flowed into businesses and homes, and residents could not get out of the area. While volunteers assessed the damage, the committee postponed the celebration until further notice.

“Randsburg was under mud for sure!!” said Carol Dyer, spokesperson for the Old West Days committee. “But lots of volunteers & hard-working people, effort, muscles, cooking, phone calls and road crews; we’re getting it together.” She thanked the Rand Water Company, the tractor owners and operators, Caltrans, and Kern County. She explained that choosing a new date meant working around other area events and the schedules of vendors and performers, and added, “The alternative was to completely cancel until next year ... which we worked hard not to.”

The committee settled on November 1. Many vendors were booked elsewhere that day and could not come. The AU Mojave Prospectors, Bedelia’s Beads, and the Dry Lake Blues Band, set to play from ten, said they would still be there.

The museum on Butte Avenue

All of this pays for the Rand Desert Museum on Butte Avenue. In 2023 the festival was described as funded by donations taken at the museum through the year and by proceeds from merchants. Bells & Whistles Mercantile calls Old West Days “the largest fundraiser of the year for our little desert museum” and credits it with keeping the museum “open & free for everyone to see.” In August 2026 a Pizza Factory in Ridgecrest gave part of a day’s sales to the event and the museum to customers who used the code word “PIZZA.” Shotwell’s own appeal in 2023 named both causes: “Come join us to earn money for our Rand District Cemetery and Rand Museum.”

The museum collects the history of the Rand Mining District. According to the 2023 newspaper account, three prospectors found gold near the present town in 1895. Their mine was first called the Rand Mountain Mining Company and later the Yellow Aster Mining and Milling Company. The district was named for the Witwatersrand gold fields of South Africa, and by 1897 an estimated 2,500 people lived there.

The Randsburg Railroad reached what is now Johannesburg in 1898. Tungsten was found to the south in 1903, at a place later named Atolia for Atkins and Degolia, the two men who developed the mines. The tungsten boom faded after the Armistice. Silver turned up at Red Mountain in 1919, and the California Rand Silver Mine, later the Kelly Mine, was the richest silver mine in the state during the 1920s. In the early 1980s the Rand Mining Company reopened the Yellow Aster and neighboring mines and used heap leaching to recover gold. By the 2023 account the district had produced more than half a billion dollars in gold, silver, and tungsten.

The Desert Lions Club founded the museum in 1943 as an archive for the district. Kern County took over its direction in 1948. In 1985 the county decided it could no longer justify the cost and returned ownership to the residents of the Rand Mining District. A week after the 2026 festival, its Facebook page posted: “See ya’ll again next year .... in 2027!!”