I'm not telling where my two are, but I'm certain of one thing: there is at least one more of them in Arizona that's still intact. The reason I can't let you in on my little secret is simple, but I suppose I can give up some clues. Two things have made it so difficult to find and experience ghost towns. One is that in this age of litigation and lack of personal responsibility the wild west is long-gone: If you're a land-owner (and particularly if you're the State) with too much debris, dilapidated pre-code structures, holes in the ground (mines - they're being capped-off daily), and so many rusted nails on your property, and you haven't a caretaker, guide, fences and signs ("reasonable prevention in the face of an attractive hazzard"), then you're open to some fairly serious liability. Abandoned mining-junk is a social-cost (risk) that we as a society are beginning to just refuse to endure. Indeed it is more costly to buy adequate insurance for the likes of the large mining-firms that hold many of the best sites than it is to simply blade them flat. I have seen several fairly good sites that have since been razed ("Gunsight" was one of the first) on both public and private lands owing to liability concerns. The other reason that the ghost towns are disappearing was originally (c1984) the ATC/ATV craze that has since degraded into an all-out SUV/4WD sickness. Another page on off-road morality for later, I feel that I'm getting a bit red-in-the-face here, and about to be severely sidetracked: I have for 20 years responsibly used an old LandRover in rural Arizona and so resent the freedoms they (in their air-conditioned bulldozers) have necessarily taken from us all out of their despicable and utterly irresponsible behavior. Anyway ... town sites are being dismantled and vandalized at an alarming (perhaps just amazing) rate. Natural degradation and attrition are no longer relevant issues once the sites are publicly known and accessible: after discovery, a wooden town site of the 1880's is good for about a year, max. The few good adobes left, like Helveia, south of Tucson, seem to have faired a bit better: "discovered" in the mid '70s, I reckon there will be no trace by 2005.
There is a certain challenge associated with trying to find ghost towns, and the positive aspects of their rapid disappearance might be an added angle in the quest. Since the sites that remain are in places that the SUV crowd is afraid of, or is too lazy to get to, or where their friends won't be there to see them parade, the fun of finding good sites is augmented by the desolation of them: the simple assurance that your truck or tent won't be tagged by your own neighbors at night, nor will your guitar be at risk of being used for target-practice while you're off scoping-out a head-frame. Remember that in the range-and-basin portion of Arizona (southern and western) where most of the mining took place, an above-average number of sites were at about 4000 feet. Generally speaking that's about 2000 feet above the desert floor. The relatively intact sites are so damn difficult to get to that by the time you get there you'll be elated just to stop. Additionally, the exclusively gold and silver mining districts spawned the best boom-towns - the sort that went ghost - and the districts that also had good porphyry copper, or tungsten, or molybdenum, tended to be more stable, not suddenly abandoned with a flux in price of precious metals.
Occasionally there's a genuine site that's accessible to 2WD that has been too well protected to have been utterly ruined, like Ruby, an early mining center. Agua Caliente too (seen here in 1912), an old destination-resort out in the south-west deserts is a good example. Still standing, and really still quite similar to the photo, the new old highway now passes right between the "springs" and the hotel - and over the old sidewalks (still visible in the roadway in '86) that led robed guests to the springs - right past its front doors. The hot-springs themselves are now dry (owing to nearby irrigation for 50 years) and largely occupied by assorted construction/farming equipment. Concurrent with Agua-Caliente's heyday was Hooker Hot Springs (Muleshoe Ranch). Nature Conservancy has now obtained this old resort, another of Arizona's very few remaining . Again, the original structure is still mostly intact, but the pool has been filled and the streams have been obliterated or re-routed by them for more "appropriate" uses (parking and paths, in this case). They have also built disgusting "outbuildings" that are supposed to look vintage, but their [incompetent] architects used expansion-joints, incorrect roofing details, and similar modern details to totally spoil their presumption that they could develop the site and still preserve it's archival attributes. Myself - that one's interesting, and in a beautiful site, but much of its flavour is gone (commercialized-wrecked) - I'd sooner head for Bisbee or Jerome to experience the sensation of a 19thcentury boom-town that's easily accessible and genuine!
Return to The esoteric Index
