The Settling of the West didn’t always result in thriving communities. Gold strikes didn’t last forever and boom towns often turned to ghost towns. Some of them later turned to tourist destinations. Some people moved west to farm or ranch, taking advantage of land they could get from the government either for free or at a low cost. They often traveled with their families and sometimes were joining others who had already set up a town. Successful settlements were initially along transportation routes: rivers or the very well-maintained paths and lanes used by Native Americans.
Lyla June Johnston, an expert in indigenous food systems explains tribes created easily-walked trails, often by using prescribed burns, so the settlers naturally followed them, often from Native settlement to settlement. This resulted, in the East, in the Colonists often settling near where their predecessors had set up housekeeping, Johnston says. But later settlers followed a very different trajectory.
Prospectors and adventurers traveled west in search of gold or silver. When someone found a rich vein, as Lambertville, NJ’s, James Marshall did at Sutter’s Mill in 1849, they were quickly joined by more prospectors and eventually built a mining town. But gold strikes didn’t always last forever and boom towns often turned to ghost towns. Some of them later turned to tourist destinations.
Molson, Washington, is an authentic pioneer town near the Canadian border, according to the website Only in Washington. It was one of the gold rush towns in the far west that attracted Chinese miners first, then white settlers. Named after the early Canadian brewing magnate who was one of the first investors of the region. It includes a sturdy stone schoolhouse, now a museum, and a wood-planked Molson State Bank.
Still present on the site of this authentic pioneer town are several historic buildings as well as farming equipment and other relics. The museum includes items from the town’s former bank, barber shop, post office and more. Burke, Idaho, is unique in that it is centered in a canyon of the Coeur d’Alene Mountains that is only 300 feet wide at its narrowest point.
The train tracks and road followed the same route, so carriages and later cars had to pull over when the train came through the 1887 town. A few residents live in the area but many of the remaining structures are decaying. The railroad also ran through the town’s Tiger Hotel with a covered walkway over the tracks. Five Union Pacific cars passed though the hotel lobby every day.
While many ghost towns successfully became tourist destinations Cerro Gordo, near Death Valley, a failed silver town also failed as a tourist town. Silver was discovered near Buena Vista Peak in 1865. The discovery brought thousands of miners who were, as often happened, accompanied by various unsavory characters. Saloons were soon built and the town averaged one killing a week. It got so bad the town doctor left and there was no sheriff at all. It wasn’t the crime and chaos that shut it down, however.
The silver ran out and Union Mine switched to zinc, eventually closing in 1938. It was purchased in 2018 for $1.4 million but a fire that year destroyed three historic treasures, an icehouse, residence and the American Hotel, delaying, if not ending, hopes for a tourist town.
Silver City, near Bodfish, CA, appears to be one of those silver strike towns dating to the 1850s. It’s actually a privately-owned fake ghost town.
Locals working with the Dave and Arville Mills family, early settlers of the area, moved some mining buildings to create a courtyard for tourists. They collected and display artifacts and posted notices around the ghost town explaining its history.
The owners and employees are constantly working on the tourist attraction which has a museum consisting of several buildings and antique shops that sell historical artifacts from the region. It also features a saloon, residences and a jail and has been featured in several movies.
Many settlements were similar to Orchard, CO. It was discovered by John Fremont, a well-known military officer, explorer and mapmaker and started as a fort and a stage stop. It had a Post Office by 1863.
Following a tradition of naming towns after famous people (it is near Greeley, named for Horace Greeley who famously said “go West young man, go West”) the townspeople originally called it Fremont’s Orchard.
Nearby Dearfield was different in a few ways. While Orchard was predominantly settled by immigrants from the Isle of Man, Dearfield was founded as a Black settlement in 1900. Founder Oliver Toussaint Jackson called it “Dear”field because “land and community are precious to residents.”
Jackson filed for a claim under the Homestead Act and by 1920 Dearfield had two churches, a school, a blacksmith’s shop, a dance hall and a restaurant. Jackson was planning a cannery and a soap factory. The town survived an attack by the Denver Chapter of the Klu Klux Klan, but the Great Depression and Dust Bowl took too much of a toll.
Several buildings remain, however, and Denver’s Black American West Museum is working on preservation. Dearfield is a Colorado registered historic landmark.
Of course not all ghost towns are in the West. Many towns succumbed to a loss of industry or being bypassed by the railroads or, later, superhighways. Batsto Historic Village in Ocean County is a famous ghost town in New Jersey.
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