Unexplained Mysteries of America's ghost towns

By Hugo Martín, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

Dusty whiskey bottles line warped shelves. Dog-eared hymnals rest in church pews. Framed black-and-white photos, veiled in spider webs, hang on crooked nails. The haunted ghost towns of the American West recall a desperate era. Located on high plains and open deserts, where sand storms and cold winter nights have embalmed any semblance of life, these towns still whisper their legends to anyone willing to drive through and listen.
Pull over and step outside, and you'll hear the stories of the men, the women and the children who abandoned their homes and gave up their claims so fast that they seem to have vanished mid-stride and mid-sentence. As Halloween nears, they seem more than eager to speak.

GOLDFIELD, NEVADA

Whoever chained a young woman to a radiator in the Goldfield Hotel, leaving her for dead, probably thought she would be silenced forever. Instead, she lives on a century later in this once-flourishing mining town in the Nevada desert. Here, guests enjoyed French cooking, hot baths and a decorative lobby with dark mahogany walls and gold-leaf ceilings, but the young woman never knew such luxury. After all, she was a prostitute and, worse, pregnant. Prospectors, entrepreneurs and laborers abandoned Goldfield in the 1920s when the boom went bust. As you walk through the darkened hotel with Virginia Ridgway, the head of tourism for what little remains in Goldfield, she swears she is neither crazy nor drunk when she talks about having seen a glowing man in a black hat and hearing footsteps where there should have been none in this four-story brick building. Today, the haunted room where the imprisoned woman died is empty and hollow.
From Las Vegas, drive 184 miles north along U.S. 95. For more information, call Ridgway at (775) 485-6365.

SKIDOO, CALIFORNIA

Pity the hard-luck residents of Skidoo, perhaps the sorriest little mining settlement in the West. In its short-lived, miserable history, the town had the misfortune of attracting such desperate characters as Joe "Hooch" Simpson. In 1908, this down-on-his-luck barkeep made the mistake of gunning down the town banker for $20, and when a lynch mob finally got its hands on him, they couldn't even wait to build a proper gallows. They hanged him from the telegraph pole that brought news of the outside world to this benighted patch of earth. When a reporter from the Los Angeles Times showed up for a photo, the good citizens of Skidoo accommodated him by digging up Hooch, brushing him off and hanging him again. But then the town doctor, in a macabre moment, lopped off Hooch's head to test for syphilis, the possible cause of his sudden madness. No wonder today the twice-hanged, headless Hooch still haunts these empty hills in Death Valley where all that remains are a historical marker, broken bottles and hundreds of abandoned mine shafts.
From Stovepipe Wells, drive southwest along California 190 for nine miles, turn left on Wildrose Canyon Road and, after nine more miles, turn left on the first major gravel road and continue for almost eight miles. For more information, call the Death Valley National Park at (760) 786-3200.

VULTURE MINE CITY, ARIZONA

A low-hanging ironwood tree drapes over the crumbling remains of an abandoned stone house, one-time home of Henry Wickenburg, patriarch of this forgotten town. Run your hands along the rough gray bark and turn your eyes to the skeletal frame of branches that arch overhead. Justice was often swift and harsh in these places. Eighteen miners were strung up from this tree more than 100 years ago, close enough for Wickenburg to see their feet dangling in front of the window. Their crime? Stealing ore from established claims. Although the mines of the area yielded countless riches, Wickenburg ended up a pauper who later put a bullet in his head. Today the town's last full-time resident, Marge Osborne, recalls seeing mysterious haunting figures and hearing unexplained knocking whenever she walked the streets at night beside the jail, the assay office, the schoolhouse, the smithy. Although most of the structures have withered under sun and rain, the old ironwood thrives, nearly engulfing what's left of Wickenburg's ruined home.
Take U.S. 60 west 2 1/2 miles out of Wickenburg to Vulture Mine Road. Turn south and travel 12 miles. For more information, call Osborne at (602) 859-2743.

FRISCO, UTAH

George Reese, Samuel Bailie and Hans Roth are a few of the names in Frisco's weed-choked cemetery, the final resting place for many victims of the legendary violence that nearly killed this silver-mining town toward the end of the 19th century. The bloodshed provided job security for the undertaker, who drove the main street in an open wagon evenings, carting away the bodies. Times changed when the marshal, William Pearson, from neighboring Pioche, Nev., showed up one day to set things right. First came a warning: Lawbreakers wouldn't be arrested; they would be shot. Then came justice. On Pearson's first night on the job, six outlaws bit the dust. Only a few lopsided, splintery buildings, along with five charcoal kilns used in the silver- and lead-melting process, remain in Frisco today, and of course, there are all the tombstones in the cemetery that rise from the desert shrub near the Nevada-Utah border like bad teeth sprouting from the ground. Want ot visit this haunting mystery..
From Milford, Utah, drive west along Utah 21 for 15 miles.

BODIE, CALIFORNIA

Bodie is a cursed ghost town. Pilfer anything from one of the old sun-bleached buildings north of Mono Lake -- a nail, part of a clock or even an old bottle -- and bad luck latches onto you forever. Don't believe it? Then tell it to the visitors of this ghost town who have been returning stolen stuff with tales of heartbreak, death and serious injury that beset them once they left this Eastern Sierra settlement. One fearful visitor even returned the nail that pierced her tire as she drove through town.
From U.S. 395, take California 270 east. Drive 10 miles to the end of the pavement and continue three miles on a dirt road. For more information, call Bodie State Historic Park, (760) 647-6445.

ST. ELMO, COLORADO

Like an ancient gargoyle, Annabelle Stark watches over St. Elmo. Dead for nearly 50 years, she stares out of windows and wanders the empty streets. More than 2,000 residents abandoned this silver- and gold-mining town in the 1920s, but not Annabelle. Her father was a cattleman, a mining boss and a member of the town's elite. Attractive but lonely, Annabelle hung out at her pa's hotel, the Stark Home Comfort Inn, even when tumbleweeds and jackrabbits outnumbered visitors. After a stint in a mental institution, Annabelle returned and died in 1960, but skiers and snowmobile riders who venture into the old settlement each winter insist they still see her patrolling and haunting her beloved town in a flowing white dress, scaring off vandals and trespassers.
From Colorado Springs, take U.S. 24 west to U.S. 285 south. Take U.S. 285 for 21 miles then turn right on County Road 280, right on CR 270, then left on CR 162 for 12 miles. For more information, call (719) 395-8458.

Shakespeare, New Mexico

The climate in Shakespeare is cool in the winter and hot during summer and while you can visit anytime, check before visiting, the town is not always opened. Shakespeare has had many names over the years from Mexican Springs to Grant to Ralston and finally to Shakespeare. The little town began in the late 1850s as a storied carrier with the Butterfield Overland Stage Company built an alternate route that passed through Mexican Springs. Because good water was hard to find and was abundant in Mexican Springs, The National Mail and Transport Company built a mail stop and renamed the city Grant. Not long after William C. Ralston became interested in the little town and tried to start a mining company but the silver claims had been staked and improperly recorded. Then in the late 1870s, the Shakespeare Mining Company staked claims in silver and renamed the town. Mining continued strongly until the depression when mining ceased. The land is now a privately owned ranch so call and check on the times and be courteous.

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