FLItown: From Ghost Town to Drone Test Site
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From 1880 to 1940, communities throughout California proliferated in response to the California Gold Rush. This, in turn, led to booming industrialization and a growing railway industry, primarily for the mining of resources like oil and iron. By the 1970s, a number of factors contributed to declining populations in many of these communities, which eventually became ghost towns.
There are 346 ghost towns in California, one of which is Eagle Mountain, located in the southeastern corner of Joshua Tree National Park. The town was founded by industrialist Henry Kaiser in 1948. By the 1980s, Eagle Mountain, which had a population of 4,000 at its peak, was deserted. Several attempts to restore the town were made, all of which failed. The location has since been used as a filming site for several films and television shows. However, since the town still has many structures intact, a California-based drone company recognized it as the perfect spot for a drone training site.
After years of experience in leadership positions at several companies, along with knowledge gained as a Reserve Police Officer, Barry Brennan founded Flying Lion, Inc. (FLI) in 2014. Barry’s goal was to develop a system that would help supplement police and emergency operations through drone technology. This was at the onset of the drone revolution, in which police in California would play a pivotal role. In 2015, California’s Chula Vista Police Department (CVPD) partnered with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to become the first police department in the country to launch a drone program.
The CVPD drone program paved the way for police departments to slowly implement their own drone programs. At the same time, FLI was there to help facilitate the implementation of these programs for many emergency services. The company assisted with training, the FAA licensing process, and advising on the purchase of drone equipment. The success of police and emergency department drone programs across the nation eventually led to a demand for expanded drone use, where once again, FLI was in a position to help.
They soon found that police departments needed dedicated drone support, allowing officers to go about their normal daily activities. In 2020, FLI was contracted by the CVPD to be their Drones as First Responders (DFR) coordinator, a first in the country. At the onset of police drone programs, the technology was used to supplement activities such as collecting evidence at crash sites, monitoring traffic or crowds, assisting in search and rescue operations, and providing additional situational awareness. Drones were brought to the scene either in advance of a situation (e.g., for monitoring) or after officers had already arrived. A DFR program is different in that drones, strategically placed throughout a district, are dispatched upon 911 calls to arrive at the scene before officers.
For CVPD, this means a series of drone stations placed on rooftops, each controlled by an onsite operating team provided by FLI. However, Steven Katz, FLI’s vice president, says there is a need to train officers to perform the duties that FLI’s team does, including establishing their own dedicated DFR teams. “We realized that there’s no place to really train law enforcement officers besides sitting next to them at their agency and flying over their city,” he said. This is where Eagle Mountain comes into play.
Using the existing infrastructure in the ghost town, FLI has created a drone testing zone that can be used to train pilots on everything from the basics of becoming an FAA Part 107 licensed drone pilot to learning how different drones work, and how to carry out anticipated emergency drone missions. They have named the program FLItown and established 20 emergency scenarios to train drone pilots for DFR programs.
As more police departments adopt or expand their drone programs, FLItown provides an ideal location for realistic, hands-on training that meets both FAA standards and the specific needs of law enforcement agencies. By repurposing Eagle Mountain, once a thriving industrial town, FLI has turned it into a vital resource for the 21st-century drone revolution. What was once a ghost town supporting the second industrial revolution is now playing a key role in shaping the future of public safety, proving that even abandoned spaces can have new life and purpose in today’s technological age.
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