Ballarat
If you are coming to Death Valley from the southwest on Rt 178, it's worth a short stop in the almost ghost town of Ballarat. Ballarat was named after Ballarat, VIC, Australia by some immigrants from there.
The California gold rush of 1849 didn't pan out for most miners. A number them, having now seen where gold is found in California, traveled to Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and other parts of the world to look for gold in the same kinds of deposits. Although gold had been found earlier in Australia in small quantities, it was not until 1851 that gold was found in large deposits in Ballarat - a lot of it by 49ers. The world's richest gold field ever discovered is in Ballarat.
But the Australian gold rush of 1851 didn't pan out for most miners. A number them, having now seen some different kinds of deposits where gold is found, came back to California. Some of them found gold in the canyons of the Panamint range. They were from Ballarat and they named the town Ballarat.