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The night before, I had pulled off the highway to a pitch black landscape under a bright starry sky. I was in for a surprise when I looked out the camper that morning. As I pulled the shade, the morning sun reflected off a sturdy crust of icy snow with a vengeance for my corneas. I had parked in an expansive meadow with timber climbing the ridges on either side. After making coffee, I glanced out again and could see that I had parked in a popular cross-country ski area. The l

From wild horses to atomic remnants, my journey across the desert just getting to Tybo had already been unexpectedly eventful. The day wasn't done with me yet. The road to get to Tybo is pretty tame as far as ghost town trails go. I had turned off highway 6, past the weathered air force base camp and airstrip used for the Project Faultless nuclear test, among other covert purposes. The area around Tybo is dry, with dust and dim sagebrush as my only companions for the first fe

When you're rolling across the wide open desert of central Nevada in early January, alone doesn't begin to describe the feeling. It's all cracking fence posts and rusty barbed wire. The few man-made sites you do pass are all marked keep out, no trespassing, or Property of the United States Govt. My day had begun hours earlier camping near some hot springs miles outside of Mammoth Lakes, California. I had stayed there for a few days after repeated storms blanketed the area wit

In the final installment of the series, we follow the life of a woman whose unwavering dedication helped preserve the historic town of Bannack, ensuring its stories and its spirit would endure for generations. Across the street from the Methodist church near the middle of town lies the Ovitt Store. Once home to a saloon, a bustling boarding house, and even a bakery, the building found new life in the 1950s when Mrs. Mabel Ovitt took over and turned it into a shop. Mabel was b

The heart of Bannack holds its share of stories, but it’s in the forgotten edges of town where the ghosts whisper loudest. While most ghost towns offer only a few scattered cabins, Bannack tells a fuller story. Some came to strike it rich, digging deep into the earth. Others saw opportunity above ground, opening businesses to serve the miners. And then there were the drifters, drawn by the chaos and chance of a town on the edge of nowhere, chasing drink, cards, and fleeting f

Tucked away in one of the furthest reaches of the Yankee Fork, miles up an isolated gorge, lies the ghost town of Custer, Idaho. As I roll into town, the dense evergreens on either side give way to wide, open swaths of snow, dotted with aspen and willow trees. The town is quiet, with numerous structures boarded up for winter, their roofs blanketed in a thick layer of snow. Not another soul is in sight as I park the truck and step out to walk through this slice of history. At

With clear weather forecast for the next few days, I ventured deeper into the mountains toward the ghost towns of Custer and Bonanza. Following the Yankee Fork of the Salmon River north, I passed a tall cottonwood tree standing by the roadside. Its trunk, gnawed halfway through, must have been no match for the local beaver population. The notch was on the roadside and a few inches wide, suggesting that the tree would soon fall at some random moment. It almost felt as though t

I was meandering down a snow blanketed road in my truck camper like a giant white turtle in a sea of snow to check out the ghost town of

In a matter of moments after beginning my descent, I realized how big that fissure in the earth really was, and it was evident why that p...

That morning I sipped a cup of coffee and reading while enveloped by trees and teetering on a ridgeline as the sun ascended from the...

That morning my legs moved slowly, twisting and stretching a bit in recovery from trekking in the footsteps of countless others in that...

Barreling out of Helena that morning, I was bound for a piece of history unlike others; it was for sale to the highest bidder. The ghost...

Out in the middle of the Mojave Desert lies an oasis most people never see, let alone hear about. With faded stucco buildings, peeling...

Standing up on that hill beneath the shadow of Mount Belmont was the crown of the town, an old cabin with only its walls still vertical. The dwelling faced east, and the wood stain from long ago had been bleached lighter and lighter with the decades of sun, only holding on in the boards' most porous spots. The front wall with its steep pitch cast a distinct shape upon the hills, and It made me wonder if my young great-grandfather had laid his own eyes on the same structure lo

Standing above the haggard former mining outpost of Garnet, I felt like I was in the foreground of an old Charles Russell painting as the...