A Guide To Western Ghost Towns

Ghost Towns of California is a guidebook to the state's best boomtowns. Once thriving, these abandoned mining camps and pioneer villages still ring with history. Ghost town expert Philip Varney equips you with everything you need to know to explore these remnants of the past. Featured are color maps, driving and walking directions, town histories, touring recommendations, and stunning color photography of 70 sites, including the famous Bodie. Come see where it all started at the mother lode, and trace the great migration throughout the region. Visit the northern mines and the ghosts of San Francisco Bay, the Eastern Sierra, Death Valley, and the Mojave Desert. This is the essential guidebook to the glory days of the Old West!

Ghosts Towns of the West is filled with photographs, maps, history, and detailed directions to find the best ghost towns to linger in the wake of the Old West. Ghost Towns of the West blazes a trail through the dusty crossroads and mossy cemeteries of the American West, including one-time boomtowns in Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming. The book reveals the little-known stories of long-dead soldiers, indigenous peoples, settlers, farmers, and miners. Perfect for planning a road trip, each section covers a geographic area and town entries are arranged by location to make this the most user-friendly book on ghost towns west of the Mississippi. Most ghost towns are within a short drive of major cities out West, and they make excellent day trip excursions. If you happen to be in or near Los Angeles, Phoenix, Las Vegas, or El Paso, for example, you ought to veer towards the nearest ghost town. Western ghost towns can also easily be visited during jaunts to national parks, including Grand Canyon, Yosemite, Crater Lake, Mount Rainier, Glacier, Yellowstone, and many others throughout the West. Ghost Towns of the West is a comprehensive guide to former boomtowns of the American West, covering ghost towns in eleven states from Washington to New Mexico, and from California to Montana. This book has everything you need to learn about, visit, and explore a modern remnant of how life used to be on the western range.

A verbal and visual exploration of the West's ghost towns.

The Rocky Mountain and Great Basin states are the heart of ghost-town country. Once-bustling pioneer outposts, mining camps, lumber towns, and railroad villages stand today as reminders of the glory days of gold rushes, industrial progress, and that pioneering spirit of the Old West. This book guides readers to the fascinating and scenic ghost towns of Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, Utah, and Nevada. Varney highlights popular tourist destinations as well as out-of-the-way spots unfamiliar even to natives of the region. Maps, historical background, and stunning color photographs bring to life dozens of ghost towns and provide practical information for exploring this fascinating chapter of American history.

Survey of abandoned towns, mostly mining towns, in the West. Well illustrated.

The ghost towns of Southern California-some dramatic and nearly intact, others devastated-are well worth visiting. Most are remnants of once-colorful mining towns, though there are also railroad towns, a World War II relocation center, a promoter's swindle, and a failed socialist colony. Some excellent attractions remain. One of the best-preserved stamp mills in the West is in Skidoo. Smelters, homes, stores, and the remarkable wooden American Hotel can be found in Cerro Gordo, which the author calls "California's best true ghost town." Seasoned back-roads traveler Philip Varney, who has visited nearly a hundred ghost towns in the area, provides a down-to-earth and helpful guide to more than sixty of the best in Southern California and nearby Inyo and Kern counties. He defines a ghost town as a town with a population markedly decreased from its peak, one whose initial reason for settlement no longer keeps people there. It can be completely deserted, have a resident or two, or retain genuine signs of vitality, but Varney has eliminated those towns he considers either too populated or too empty of significant remains. The sites are grouped in four chapters in Inyo County, Death Valley, the Mojave Desert and Kern River, and the regions surrounding Los Angeles and San Diego. Each chapter provides a map of the region, a ranking of sites as "major," "secondary," and "minor," information on road conditions, trip suggestions, and tips on the use of particular topographic maps for readers interested in more detailed exploration. Each entry includes directions to a town, a brief history of that town, and notes on its special points of interest. Current photographs provide a valuable record of the sometimes fragile sites. Southern California's Best Ghost Towns will be welcomed both by those who enjoy traveling off the beaten path and by those who enjoy the history of the American West.