While Exploring The Mountain Ranges Of The State During A Considerable
Portion Of Three Summers, I Think That I Have Seen At Least Five Of
These Deserted Towns And Villages For Every One In Ordinary Life.
Some of them were probably only camps built by bands of prospectors,
and inhabited for a few months or years, while some specially
interesting canyon was being explored, and then carelessly abandoned
for more promising fields.
But many were real towns, regularly laid
out and incorporated, containing well-built hotels, churches,
schoolhouses, post offices, and jails, as well as the mills on which
they all depended; and whose well-graded streets were filled with
lawyers, doctors, brokers, hangmen, real estate agents, etc., the
whole population numbering several thousand.
A few years ago the population of Hamilton is said to have been nearly
eight thousand; that of Treasure Hill, six thousand; of Shermantown,
seven thousand; of Swansea, three thousand. All of these were
incorporated towns with mayors, councils, fire departments, and daily
newspapers. Hamilton has now about one hundred inhabitants, most of
whom are merely waiting in dreary inaction for something to turn up.
Treasure Hill has about half as many, Shermantown one family, and
Swansea none, while on the other hand the graveyards are far too full.
In one canyon of the Toyabe range, near Austin, I found no less than
five dead towns without a single inhabitant. The streets and blocks
of "real estate" graded on the hillsides are rapidly falling back into
the wilderness.
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