California Ghost Towns Live Again

The ghost towns of Southern California-some dramatic and nearly intact, others devastated-are well worth visiting. Most are remnants of once-colorful mining towns, though there are also railroad towns, a World War II relocation center, a promoter's swindle, and a failed socialist colony. Some excellent attractions remain. One of the best-preserved stamp mills in the West is in Skidoo. Smelters, homes, stores, and the remarkable wooden American Hotel can be found in Cerro Gordo, which the author calls "California's best true ghost town." Seasoned back-roads traveler Philip Varney, who has visited nearly a hundred ghost towns in the area, provides a down-to-earth and helpful guide to more than sixty of the best in Southern California and nearby Inyo and Kern counties. He defines a ghost town as a town with a population markedly decreased from its peak, one whose initial reason for settlement no longer keeps people there. It can be completely deserted, have a resident or two, or retain genuine signs of vitality, but Varney has eliminated those towns he considers either too populated or too empty of significant remains. The sites are grouped in four chapters in Inyo County, Death Valley, the Mojave Desert and Kern River, and the regions surrounding Los Angeles and San Diego. Each chapter provides a map of the region, a ranking of sites as "major," "secondary," and "minor," information on road conditions, trip suggestions, and tips on the use of particular topographic maps for readers interested in more detailed exploration. Each entry includes directions to a town, a brief history of that town, and notes on its special points of interest. Current photographs provide a valuable record of the sometimes fragile sites. Southern California's Best Ghost Towns will be welcomed both by those who enjoy traveling off the beaten path and by those who enjoy the history of the American West.

High in the Inyo Mountains, between Owens Valley and Death Valley National Park, lies the ghost town of Cerro Gordo. Discovered in 1865, this silver town boomed to a population of 3,000 people in the hands of savvy entrepreneurs during the 1870s. As the silver played out and the town faded, a few hung on to the dream. By the early 1900s, Louis D. Gordon wandered up the Yellow Grade Road where freight wagons once traversed with silver and supplies and took a closer look at the zinc ore that had been tossed aside by early miners. The Fat Hill lived again, primarily as a small company town. By the last quarter of the 20th century, Jody Stewart and Mike Patterson found themselves owners of the rough and tumble camp that helped Los Angeles turn into a thriving metropolis because of silver and commercial trade. Cerro Gordo found new life, second to Bodie, as California's best-preserved ghost town.

A pictorial discovery guide through about 50 of Northern California's most

There's a certain mystique to the ghost town of Drawbridge, California, even though it "died" 37 years ago. Because of its isolation on a marshy island, the town remains unknown, even to people who live a few miles away. This unusual community lacked streets, schools or stores and its buildings constantly sank into swampy water. Residents had to walk three miles on railroad tracks to the nearest grocery. Their kids trudged to school on those same busy tracks. Still, residents loved its lifestyle. Why were they forced to leave? Why is the island off limits today? The town remains alive in an unusual manner. You will meet the hardy folks who lived there and learn their stories firsthand, thanks to unexpected events that took place after it became a ghost town. Photos and rare interviews with former inhabitants bring Drawbridge to life again, allowing readers to experience the town without slogging through its mud.

A travel guide to northern California's 50 deserted mining towns, plus the "ghost prison" of Alcatraz and a couple of Chinese fishing villages in the San Francisco Bay area.

Brings to life the turbulent times in the heyday of each town and guides the visitor to the sights that are relies of those times. Historic photos.

Visit VirtualVenice.info Pat Hartman´s first book, Call Someplace Paradise, was concerned with the public face of Venice, California - the boardwalk and boutique Venice visited by between one and two hundred thousand tourists each weekend. Ghost Town is about the other Venice. There is a book genre described by Russ Rymer as "inspecting America´s racial trauma through the lens of private experience, as it plays out in the daily difficulties of particular persons in one or another microcosmic place." Here the microcosm is Oakwood, a hotbed of diversity and danger called Ghost Town by its own citizens. The particular persons are a white single mother, age 30, and her 11-year-old, half-black daughter, along with a stellar cast of roommates, boyfriends, and neighbors. Ghost Town: A Venice California Life is a psychological adventure story that takes place in a challenging environment where many people would never consider trying to live. Much has been said and written about racial dynamics by people who, however well-informed and well-intentioned, may talk the talk but haven´t walked the walk. Whether by lack of inclination or of opportunity, many experts on race relations have never actually lived in a racially mixed neighborhood, let alone where their own group is a minority. In an environment that forces thought about race issues every single day, it´s a different world. How are attitudes about race formed? Why is it that even the most willing participants of the melting pot sometimes can´t take the heat? These and other questions are precisely as relevant now as they were in the period covered here, 1978-84. Unfortunately the subject of race will probably continue to be relevant into the next millennium and beyond, given that the human race as a whole is still around that long. Despite being burglarized, mugged, vandalized, menaced, caught in the black/chicano crossfire, and visited by men in suits who travel in pairs, the author found existence in Oakwood rewarding and positive an many ways. (Film director Barbet Schroeder, who lived in Oakwood during the same time period, told an interviewer it was "the best year of my life so far.") Like the diary of Samuel Pepys in London, like Alexander King´s memoirs of Greenwich Village, Ghost Town is a record of a fascinating and frightening urban environment through the eyes of an articulate and meticulous observer. Visit VirtualVenice.info