BIG DREAM Hobby and Craft: I Bought a Ghost Town. Here's What I Learned When I Brought It Back to Life.

Minggu, 13 Desember 2020

I Bought a Ghost Town. Here's What I Learned When I Brought It Back to Life.

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COURTESY OF BRENT UNDERWOOD

I Bought a Ghost Town

This abandoned California mining village once had 400 buildings. Now I'm restoring the 20 that remain.

BY: BRENT UNDERWOOD, AS TOLD TO CLINT CARTER

In 2018, Brent Underwood submitted a winning, $1.4 million bid on a network of dried-up silver mines in Southern California. The property includes 336 acres of high-desert terrain and the remains of a mining boomtown called Cerro Gordo, or "Fat Hill."

After Covid-19 hit, Underwood moved from his home in Austin, TX, to live at Cerro Gordo full-time. Now he's the sole inhabitant of a genuine Wild West artifact.

The day we closed on Cerro Gordo, my partner and I met the caretaker to receive the most preposterous keychain I've ever seen. There must have been 40 keys hanging off. It happened to be Friday the 13th and my partner's birthday, so after signing the papers, we retreated to Cerro Gordo to celebrate.

The plan back then was basically the same as it is now: We want to turn the old mining town into an off-beat hospitality destination and artist retreat. Things just haven't run as smoothly as we'd hoped.

Originally we talked about soft-launching a few cabins on AirBnB by Halloween 2019, but logistical challenges, a catastrophic fire, and a national pandemic have continued to push that date back. Now here we are a year later, still not open to guests, and for the past six months, I've lived at Cerro Gordo alone.

This isn't how I imagined my life, but I'm not complaining. Despite the challenges, I've never been happier. I feel a real connection to the town's Wild West history: Miners started settling Cerro Gordo in the 1800s, and Butch Cassidy is said to have spent time here hiding out from the law. I have a view of Mt. Whitney on one side and Death Valley on the other, and every day I explore abandoned mines and hunt for artifacts left behind by the men who worked here.

The more time I spend at Cerro Gordo, the more I fall in love, and now when I leave to stock up on groceries or gather supplies, I immediately want to come back. But it's hard work bringing a ghost town back to life. Here are a few things I've learned along the way.

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