Benton, CA

Benton is a Mono County census-designated place of 279 residents at the 2020 census, 32 miles north of Bishop along U.S. Route 6. It includes Benton proper and Benton Hot Springs, a pair of places bound together by desert, water, and an old mining story. The town was named for Missouri senator Thomas Hart Benton, but the springs and the land around them were used by the Utu Utu Gwaitu Paiute long before the silver boom arrived.

Silver was found near Blind Spring Hill in the 1860s, and a town of nearly 1,000 grew around the hot springs, complete with hotels, stores, a Wells Fargo station, mills, and saloons. The boom faded, but Benton Hot Springs did not disappear; the Bramlette family bought the townsite in the 1930s and still helps preserve it. The Benton Paiute Reservation lies within the CDP, and the White Mountain Fire Protection District's annual music festival helps raise money for the local department. Benton's old roads still feel like a crossroads between mining history and high-desert travel.