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GHOST TOWN USA ™
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ü Ghost Town USA - Home
of the GHOST
TOWN OF THE MONTH
ü
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Ghost Town USA’s MISSION STATEMENT:
“Preserving the history of America’s fading and
vanished towns,
communities and other places of habitation through education.”
Researching and exploring ghost towns throughout the United States
& Canada since 1968. - ONLINE 23 years!!!
What’s
NEW
& NEWSY at
Ghost Town USA
In the past
30 days or so we’ve made these changes:
PLEASE NOTE: There have only been
a few updates on my Ghost Town USA webpages since
January 2016, but in a way that is good!
In mid January 2016, I underwent surgery, and am now doing very
well. This past summer (2016), I finally
got a chance to get back out and explore the highways and byways that make up
Ghost Town USA. That forced “downtime” coupled
with a six week crash of Rootsweb - the fantastic
host for this site - in late February –March, together with major lack of
access issues remaining from that crash lasting off-and-on through the Fall of
2016 precluded any updating. Once they were
fully back online, ALL of my pages updated after July 10, 2015, had their “update
odometer”
reset to July 10, 2015. As a result, I
am now in process of revising and reloading all 300+ individual pages on this
site – a time-consuming task at best! These
updates will be noted here on our Index
Page.
1.
ONGOING: These past 4 summers (2013-2016), we took
multiple ghost town road trips, and most of these locations will be posted over
time. Check here for updates on towns already posted, as well as any new
listings.
2. ADDED NEW PAGE: For Harmony,
CA
3. UPDATING: Kansas
page. Major overhaul on the vignettes.
4. ONGOING: Addition of 2010 census figures.
5. ONGOING:
Changing formatting of some pages to a PDF format to incorporate photos
on the actual page.
6.
ONGOING: Working on adding a “SOURCES” page for each site vignette and state/province pages to
enable researchers to see where my information came from.
7.
ONGOING: Updating a GPS page supplementing my monthly in-print Ghost Town USA column as featured Western & Eastern Treasures magazine. Currently working on 2004.
8. ONGOING: Ghost
Town USA Column Index. This is a comprehensive index to all of the
ghost towns that have appeared in Gary’s column in Western & Eastern
Treasures magazine from 1980 through the current issue.
·
LICENSE PLATE COLLECTING:
1.
Check out the Southern California ALPCA’s
Regional chapter’s own Facebook
Page.
·
TREASURE:
1.
NEW!!! ADDED a whole new Treasure
Hunting section, starting with a NEW INDEX
PAGE. This will be a “Guide to Searching for Lost
Treasures.”
2.
Relocated our TREASURE
LEGENDS index.
·
MISC:
1. Ghost
Towns Yesterday & Today now has its own Facebook group.
2. Ghost Town USA now has
its own Facebook page.
3. I am still looking
for historical information and photographs on the Salton
Sea area and Imperial
County, CA. IF all
goes well over the next year, I hope to FINALLY finish my very detailed Ghost
Town Guru Guide to the Salton Sea region. I have received a lot of new information and
photos from several readers, and I have at least one more journey down there
for some photos then I’ll be looking to finally publish this LONG project!
Freelance writing and photography
Celebrating 39 years of continuous publication –
1978-2017!
850+
articles and well over 3000 photos published in 22 different magazines, two books
and this website.
My first published article was in
February 1978, my first book in 1996.
(*Includes articles posted on this website, and on
the Ghost Town USA Facebook page.)
·
AUTHOR
of the 2010 book Ghost
Towns: Yesterday & TodayTM Published by Publications International, Ltd,
Lincolnwood, IL. Sadly after a couple reprintings, it
is now out of print. However, copies are
still available through Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.
1. Check out the exciting, wildly successful Facebook group of the same name that
was originally based on this book. With
over 35,000 members, it is by far THE
largest Ghost Town-lovers group on Facebook. Check it out and see what all the excitement
is all about!
·
AUTHOR of
the book Dust in the Wind – A Guide to American Ghost Towns Published
by Whites Electronics, Sweet Home,
OR. Still IN PRINT and selling well after 20 years!
·
Contributing Editor for Western & Eastern Treasures
magazine.
·
Author of THE monthly column “Ghost Town USA”
Featured monthly in Western & Eastern Treasures magazine,
since April 1984 – 33+ years AND
still going strong!
·
ADMIN/Moderator of the Ghost
Towns: Yesterday & TodayTM Facebook page, with over 35,000 members. Come and interact with other ghost towners
from around the world!
·
SEARCHING FOR MY ROOTS THROUGH: GenealogY (As noted
above, temporarily on hold)
License Plate Collecting
·
Want
List:
·
Trade
List:
·
General
collecting information:
License Plate Collecting clubs:
·
Automobile
License Plate Collector's Association ( ALPCA
)
1. Check
out the Southern California ALPCA’s Regional chapter’s own Facebook
page.
·
Number
Plate Collector's Club-Australia
1.
Visit NPCC’s
main website.
2. North American membership coordinator for NPCC
WELCOME
TO THE WORLD OF GHOST TOWNS
It
was a summer evening - 1887. He just got
paid. Money was trying to burn a hole in
his pocket.
Walking
the dark and dusty, yet busy Main Street, Joe Miner passed stores, restaurants and
boarding houses filled with tired miners.
Light emanating through the windows of the Cosmopolitan Saloon caught
his attention and he crossed the street.
He
was beat.
He
was lonely.
After
six days of back-breaking labor, Joe needed to relax. His tiny, drafty, wooden cabin tucked in the
junipers above the mine east of town offer no creature comforts or amenities
other than a battered chair nearly unworthy of the name, barely edible
hardtack, canned beans, tinned sardines, a couple well-read books and a broken
down bedstead.
He
needed company.
He
needed real food.
Stepping
through the door, his senses were assailed by a full house. Clinking glasses and bottles, sporadic shouts
and laughter lifted above the hubbub as scores of sweaty, jabbering men shook
off a week’s worth of stress and strain.
Deep rumbles and booms from the underground mines rattled the saloon,
not even raising eyebrows on any of the assembled multitude. Carefully working his way through the crowded
room, Joe counted out the appropriate change and tossed it onto the scarred
wooden bar top in exchange for a lukewarm mug of locally brewed draught beer.
Turning to face the milling mob he wondered what in the world would possess a
man to leave his wife and kids on the farm in Missouri, head west to find fame
and fortune, then end up as grunt labor in an anonymous underground hole,
blasting big rocks into smaller rocks, then shoveling those rock crumbs into
tiny ore cars - only to make someone else rich.
Because
of this booming mining town’s isolation, prices for life’s staples were so high
he could barely meet necessary expenses, much less save anything. His pants were holey and his boots
disintegrating. His back ached, he was
constantly dirty. He deeply missed his
family. Rumors that the mine would be shutting down next year made him reassess
why he was even here.
Deep
in the heart of Nevada, Joe was just another dirty, nameless face, jostled by
an anonymous crowd of thousands populating a forgettable mining town plopped in
the middle of nowhere. He was a worker ant in a teeming anthill, in just one of
countless hundreds of similar towns scattered about the American West: each one
proclaiming themselves to be “the next Comstock.”
The
man standing next to him asked if he’d heard the rumor of a rich gold discovery
off to the south in Arizona. It’s said the nuggets can be picked right up
off the ground. Joe shook his head,
and sadly turned away.
That’s
the very same rumor that got him here in the first place.
That
was yesterday - but, what about today?
A
whispering breeze barely rustled the sagebrush rolled into a bristly pile
against the south side of the half-collapsed rock wall stitched to a dead
storefront. Shining through vacant
window and door openings, three arched sunbeams punctuated the storefront’s
shadow sprawling across the rutted dirt of Main Street. Across the street the Cosmopolitan Saloon
lies dead, its second floor reduced to a jumble of firewood nestled inside street-level
rock walls, bleached boards stabbing the sky at bizarre angles much like the
children’s game “Pick Up Sticks.” Soaking up residual
heat from a lowering sun, a fat brown lizard disturbed by our passing, skitters
up the rock face of the ruins of another saloon building, disappearing through
the wood-framed, vacant window socket.
Behind
the ruins of dead buildings on the west side of Main Street, a babbling brook
laces its way through tall cottonwood trees.
Beyond that stream, sunshine glints off intact windows lining the second
floor of a massive brick building topped off by a metal roof lined with a
half-dozen brick chimneys and a bright white cupola.
Permeating
the dead townsite is the smell of barbeque, the
clanking of horseshoes and the joyful melody of young children laughing and
playing.
We
are not alone.
Why
is this town dead?
Why
the sound of joyful children playing?
Welcome
to a world of the unexpected.
Welcome
to a world where you can meet history face-to-face, walk dusty streets with Joe
Miner, visiting where businesses once thrived, experience the now-faded hopes
and dreams of people looking to make a difference, touch the ghosts of the
past.
Welcome
to the wonderful world of ghost towning.
SO
- what are GHOST TOWNS?
Lambert Florin, one of the earlier ghost town hunters and prolific writers,
called a ghost town “a shadowy semblance
of its former self.”
Philip
Varney, another well-known and well-respected ghost town hunter and
author/photographer says ghost towns have two characteristics: “the population has decreased markedly and
the initial reason for its settlement (such as a mine or railroad) no longer
keeps people there.”
Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary (G. & C. Merriam Co., Springfield, MA) defines
a ghost town thusly: "a once-flourishing town wholly or nearly
deserted usu(ally) as a result of the exhaustion of some natural
resource (as gold)."
Using
all these definitions as a basis, I have come up with the following
description…
"A
Ghost Town is a town or community that at one time had a commercial or
population center,
and is either wholly abandoned or
faded greatly from its peak and now is just a shadow of its former self."
Many people consider ghost towns to only be the tangible remnants
of mining camps in the Western United States as described above. However in reality, they may be the remains
of agricultural communities, logging camps, railroading centers, construction
camps, military posts, stagecoach stops, ferries, former resorts, European
colonies, and so forth. They can be
found in every country of the world; any place people have lived. Some folks even extend the description to
Native American communities and ancient Egyptian and Greek cities. However on these web pages, the listings are
primarily aimed at American ghost towns, with a smattering of Canadian and
other country locations established by non-indigenous peoples. The term GHOST TOWN is subjective,
like trying to describe love, beauty and art, or other subjects whose
descriptions and connotations vary from person to person and can actually
embrace controversy.
Ghost Town USA will explore deeper than the stereotypes. We will seek out not only well-known places, but
other types of ghost towns often forgotten by the masses AND mainstream
media. Listed herein, are ferry
crossings, resorts, stage stations, Pony Express stops, logging camps, mining
towns, military posts, fishing villages, mill towns, failed (and successful-but
abandoned) European colonies, missions, presidios, rural post offices, farm
towns, railroad construction camps/sidings/stations, toll road collecting
houses, internment/POW camps, road towns and so on. They’ll range from class A (barren sites) through class E
(living towns with a boisterous past.)
YET, all locations featured in Ghost Town USA will have one thing in common – they will ALL at one time
have had a commercial or population center and be either wholly abandoned or
faded greatly from their peak, shadows of their former selves. If there are any remaining residents, they
sometimes bristle when their beloved communities make it onto a ghost town list
somewhere! Yet, by using our description
of what a ghost town is, these places need to be included. As such they are fair game to be explored,
photographed and shared by Ghost Town USA.
Ghost towns
are one of America's least understood and under-appreciated historical
treasures. Unfortunately those with tangible remains, especially the classic
ghost town with a street full of abandoned buildings, are disappearing far too
rapidly and a large percentage of ghost towns left in the United States are
either barren or rubbled sites. Historians estimate there may be as many as
50,000 ghost towns scattered across the United States. Obviously there is no
one source for information on all those locations, but the man that CNN
called "The Ghost Town Guru" is working on it through Ghost Town USA!
If you have a passion for lost and forgotten sites, classic ghost towns,
near-ghost towns, or even state-protected ones, read about them monthly in
Gary’s Ghost
Town USA column, featured in Western & Eastern Treasures magazine. Or you can discover more through Gary’s
books: Dust in the Wind - A Guide to American
Ghost Towns and the 2010 success story, GHOST
TOWNS: Yesterday & TodayTM. You
can also have fun discussing ghost towns and sharing photos with OVER 34,000 other
ghost towners on Facebook!!!
The ghost towns AND information AND photographs featured here in Ghost Town USA are only a tiny portion of my ghost town
files. Their listings on this site are
purely subjective.
PLEASE REMEMBER, when out exploring, never forget how
fragile these rickety relics of Americana are. Always treat them with
respect and abide by the Ghost Towner’s
Code of Ethics. In that way, they may last a little longer, and be
available for someone else (or YOU!) to visit next year.
COME. Join with The Ghost Town
Guru™ on a journey into the world of GHOST TOWN USA!
"The
Ghost Town Guru"
and "The Ghost Town Guru's Guides to the Ghost Towns of
***"
are trademarks of Gary B. Speck
Publications.
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