Experience: I’m stranded in a ghost town
Igot a text from a friend at 2am one night in the summer of 2018. It said: “Wanna buy a ghost town?” I thought it was a weird joke, but I clicked on the link and started reading about Cerro Gordo. It was a piece of American history straight out of a wild west movie: an abandoned 19th-century silver-mining town about 200 miles from Los Angeles. At its height, it had about 4,000 residents, mostly miners who spent their time seeking their fortunes and drinking a lot. There was a history of gun fights; at one point police were reporting a murder a week. There’s a rumour that Butch Cassidy hid out there for a while.
When the mines closed in the 1930s, almost everyone left and the abandoned town changed hands several times. Now there was just a caretaker called Robert who has kept watch over the town for 21 years, protecting it from the occasional looting attempt, and the whole town was for sale.
I grew up in Florida and consider myself a bit of an entrepreneur. I own a backpacker hostel in Austin, Texas, which was built in 1892. I’ve always liked that combination of hospitality and history. But I was 30 years old, the hostel was doing well and I was looking for a project that was more of a challenge. When I saw Cerro Gordo, I thought it would be incredible if people could stay there. So, I scraped together my life savings and convinced a few investors to get involved. On Friday 13 July 2018, we closed the deal.
For the next year or so things went slowly; we waited for permits and tried to make a start on the renovations. Everything takes an age, because it’s so hard to get people or materials here. When the coronavirus pandemic started, I got a call from Robert. His wife lives in Arizona and he wanted to be with her before lockdown began, so he asked if I could watch over the town to keep it safe from looters.
I originally planned on staying a week or two. There are 22 buildings, including a church, hotel and general store; I thought I could repair some and we could start renting them out to visitors. Mother Nature had other plans.
A snowstorm hit the night I arrived. My truck didn’t even make it all the way; it was stuck, spinning out in the snow 500 yards before town. I left it in the middle of the single-lane road and walked the rest of the way.
It snowed almost every day for 10 days. It got to the point where I could barely open my front door. The road here is precarious. It rises 4,500ft over seven miles, so it was now completely impassable.
And then, because of the pandemic, California issued a “shelter in place” order, so there were two reasons I couldn’t leave.
The town has electricity, but no running water. All the food I brought with me is gone, but luckily Robert left a pretty large store of tins. I’ve eaten a lot of out-of-date beans.
I have been here for more than a month now. I have a phone signal, but the internet isn’t powerful enough to stream Zoom or Netflix. To pass the time, I’ve been playing museum curator, finding time capsules from the town’s history. A week ago, I found a briefcase, and inside were cheques from the 1920s, divorce settlements and love letters: the highs and lows of one miner’s life.
The thought of death is never far away; part of the town’s atmosphere is its grim nature. The cemetery has about 1,300 graves; there are bullet holes in the walls of The American, the local hotel built in 1870, and blood stains
from an infamous disagreement in its card room. I found a huge VHS collection left by the previous owners, including a copy of The Shining. I can’t bring myself to watch it.
If there is a silver lining, it is that the pandemic is forcing me to spend time here working on the buildings. I have taught myself to build a deck and to track animals; most are rabbits, but a bobcat visits my porch every night leaving big paw prints.
Once the snow has melted, I will stay here because I would like to give Robert more time with his family, and the news doesn’t make me want to go to a big city any time soon. Some days I can’t believe a place like this was available to buy. It’s a part of history, and I want it preserved.
As told to Alice Hutton.Do you have an experience to share? Email experience@theguardian.com.