Spawned by the success of the silver mining operations in the nearby Cerro Gordo Mines in the late 1860s, Swansea became a hub for smelting the ore and transporting the resulting ingots to Los Angeles, over 200 miles away.

The 1872 Lone Pine earthquake damaged the smelters and uplifted the shoreline, rendering the Swansea pier inaccessible by Owens Lake steamships.

As a result, most of the smelting and transportation business moved to Keeler, approximately one mile to the south.

In the summer of 1874, a thunderstorm-induced debris flow inundated Swansea under several feet of water, rock, and sand.

As of 2007, only one building and a smelter foundation remained alongside California Route 136 (about 10 miles southeast of Lone Pine).