| Show Life Standard-Examine- r Sunday August 26 2001 Ghost Ghost Towns of the West From 1 D Books 2000) and editor of two anthologies of Western women's writing She visited several ghost towns on her tours of the West for previous books Plus she's willing to brag she’s lived in several herself She grew up in Iron Mountain on a ranch 43 miles northwest of Cheyenne Wyo that was once a town with a rail station stores telegraph office and several dozen houses By the time she graduated from high school no one was liv ing there anymore Also she and her husband own a ranch in Deeth Nev at one point larger than the g station town Elko - but now not much more than their plot of land “I guess I’m one of the ghosts” Jordan jokes near-mis- s Some readers may be shocked to find Park City among the towns listed in many ghost town books and reference materials Now home to Olympic venues and the getaways of the rich and famous Park City nearly fell off the map a few decades ago It was listed in ghost town guides Jordan discovered and she heard about people who visited Park City and talked about seeing every house falling down Recreation has been the savior of many towns like Aspen and Vail in Colorado d on the brink of ghost status Jordan said If Park City didn’t have ski 6Lflhyciite Wickenburg Cloverdale Ruby California 13 14 15 16 17 IS 19 20 21 Virginia City Marietta Belmont Hamilton Timbuctoo 71 Alta 72 Stems ' Oregon 73 Shaniko 74 Kent 75 Wnitnev 76 Granite South Dakota 77 Tinton 78 Deadwood 79 Rochtord 80 Scenic 81 Okaton Texas 82 Salt Flat 83 Terlmgua 84 Langtry Utah 85 Iosepa 86 Promontory Pt 87 Park City 88 Ophir 89 Scofield 90 Eureka 91 Spring City 92 Thistle 93 Cove Fort 94 Canyonlands National Park 95 San Raphael Swell 96 Elgin 97 Cisco 98 Castletown 99 Bicknell 100 Frisco Marysville Columbia Jamestown Bodte Copperopolis Death Valley Cerro Gordo 22 Randsburg 23 Calico Colorado 24 Crystal 25 leadville 26 Georgetown 27 Ashcroft 28 Holy Cross City 29 turret 30 tomboy 31 Placerviile 32 Cripple Creek 33 Altman 34 Bent's Old Fort Nat Historic S'te 35 St Elmo 36 Telluride 37 Animas Forks 38 Alta 39 Carson 40 Ironton Idaho Coeur d'Alene 42 Gem 43 Bay Horse 44 Placervrlle 45 Silver City 46 Chesterfield Montana 47 Garnet 48 Elkhorn 49 Buffalo 50 Lewistown 51 Mildred 52 Harlowtown 53 Bozeman 54 Nevada City 55 Virginia City 56 Bannack 41 Shakespeare 101 Harrisburg 102 Grafton 103 Par la River Washington 104 Molson 105 Bodie Wyoming 106 Antelope Flats 107 South Pass City 108 Piedmont 109 Laramie post-settleme- nt American West is short a mere footnote on the full span of human experience Yet so much happened in so little time and ghost towns are crucibles of sorts places where we can the remnants of the past and also feel their implications in our very bones resorts Till said “the city would be in our book today” There’s one sure way Till jokes that he can tell if a town has risen above its label: “If it has a McDonald’s it’s not a ghost town anymore” ghost-tow- One of the first to comprehensively document Utah’s abandoned settlements If towns can blossom so quickly Jordan cautions that they can wither and die at the same speed - particularly in an arid desert state like Utah Someday if the area runs out of water people might not stick around Or if the economy crashes (and some worry the latest woes are technology-stoc- k warning signs) Utahns could be in for a rough road ahead Jordan said she overheard a conversation once in Las Vegas Two people were looking around in amazement at the glitz and excess and one said "Aren’t the archaeologists going to have fun with this place?” “It’s booming now but some say it’s a false economy It won’t be sustainable in the long term” she said “I think it’ll be one of the first places to go” The researchers before Till and Jordan had many before them scout out and write about ghost towns and they used many previously published books to research theirs take Tom Among them are “Some Dreams Die: Utah’s Ghost Towns and Lost Treasures” (Dream Garden Press 1999) by George A Thompson “I think people are fascinated by the way people’s dreams have crumbled" Till said playing off the title of Thompson’s book which was written in the early 1980s and recently revised photo Thompson focused as much on lost mines and treasures in and around ghost towns as he did on the towns it! themselves He referred to buried loot from bank robberies or gold stashed for safekeeping He claimed that most of those lost treasure stories were true tales of someone’s grandpa burying his money behind the barn but never telling anyone where it was before he died or someone’s uncle getting killed by an outlaw before he could reveal the location of his hidden mine Maps and tales delve into the line! Totally dependable! YOU: Well OK then I guess I’ll SALESPERSON: Of course if the refrenestator module blows you’re looking at a $263000 repair plus parts and labor One customer had to sell a lung In some stores selling you a product seems to be merely an excuse to sell you the service agreement Several months ago my wife and I were shopping for a comput- er and a salesperson attached himHis sole self to us lamprey-lik- e SALESPERSON: There’s this professional contribution was to inform us no matter which computer thing inside? The confabulator? You’re lucky if that baby lasts you a we looked at that we would defiweek nitely want the service agreement YOU: So you’re saying it’s NOT a At one point he took me aside and told me Man to Man that we good product? SALESPERSON: No! It’s top of especially needed the service agree YOU: What? Till Now becoming a popular recreation area Scofield was once a booming coal town until a mining disaster took the lives of more than 200 men SALESPERSON: It’s going to break was Stephen Carr’s “The Historical Guide to Utah's Ghost Towns" (Western Epics 1972) d Carr a pediatrician from Holladay had been “poking around a ghost town north of the Great Salt Lake” in the late 1960s and wanted to know more about it When he couldn’t find much information on the subject and when he found out Sam Weller’s bookstore in Salt Iake City received two or three similar inquiries a week he decided to tackle a now-retire- ments for the same reason you’d love to have money fall on you from the sky As a result when you buy a product today you get this bizarre sales pitch bemultiple-personalit- y cause at the same time that the salesperson is telling you how swell the product is he's suggesting it will need a LOT of service: so this is an SALESPERSON: excellent product Totally reliable YOU: I’ll Teresa Jordan Carr’s work Future ghost towns b(X)k project For the next year and a half on his days off and weekends he researched and traveled approximately 9300 miles visiting more than 130 towns throughout the state “The dining room table was piled up high with research We didn’t eat at the table for 18 months” Carr recalls His hunch about the popularity of ghost towns was correct Within the first six weeks of publication the book sold out its first run of 5000 copies and the next 5000 printed sold out in 18 months he said He has revised it twice ment because - this is a direct quote - "You know how women can be with computers” He did not elaborate but the implication was that as soon as a woman is alone with a cortiputer she has some kind of massive hormonal surge that causes her to I don’t know lactate on like Till a guide to follow so they could visit the spots and use them as subjects capturing their magical mystical qualities in creative ways He asked those reading " as the books he called them to follow the old adage "Take nothing but photographs leave nothing but footprints” “ghost-towners- Preservationists in some parts of the West have found the resources to protect ghost towns like Bodie Calif Nearly 150 buildings remain in Bodie and the California State Park Service now maintains it in what is called a "state of arrested decay” If visitors listen closely they might almost hear the e rowdiness" of “devil-may-car- miners that Jordan describes in the book ' The rumors of raucous reckless abandon are said to have prompted one little girl en route to the town with her family during the gold rush to write in her diary "Goodbye God I’m going to Bodie” That phrase became famous throughout the West Till included in the book several images of Bodie’s Wheaton and Hollis Hotel still featuring piles of gaming chips an old pool table and a roulette wheel all covered with a hundred years of dust “I treasure the past I don’t want to live in the past but I do think it instructs” us” Jordan said “There’s something about the physical remnants of history that inform us in a way that books and documents never can “I hope that the book helps people see these places in a new light and new depth If we understand them and value them they’ll last longer” she said “These places are jewels It’s up to us to keep them safe" You can reach reporter or Amy Schoon at 625-427- 7 aschoonstandardnet at all just empty aisles prowled by salespersons who glom onto you and relentlessly hector you until you buy a service agreement Think of the profit margin In closing let me stress that this column is in no way intended to be critical of the retail community especially the many fine retailers who advertise in this newspaper If you are such a retailer and you are for ' any reason unhappy with anything I’ve said simply write me a letter explaining the problem I’ll be happy to correct it! Be sure to enclose your service the keyboard We did not get that service agreement Nor did I get the service agreement for the cheap telephone that hardly did anything In each case after I said “no” for maybe the fifth time the salesperson backed slowly away giving me a look of pity mixed with apprehension as if the product unprotected by a service agreement was going to explode at any moment It’s only a matter of time before we see stores that have no products firearms" Carr eventually decided to risk it because he wanted to document these towns’ whereabouts and backgrounds for historical purposes He also wanted to give artists and photographers ghost towns the legends n building for a souvenir (can you believe it) or perform some equally offensive act" He warned that some landowners were strict about trespassers “to the point of leveling charges or Till and Jordan also were concerned about alerting potential vandals when writing their book But Till hopes that the book will serve another more positive - to invite people to sec purpose step up and pay for preservation of some of these - at less than two hunched years old -- Carr’s biggest fear about writing the first ghost town book nearly stopped him from finishing it He worried that by telling people about the ghost towns and offering maps pointing out where they were he was inviting vandals to finish them off Carr wrote at the beginning of the book about the folks near these places" who worried that the book might "increase the small number of vandals who search out a town and pilfer items knock chips out of an historical The next step Standard Examiner The history of the and written another book that focuses on Utah ghost ' railroads the rails that had been abandoned and disappeared over time Take only photographs New Mexico 62 Elizabethtown 63 Las trampas 64 Cenllos 65 Madrid 66 Golden 67 White Oaks 68 Chlonde 69 Mogollon 70 Pinos Altos Vulture 10 Bisbee British Columbia 11 Retallack 12 Sandon Barry Stores LOVE service agree AJerome 9 tombstone From 1 D In case you just got here from the Lost Continent of Atlantis let me explain the service-agreemeconcept: When you buy a product' you pay extra money to the store and the store gives you a piece of paper This gives you the consumer the peace of mind that comes from knowing that if for any reason at any time something goes wrong with your product you will not be able to find the service agreement Most likely you won’t even remember you bought it Your brain will be clogged with too much other information such as how to work the intercom feature nt 57 56 59 60 5 6 7 8 Tales of the towns Park City: A 8onan:a 2 Kenrvcott Arizona 3 Swansea 1 cattle-shippin- Although there are dozens and dozens of spots in Utah once home to settlers and fortune-seeker- s but now vacant Till and Jordan - and ' sometimes their editors - had to pick and choose which they would include as "great” among Western ghost towns Till’s favorite Grafton didn’t make the final cut Near Zion National Park this abandoned farming town was the site of some of the filming for “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" Several groups in Southern Utah have banded together to take care of and restore buildings on this site a place TUI describes as the “most beautiful agricultural ghost town in Utah” One that did make it into the pages is Iosepa a unique Mormon ghost town 20 miles south of the Great Salt Lake It was founded in 1889 by a group of Hawaiian converts who moved to the area to be closer to the temple They managed to grow lush vegetation - trees berries grapes and flowers -in the seemingly inhospitable desert At one point the town had 228 residents In 1896 leprosy attacked the colony and many died the rest left when the Mormons announced in 1916 that a temple would be built in Hawaii A lot of people felt it was cruel Jordan said that the Hawaiians were placed in such a situation But she found in interviewing descendants that it was “an incredible spiritual experience” for the residents “It was a way for them to be in communion with their faith” she said “That’s something that really separates this town from other ghost towns” Nevada Alaska 5D agreement i Dave Barry is a humor columnist for the Miami Herald Write to him do The Miami Herald One Herald Plaza Miami FL 33132 |
