In the nineteenth century, two overland wagon trails crossed on the east slope of Ivanpah Valley. One east-west trail carried people and freight from the Colorado River to the silver mining town of Ivanpah. The other, a north-south trail went from the mining community of Goodsprings to Goffs, a station on the Santa Fe Railroad (the Southern Route). A discovery of gold at the turn of the 20th Century in the Crescent District drew attention to the crossroad which would become the town site and place name of Nipton. An entrepreneur and gold seeker from western Pennsylvania, S.(Samuel) D. (“Dunc”) Karns, arrived in Ivanpah Valley late in the 19th Century attracted by the boom town in the Vanderbilt Gold District just up the valley from the E-W/N-S crossroad. It is thought that on January 1, 1900, Karns and some associates staked the earliest claim in the Crescent District, to be given the name Nippeno, later to be followed by adjacent claims Susquehana, Cumberland, Northhumberland, Pennsylvania, & Osceola: taken together to be known as the NIPPENO CONSOLIDATED MINE. The mining camp associated with the mine was known as NIPPENO CAMP which was located nearby the wagon crossroad. There is evidence that the name Nippeno derives from Native American tradition of the western Pennsylvania region. Nevada Senator William Clark, a Montana copper baron, was determined to connect Salt Lake City to Los Angeles by rail. In 1885 he proposed building the railroad which his company completed in the winter of 1904/1905 which passed immediately by the crossroad and Nippeno Camp.