California Ghost Towns

Another old town can be found in Bodie close to the California and Nevada boundary that is north of Mono Lake. Bodie is a Historic park and one of the biggest and best preserved ghost towns in the West and a great place to take pictures of.

Another very interesting place to visit is Columbia. Columbia is one of a kind in California. It's a state park but it is also a living community. The original buildings with the iron doors have been renovated and restored. There you will be able to find guided tours, stagecoach rides, live theatre, horseback riding, and gold panning. This is a place where you can take your children, guaranteed they will love it.

There are guided tours that take you through the Hidden Treasure Gold Mine that has more then 700 feet of tunnel burrowing through a rich lode. This obviously was hard rock mining, not placer mining but it is still a fascinating place to visit. This is additionally a place where over $50,000,000 in gold passed through during the years of the gold rush.

One other noteworthy place to visit is in Oatman, Arizona that is located southwest of Kingman in the northwest corner of the state and the history of this place is very interesting to find out about since the story about it is very unusual. Gold was first discovered in Oatman in 1902 by a man whose name was Ben Taddock who, while riding along the trail, spotted gold glittering on the ground and decided to file a claim right away. A tent city soon bounced up as soon as other miners heard of the news that there was gold and rushed to the area. The attraction of this place is the crows of desert burros, whose ancestors were abandoned when their owner or prospector died.

Wild burros roam around the town freely and can be hand-fed carrots and "burro chow," that can be easily found in pretty much every store in town, much to the enjoyment of visitors. Despite the fact that usually quite gentle, the burros are in fact wild and signs posted throughout Oatman recommend visitors to use caution as such. The burros are descended from pack animals turned loose by early prospectors and are protected by the US Department of the Interior.

The history that Oatman has gave it the nickname of the town that died two times. Oatman and its neighboring Goldroad used to be rich gold towns in the past. Goldroad used to depend almost entirely on its mining and Oatman that is an old US route 66, did quite well when in the business of tourism and in the mining industry.

However, when World War II came along things changed. In an effort to win, there were a lot of industries that were declared as not being essential and were shut down and gold mining just so happened to be one of them. The result of this was that Oatman died, no mining in this place meant there was not going to be any income. The people that lived there were strong people and were located in a strategic place on route 66 just before it took off into the desert of Southern California. Then the town turned into a tourism town instead and did well.

Then there was a plan to replace route 66 and it was decreed that the new highway, Interstate 40, should go over the mountains well to the south of Oatman. This meant the town died once again.

Believe it or not there is still life in this old town though. The people decided they could restore the place and decided to renovate the old saloon and the hash house etc and the place is doing well and worth checking out.

Goldroad, which is Oatman’s neighbor, is right off the main highway on a side road. Goldroad does not have anything left in it except for old ruins that can be photographed and a great deal of scenery.