Chevrolet Coupe in the Ghost Town Bodie in California

Ghost Towns of the American West

Get out, happiness lies elsewhere

Photographs from the book “Ghost Towns of the American West” with a wonderful foreword by movie director Wim Wenders. The abandoned western and mining towns left some of the most impressive traces in the settlement of the American West.

Ghost Towns – in the broader sense, any form that even vaguely resembles a settlement or a house and breathes history – every pile of stones, every crooked hut or still inhabited place is quickly declared a ghost town. This is irritating. With time, however, one understands and appreciates this unusual way of dealing with history. After all, none of the places is older than 150 years, none has been inhabited for more than 100 years. The compulsion to change one’s place of residence, to leave one’s house and farm and start anew elsewhere was much greater than in Europe. Traditions and ways of life therefore had a much shorter lifespan.

Almost all Ghost Towns are abandoned mining and western towns. The fate of these towns was closely linked to the economic success of the mines. When the mineral resources were exhausted, the place was abandoned and the people left. An impressive example is the fate of the town of Rhyolite near Death Valley in Nevada. It is the story of a classic boomtown. After two gold miners stumbled upon a large gold deposit in the desert, one of them, in a whiskey frenzy, revealed the location of the find and within a few weeks the town of Rhyolite emerged from a makeshift camp. After three years, over ten thousand people lived in the town. When the ore deposits were exhausted a few years later, the exodus began.
Get out, happiness lies elsewhere – the people packed all their belongings and took their houses with them, because wood was scarce and expensive. Today, only the concrete skeleton of the bank and the schoolhouse remain in the desert.

The futile search for mineral resources and wealth knows many stories and you encounter them in every place. There is one particular town, however, whose stories are inexhaustible: Bodie. Many houses are still in the same condition as the inhabitants left them. Dust covers the tables and maps in the saloon, glasses lie on books as if the inhabitants had left only yesterday.
Why some of the places have survived as Ghost Towns is often thanks to their last inhabitants, who took care of the town’s legacy. In Bodie, one of the remaining residents bought house after house and protected them from decay; in Gold Point, Ora Mae Wiley preserved their stories.

The photographs of the 19 Ghost Towns were taken for the book „Ghost Towns of the American West“ and during an assignment for Smithsonian Magazine in the western states California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico.

Wheaton & Hollis Hotel in the ghost town Bodie in California.

Wheaton & Hollis Hotel, Bodie, California

The hotel is located on the corner of Main Street and Green Street.

Chevrolet Coupé, Bodie, California

The fire of 1932 destroyed most of the houses in Bodie. Even the revival of the disused gold mine did not bring a new boom. Bodie became a ghost town.

Ore lading station in the Ghost town Alley Belle Mine in Colorado

Alley Belle Mine, Colorado

At the beginning of the 20th century, the railway line of the Denver, South Park & Pacific Railway still ran over the Rocky Mountains. Ore from the Alley Belle Mine was loaded into train cars here and brought to the valley for further processing.
By 1880, the mountains around Chalk Creek Canyon were dotted with mines and all the surrounding forests had been cleared. After the tracks were removed in 1926, the mine and the nearby mining town of Hancock were abandoned. Due to the many snow avalanches and landslides, the buildings fell into disrepair and today only sparse remains can be found in the regrown forests.

Sheep Mountain Tunnel Mill in the ghost town Crystal in Colorado

Sheep Mountain Tunnel Mill, Crystal, Colorado.

In the 1890s, silver was discovered in the Rocky Mountains along the Crystal River. Mining in the rough terrain was extremely difficult. Mining equipment had to be brought in. In 1892, a small hydroelectric plant was built to power the air compressors for the drills in the mines.

Gas station in ghost town Cordes in Arizona

Gas station, Cordes, Arizona

John Henry opened the petrol station, shop and restaurant on the highway between Prescott and Phoenix in the 1930s. At the time, it was the only petrol station in the whole area and thus an important supply point.
When the new highway between Prescott and Phoenix was built 20 miles away in early 1960, the gas station had to be abandoned. Today, the abandoned petrol station and shop stand on a dusty dirt road in the vast plain near Cordes.

Swazey Hotel in the ghost town Bodie in California

Swazey Hotel, Bodie, California

It all began with the story of William Waterman S. Body. As the gold rush in the Sierra Nevada gradually waned, Body crossed the mountains to dig for mineral resources on the eastern side of the range. Towards the end of 1859, while hunting to dig a rabbit out of its burrow, he struck one of California’s most valuable gold veins at Bodie Bluff. His luck lasted only a short time, however – he froze to death on the way back to his cabin in the winter of 1859/1860. When the prospecting camp slowly developed into a town, it was named Bodie after the deceased gold miner.

Piano in the Sam Leon Bar in the ghost town Bodie in California

Piano, Sam Leon Bar, Bodie

Piano in the Sam Leon Bar. Entertainment in the city was not limited to gambling houses and bars, but the number of saloons was considered an indicator of the wealth of a city. There are said to have been over 60 in Bodie.
Since 1962, the houses and interiors in Bodie have been subject to special protection. There is a state of “arrested decay” – controlled decay that is supposed to happen without human intervention. Only time is allowed to change the objects, nothing is restored.

Faro gambling table in the Sam Leon Bar in the ghost town Bodie in California

Roulette table in the Sam Leon Bar in the ghost town Bodie in California

Abakus on the Faro gambling table in the Sam Leon Bar in the ghost town Bodie in California

Dust and things in the barber shop in the ghost town Bodie in California

Glasses on a book in the Boone Store and Warehouse in the ghost town Bodie in California

„Berthold Steinhilber hasn’t photographed ghost towns. Instead, he has revealed the spirits of these places. Places and objects are tenacious. We’re the ones who are convinced they could not exist without us. But they’re not so quick to surrender their spirit.“

Wim Wenders in the foreword to my book

The sign Please do not ask for credit in the Boone Store and Warehouse in the ghost town Bodie in California

Razor in the shop window of Boone Store and Warehouse in the ghost town Bodie in California

Chair in the barber shop in the ghost town Bodie in California

Lottie Johl house in the ghost town Bodie in California

Boone Store & Warehouse in the ghost town Bodie in California

Oven with irons of the chinese laundry in the ghost town Bodie in California

„In this suspended time, this fairy-tale moment between yesterday and tomorrow, you see these ghost towns in a new light, no longer in connection with the people who once lived and worked here, were born and died here, but solely in their own desolation.“

Wim Wenders in the foreword to my book

Commodore Mine, Creede, Colorado

In the early years, ore wagons pulled by mules stopped in front of the loading chutes of the Commodore Mine. They brought the ore down the steep roads to the valley for further processing. The mine was in operation from 1891 to 1976 and was one of the largest silver mines in the world.

St. Elmo, Colorado

The founding Home Comfort Hotel was built in 1885 and was the centre of social life in St. Elmo. In 1909, the Stark Brothers Mercantile, a general shop with a post office and telegraph office and a large warehouse for the needs of gold miners, was also opened there. When it closed in 1958, St. Elmo gradually became a ghost town.
I was told that it is now partly inhabited again, as many tourists visit St. Elmo because the surrounding old mine roads can now be used as off-road trails.

Massicks, Arizona

A storm passes over Prescott Valley, where the fireplace and an old covered wagon still remind us of Massick’s place. At the end of the 19th century, gold miners searched the riverbank for the easily minable placer or wash gold, which could be extracted without costly equipment.
The gold present in the sand and gravel deposits was soon washed out, and more extensive investment was required when the watercourse was to be uncovered. In Massicks, several hills along the river were excavated with high-pressure water jets – but the returns were too small to retain workers in the long term. In the 1930s, the work was stopped.

Ghost Town Berlin, mining village in Nevada

Berlin, Nevada

Berlin was founded in 1897 and never had more than 300 inhabitants – mainly men. In 1850, a census in California showed that just under 8% of the population was female. In mining camps like Berlin, the percentage was much lower still. The presence of women often determined the difference between a short-lived mining camp and a permanent city. By 1947, Berlin had become a ghost town.

Abandoned schoolhouse in the ghost town of Widtsoe Junction in Utah.

Abandoned house of Austin Crawford in the ghost town Chloride in New Mexico

Methodist church in the ghost town of Bodie in California

Wagons in the ghost town Bodie in California

Abandoned house in the ghost town of Widtsoe Junction in Utah.

„Perhaps we have simply forgotten that patience can also be seen as a modern method. And that photography can still do everything it managed to do back then, that it can still capture places in a way they’ve never been captured before…“

Wim Wenders in the foreword to my book

Johnson, Utah.

The houses of the abandoned town of Johnson developed in the early 1950s into a movie set. Many early US westerns and the television series “Gun Smoke” were made in Johnson Canyon. The centre of the series was Miss Kitty’s Longbranch Saloon (left).

Stumptown, Colorado.

A gulch in the Mosquito Range was the scene of a wild hunt for gold in 1860. Two years later, the gold reserves in California Gulch were exhausted and the prospectors left. When gold miner Will Stevens found silver in the abandoned mines thirteen years later, a renewed storm began to sweep the valley in the Rocky Mountains.
The town of Leadville and smaller towns like Stumptown were founded. When the silver boom also declined, other minerals such as copper and zinc were encountered and their demand for industrial purposes steadily increased. Many of the small towns were abandoned in the 1930s and the population moved to the nearby town of Leadville. Since then, the settlements and mine sites have fallen into disrepair. Impressive is the fate of the village of Stumptown, which is slowly sinking into the swamp of the mountains.

Dodge Graham truck in the ghost town Bodie in California

Bodie, California

Gas station with the Dodge Graham truck on Main Street.

Dunfee Mine, Gold Point, Nevada.

The Dunfee Mine was abandoned in 1960 along with all the other gold mines in Gold Point. However, it had already started in the 80s of the 19th century when silver was found. A prospecting camp and later the town of Gold Point quickly developed.
In the beginning, the prospectors had nothing but gold in mind. But it turned out that there were also rich silver deposits in the west. The search for silver was complicated by the fact that silver mixed very easily with other minerals and was difficult to detect. Also, there was no simple silver assay that could easily be done in the open. It was common to test the ore with nitric and hydrochloric acid. Once the silver content was determined, it was possible to deduce the quantity of the deposit. The men were not sure until their samples had been examined by experts. There was another problem: silver rarely occurred in surface veins that were easy to work, the ore had to be mined underground.

Joshua Tree in the Ghost Town Gold Point in Nevada

Post Office in the ghost towns of Gold Point in Nevada

Ghost town Chemung Mine in the Sierra Nevada in Nevada

God is great, sign in the kitchen of a house in the ghost town Steins in Arizona

Office of Ora Mae Wiley in the Post Office of Gold Point in Nevada

Bedroom in the ghost town Steins in Arizona

Bodie, classroom and reading book, schoolhouse

Bottle collection and american flag in the Gost town of Gold Point In Nevada

„I’d like to know how many times I’ve undertaken a detour simply because a place was identified on the map as a ghost town. That designation, usually in parentheses, has a magical attraction for me, and not only for me, almost like a siren song.“

Wim Wenders in the foreword to my book

Sheep Mountain Tunnel Mill in Crystal in Colorado.

Crystal, Colorado

Sheep Mountain Tunnel Mill. Above the former small power station was the miners’ village of Crystal, which became a ghost town after the mine closed around 1917. Many of the old houses, however, still stand and are maintained by their owners.

Cook bank builidng in the Ghost Town Rhyolite in Nevada

Rhyolite, Nevada.

Frank “Shorty” Harris and Eddie Cross struck a rich vein of gold on the edge of Death Valley in 1904. Within three years, the population rose to over ten thousand. Solid concrete buildings like the Cook Bank Building were erected. But the gold boom proved to be very short-lived – the last resident of Rhyolite died in 1924.

Well in the ghost town Bodie in California.

Bodie, California

Fountain next to Green Street with the backdrop of the abandoned western town.

Chemung Mine, Nevada

When gold was also found on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada around 1860, many boomtowns like Masonic sprang up. At the beginning of the 20th century
near the Chemung Mine, which was mined until 1938.

Miner's Union Hall in the ghost town of Bodie in California

Miner’s Union Hall, Bodie, California

The Miners Union Hall on Main Street was an important social and cultural meeting place in Bodie. The big Independence Day celebrations were held here. On the right, the undertaker’s business.

„As an afterthought to these images, I am left with the feeling of having seen pictures from another planet, a little like those from the fabulous probe that landed on Mars and sent us images of a reality that exist wholly without human beings, so obviously and frighteningly independent of us…“

Wim Wenders in the foreword to my book