I'm curious who your friend in Darwin is... I've known some folks there for almost 40 years (from when I lived in Lone Pine in the 1980s), and a couple of years ago I bought a house here from the son of a Darwin friend. I now live in Darwin full time.
I have been friends with the owners of Cerro Gordo back to when Jack & Barbara Smith owned the mountain. Wally Wilson (Barbara's first husband) got the mountain from the bankrupt mining company, and it has been in the related family continuously until it was sold in 2018. I have met two of the new owners. From what they told me, they would like to bring it back to how it was when Mike & Jody were there. M&J got the old American Hotel restored and were running it as a bed & breakfast, complete with a county health dep't approved restaurant. Jody passed away not long after that. Mike passed away a few years later, leaving the mountain to his eldest son, who sold it. The new owners also mentioned about possibly extending accommodations to make the bunkhouse an air b&b place. Other than that, I get the sense that they want to preserve the town as it is.
