Items16The creator’s order
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Bodie, CaliforniaThe benchmark, and the one to see if you only see one. Bodie became a boomtown after 1877, and California keeps what is left in a state of arrested decay: nothing is rebuilt or prettied up, so you peer through windows at rooms left much as the last residents had them.
It sits at 8,375 feet,…0 - 2
Rhyolite, NevadaThe clearest lesson in how fast a boom could die. Prospectors found gold here in 1904; electricity arrived in April 1907, a three-story bank went up, and by 1910 only 611 residents remained. The bank's broken walls still stand, and they are the picture everyone takes.
Do not miss the Bottle House,…0 - 3
Bannack, MontanaMontana's answer to Bodie, and the one to choose if you want to stay the night. Montana's first major gold discovery was made here on July 28, 1862, and Bannack went on to become the first capital of Montana Territory, a title it held only briefly.
Over 50 log and frame buildings line Main Street.…0 - 4
Kennecott, AlaskaThe most remote and the most dramatic. Kennecott is a red copper company town beside the Kennicott Glacier inside Wrangell-St Elias National Park, and its 14-story timber mill is like nothing else in the West. Copper ore first left by rail in 1911, and by the time the operation closed in 1938 it…0 - 5
Garnet, MontanaA small, honest gold camp in the timber, and the best place on this list to spend a winter night. Garnet had about a thousand residents in its 1890s boom and emptied when the gold ran out, leaving remarkably intact wooden buildings among the pines.
In summer it is a gravel drive off Montana…0 - 6
Saint Elmo, ColoradoColorado's easiest high-country ghost town, and a good one with children. St Elmo lines a single street in Chalk Creek Canyon, 19 miles up County Road 162 from Nathrop, southwest of Buena Vista, and is one of the best-preserved ghost towns in the West, with its weathered wooden storefronts still in…0 - 7
Animas Forks, ColoradoThe highest and wildest stop here, for anyone driving the Alpine Loop in the San Juan Mountains. Animas Forks sits at about 11,200 feet, just over 12 miles northeast of Silverton, and its two-story Duncan House, built in 1879, still stands among the stabilized buildings, with interpretive signs…0 - 8
Silver City, IdahoThe ghost town that never quite emptied. Silver City was the seat of Owyhee County until 1934 and, at its height, had around 2,500 people. About 70 structures from the 1860s to the early 1900s still stand in the Owyhee Mountains, and the Idaho Hotel still takes overnight guests from around the end…0 - 9
Grafton, UtahThe odd one out, and a welcome change from mining camps: a pioneer farming village on the Virgin River near Zion National Park, settled to grow cotton, under red cliffs that make it the most beautiful setting on this list. Film fans will know it from the bicycle scene in Butch Cassidy and the…0 - 10
Vulture City, ArizonaArizona's best ghost town for a winter road trip. Henry Wickenburg found gold here in 1863, and at its peak around 5,000 people lived and worked at what became the richest gold mine in Arizona's history. The government shut the mine during World War II, and the town was soon abandoned.
Many…0
