6 Months Alone In An Abandoned Ghost Town

so i it just sounds ridiculous i've been living in an abandoned town for six months by myself [Music] it's true i'm here i am sitting at cerro gordo mine town this is a town that has been my residence for the past six months i came up here in march it's kind of exciting the pandemic figuring i'd come up for three four weeks here we are six months later i'm still here and this is this is home now you know i think before it was a place i would come and visit now it's home when i'm not here it's where i want to be when i'm getting groceries i want to come back it's weird somebody was so excited about coming back to a you know old mining town with no running water but i [ __ ] love it here [Music] [Music] my apartment [Music] [Music] all right so why why am i in an abandoned ghost town miles from any other town with no running water i ask myself that sometimes but the answer is about just over two years ago myself and a friend john beer purchased a taco cerro gordo and cerro gordo is a town about three hours from los angeles and three hours from las vegas and it was at one point in time the largest producer of silver for the state of california there's 4 000 residents 400 buildings and it was a boom town these days there's about 20 buildings one resident and no running water i knew it was a challenge getting into it it's been a challenge so it's hard to complain about what you signed up for it's stimulating on all fronts but i am here because in march of this year our caretaker robert wanted to be home with his wife for the pandemic and so i was living in austin didn't need to be in austin so i packed up my truck came out here thinking i'd come for three or four weeks a bunch of snow hit i got stuck i ended up being here for a lot longer than i thought but i'm still here and now my priorities have changed you know the more time you spend at cerro gordo the more it enchants you it's weird to say out loud that a property can do that but like maybe see it in the video it looks beautiful but here there's something about this place it like casts a spell over you this is the only place you want to be and i'm fully within that spell now this is what i want to do with my life i want to renovate this town i want to bring it from a place that nobody can come really visit to a place where many of you can come tour it maybe even spend the night so that's what i'm dedicated to i'm dedicating my life to doing that that's why i've been here for the past six months that's why i'll be here for the next six months i thought it'd be cool to kind of you know take an inventory of what's been going on last six months how my personalities changed how the projects have changed what's gotten done what hasn't gotten done what i hope to get done and maybe who knows it'll be cool to look back at this video six months from now i'm sure it'll change a lot but without further ado let's get into six months living in an abandoned ghost town by myself all right so we're at the bunk house and this is one of the early projects i did this year and you can see it's getting there i mean this floor used to have thick paint on it and there's terrible carpet all over the place that used to trap in the dust now i mean it's not there but it's getting there and the floor looks a lot better the kitchen um i haven't finished these yet but you know the bedrooms they're nice this took a while i mean there was carpet and i probably have a video that i could find of me ripping up the carpet then the carpet pad and then sanding that and then finishing it but now it's at least comfortable you know we're not renting these out anytime soon so people could come stay in there be comfortable at the very least this used to just be like a room with a couch but got a mattress in there in case some people come and help out they can crash in here pretty cool look at that we found those on site there used to be sheep here i haven't seen any but you know back when we had water had a whole bunch of animals a bet that's creepy it was a lot of work you know this this took me on and off probably two or three months to rip out the carpet do the floors move some things back in you know i'll show you on the project number two which is the former chapel here that used to be a mechanics garage so originally this was a mechanics garage and underneath those seats was a pit where they were driving the vehicle to service the vehicles and over time the pit got covered the old owners out of this stained glass and when we took over the place it was pretty much just floor-to-ceiling junk you know it was just old wood stuff that maybe you'd use once upon a time and so a lot of this winter was just sorting through that and going hey this wood stays this wood goes and getting the wood to a place where we could store it or otherwise cut it up for kindling for in the houses or something i think i'm a little off on this whole tripod thing but hey give the guy a break you know what side note i shoot all this stuff myself so i have a tripod and i have a camera this channel is interesting because you get to see almost real time me developing some skills hopefully some skills like i remember the very first video shows me like getting stuck in the snow and i did get stuck people were like why'd you get stuck because it's a 140 horsepower two-wheel drive tacoma that's super lightweight and spins out with street tires and people are going to get through that nowadays that wouldn't happen right and in the first video i ever made i got caught way out in a snowstorm i didn't really know where i was that wouldn't happen now i'd have done probably a hundred hikes since then further than that and so i think it's cool for me too to look back at those videos and i would make some of the same comments i was like man what's this guy getting into but i'm developing skills as i as i go one of which is the camera to kind of bring that back to whatever i was talking about you know i think as far as skills i've been learning a lot about like outdoor stuff you know hiking different things like that uh renovation basic construction things i've had people come up and help me and teach me the ropes there mine exploration animal tracking hopefully some photography i've gotten really good at bow and arrow i have a compound bow up here 50 pound for you is interested a hoyt if you guys are really interested that i love and so i've been shooting that a lot getting pretty good at that um yeah just you know i really i just feel a lot more confident with all my skills i think up here you learn to depend on yourself you forget something too bad figure it out don't have the right screw figure it out some other way and so it's been a six months of a lot of personal growth as well as you know growth for the town we're over on the back side of the property now if you remember my first video when i was building that deck on the small cabin the writer's retreat this is it so this is where i kind of come and relax sometimes if sara gordo gets too busy which is hilarious to talk that you know a ghost town 30 miles from anything would be too busy but you know we've recently had a lot of people come and help with the hotel and volunteers and coordinators and stuff and you know i think it's weird but the more time i spend up here the less bandwidth i have for social interaction i know that sounds really strange but hey maybe there's a reason i bought a town in the middle of nowhere you know i i love interacting with people but to an extent and it's weird that window let's say it used to be like four hours it's now maybe like an hour and i kind of get burnt out and i just want to retreat away so this is my retreat away no power here no water of course no nothing phone doesn't really work this is a place where i can come and sit and from my perspective i just look out over death valley and just relax you know day's pretty much done now so i just come over here decompress unwind a little bit i'll show you guys in the cabin it's pretty basic but i always want to keep the cabins over here a little bit more basic and this is my uh this is my getaway within the getaway so to speak so we're inside a little artist retreat now and i think when i look back over the past six months it hasn't all been easy you know it's been tough it's been difficult there are some of the most trying weeks of my life around the fire you know it's just a week where the crown jewel of the town burned down i saw my hopes and dreams burned down in front of me not even a couple days after that we had an earthquake that shook around the place a little bit and then a hail storm that not only knocked out the road but knocked out the power i remember at one point when it was power was out it would rain again i just laughed you know it was one of those things where you know that scene in truman show where he's trying to get to the edge of the dome and they keep making the weather more and more intense and things more difficult to stop him from getting to the side and eventually he just looks up and he laughs this manic laugh i remember having a really similar laugh during that period because i mean what else are you gonna do fire earthquake hail storm it was intense but hey here we are made it through i think that's a big thing that's happened last six months too i'm pretty confident of most situations you throw me into that i know i'm gonna come out the other side hopefully a little bit stronger i do think mentally i'm stronger after these six months i think my priorities are a lot more in order back in the city it's really easy to distract yourself with small tasks to take up your day and take your eye away from bigger goals like i remember in austin let's say a difficult thing that i was supposed to be doing suddenly i would have to go to the grocery store and have to go to get that one specific item that i needed for that night and it was really just a way to not address things or sit with ideas that maybe i didn't want to sit with you know it's a way of filling your days and i think a lot of us are guilty of that right probably a lot of you i know i do it is you fill your days with seemingly needed tasks so you don't have to address the things that you know you really want to do and up here that all falls away i'm not streaming anything you know netflix isn't available so i'm here i'm in it and it's awesome project number next is the gordon house house built for ld gordon in 1910 had some cats out there that's why there's some bowls but this was a project there was so when we bought it there's actually carpet down on this so we ripped up the carpet there was linoleum and then underneath the linoleum there's more linoleum and then finally there was this hardwood floor which is looking beautiful these days this is where i have to come over every day to cook my breakfast as the only working stove in cerro gordo at the moment um this kitchen's pretty cool ah i forgot my revolver and my harness that i go down in the mines with but this is a cool place it's one of my favorite buildings there's a lot of work um it's kind of where we have people stay when they come now because it's the largest it's got this great view typically and then down here we got bedroom bedroom my little cabin poking through the window hello uh might have some ghosts over here or something hello anyways this is my favorite bathroom at cerro gordo go down here not only does it have a clawfoot tub to cool toilet and all the creepy finishings but if you were to look out this window if they hear me they're gonna go nuts that is where the goats are ready for this watches goats there she is tofu you see me uh oh she spotted me now he's demanding ghosts now she's demanding food i'll go feed them but i mean it's pretty awesome to shower look at goats that's my shower it's in a bag you fill it with water i hang it up here so you're like hey how do you shower and it goes down right there you know it's not the best but it's not the worst and again check out that view right tofu it's like clockwork it's so good i gotta go feed them so now we gotta deal with these demanding goats so break them off a flake come with me yeah i'm coming i mean you see me hello hello i feed them three or four times a day just so they don't eat too much at one sitting there you go enjoy ah happy goats you know they say happy goats happy life something like that and so yeah that's the that's the bathroom we were just looking out up there and in relation to the rest of the town it's that it's so smoky because of these fires it's terrible that's one of my favorite scenes right there look at that the assay building and the old tram with the tailing pile so other projects do cats countess projects so i think that they should i have seven kittens that are a recent addition but definitely a project in their own right this one i'm calling gordo and gordo likes to climb up hello likes to climb up my leg when i'm trying to do work or my shirt if i heard that's normal oh you're purring no out nope too close excuse me that's my leg [Music] excuse me pay attention my leg is not a climbing apparatus and much like the goats the second these cats see me they're here yeah i know what do you want they're here and so they're great eventually i hope that they're kind of uh hello they'll kind of help reduce the mice population up here tons of mice so that'd be nice but what you're doing down there i'm editing video of you here and i see you here seven kittens four goats and this talkative little one i remember when i first got the goats the farmer i got them from was like oh you're gonna eat them these are bore goats they'll get like 300 pounds they're usually use for meat i don't think no just pets everybody kind of looked at me and did one of those because he wasn't used to that but just being up here for so long by yourself any type of life is just you know companionship in some way i never thought i'd be the guy with goat and kitten friends but now i got the goats and the kittens and it does help you know those days when you're just fully by yourself even being around any type of heartbeat i guess makes you feel a little less lonely but you know tofu is a pretty good friend i can talk to her all day hears me out every time right tofu that's a good idea i think it's a good idea this is a relatively new addition this is uh the polaris how i get around it was kind of long term given to me so i can get around the property a little bit easier and this is i gotta say probably my favorite thing my favorite addition to the property in the past years it just unlocks so much more of the property that pryor wasn't able to get to or for today for example there's this mine that i kind of saw out of the corner of my eye and to walk there would have been two hours but with this thing i got there in 10 minutes from the town the mine was collapsed i couldn't get into it so imagine walking two hours to find that out in this case it was a 10 minute drive got back and hey still had a fun ride over there so this players has been a man it's been a blessing i love it i've taken this thing everywhere that's how i can explore so many more minds uh it's so much easier than taking the truck places it's safer probably two and yeah i just i love this thing other than that probably my second favorite toy that i've gotten or gifted to me was a drone uh you might have seen some of the videos had some drone shots you maybe see that i don't have the drone anymore and that is because i crashed the drone i was trying to do this thing where these drones these days they can like follow you and so i thought oh you know be cool it's like to follow the razor while i'm going out to a mine so i decided to follow it in this follow me mode so it's looking cool looking cool and then there's something called boomerang mode where basically it swings around and sees you and i've been told that these drones are so smart these days they avoid things blah blah blah so i'm not just content with it following me i wanted to boomerang all of a sudden and i wanted to boomerang when i'm going down a hill in a wooded area so it boomeranged all right but a boomerang right into a tree now i ever don't have a drone luckily they have this replacement thing where they replace it for you for free but i'm still without a drone for a while and it's kind of one of those things that you don't know what you're missing until you have it or don't have it you get whatever that thing is uh and i'm missing the drone fingers crossed will be back soon so as far as exciting additions to the town polaris and drone i recommend them to any of you who may have a ghost town in the near or distant future and if you already get a ghost town before on the subject i have two things that i would tip you off if you want a ghost town of your own number one make sure it has some history history is what makes cereal grow interesting and that's a necessity and it goes number two running water just a tip but everything's a lot easier with water so i want this video to be about my time up here but i figured i'd give a quick back on myself just because people ask sometimes i was born in boston i grew up just outside of tampa florida for my whole life my parents are both school teachers public school teachers so i'm not rich i know people see headlines and think oh you must be rich now i've worked a lot in my life all through high school on i went to school at florida state for undergrad on a scholarship i ended up going to columbia and new york city for grad school still paying for that probably the worst decision in my life but that's a whole other story i moved to austin texas about six years ago and i ran a backpacker hostel there so you know bunk beds and rooms where people would come and share experiences and times and that was kind of like my first entry point into the combination of history and hospitality so the building there was built in 1893 it was really old and i thought it was so cool people would come to austin not just stay in a marriott with all four of the walls looking the same as every other marriott around the world but staying a piece of that town's history and so i did that it was going well and then about two and a half years ago a friend of mine named aaron texted me a link to this ghost town for sale and man was i intrigued right off the bat i was like wow he texted to me like three o'clock in the morning and he said lol check out this this might be your next project almost as a joke so i woke up and i read everything about the town i'm obsessed you know i was just like this is it this is the one so i remember i emailed or i called the real estate broker jake who's now a friend and i was like hey jake i'd love to put an offer for the town and he kind of laughed he's like hey get in line because the town is really popular there's a lot of bids long story short we ended up buying it we closed july 13th 2018 which was friday the 13th john b on business partners birthday as well all great coincidences and this is what i want to do when i'm not here this is why i want to get back i want to get to work and i think it's important and i think finding something that you think is important that you want to dedicate your life to is rare and i'm just really fortunate that i found sarah gordo and then i'm able to work on it this is the general store now becoming the museum this is project number i'm not sure i'm probably gonna change the order and editing and get really mad at myself for naming any of them so we're gonna say this is the next project but before this was just storage so this floor you couldn't really even see so that's a haul that i brought out of the mine the other day as a side note i didn't sort through it but there's some cool gloves and shirts and denim in there but this has been curated just cleaned up a bit make it a little bit nicer for people to come visit check out some of the old stuff from the town even got some of our t-shirts up there these days put a link in the bio just cause you want one um and then back here it's kind of everything i find when i explore mines so what two videos ago i found that jacket oh there it is this is other stuff and so this before was just floor ceiling junk as well so it took forever to clean this out dust these off kind of curate what to put into them but i'm really happy with how it turned out i think this building is the center of building in town and it's you know it's probably one of the coolest that we got up here all right let's type water water has been the missing puzzle piece at cerro gordo for the past 100 years you know back in the day cerro gordo was supplied by springs around the property that were fed and up kept by owens lake belois and owens lake got drained as part of the la aqueduct program where la purchased water rights from inner california and redirected the water back into the city to supply the city with fresh water and so sarah gordon kind of got left high and dry without water so for the past 100 years the different owners have been trying different things to get water you know trucking up is a big thing and then the most precarious or recent somewhat reliable water source was 700 feet under right where i'm sitting i am sitting in an original hoist cage from the late 1800s and this cart goes 900 feet straight down below me and every 100 feet there's branches of mines so imagine it goes down branches off mines another hundred feet mined almost like levels except there's no buttons to get where you're stopped and you're being supported by this 150 year old cable but down in the 700 level water started pooling or seeping in from the mountain so down there there's this reservoir of water or so we were told it's almost like mythical because when we bought the property we were told the water was impossible to get that it was too dangerous uh wasn't sure it was even there anymore and not worthwhile to go get and you know i bought into that for a year and a half i was like you know what too dangerous not getting the water plus who wants to go down and trust their life on this 150 year old piece of machinery but recently you know a couple people with a lot of history at sarah gordon they've been coming up here for 30 or 40 years told me listen if you want to make a run in that water we'll get a team together and uh and that's all i had to heard that's all i had to hear i i've been up here for a while being more confident with stuff so put together a crew put together a very experienced operator that can operate the hoist so basically control the cable that lets this cage down found the man who had last seen the pump running that actually had a replacement pump and just some other people so supposedly what happened was back in the day they would the water would pool at the 700 level and there's a pump down there and the pump would pump the water 700 feet straight up and come out this pipe right over there and that's how the town had water for at least 10 or 20 years that's how water was supplied to the town and then the pump burnt out about 15 years ago or so rumor has it and so for the past 15 years sara gordo has been without any running water at all and let me tell you you don't truly appreciate how much your life depends on running water until you don't have it i mean i know you're probably theorizing oh showers are tough this stuff everything is more difficult i've gotten used to it over the past six months but every time i go back to like a hotel to take a shower or something it's just like wow you know i can turn on the sink and i can wash my hands instead of having to pour some water into a bowl you know and wash your hands that way so anyways back in the day the pump burned out so the theory went but it was told it was too dangerous to get and there might not be water so about two or three weeks ago we got this team together and we got in this cage we put some tests away we ran up and down to make sure we support people then we got after it you know went down 700 feet straight down right now we're finally reached the 700 foot level after several repairs going down you got your hand glasses got your you got your life in cody's hands mostly yes be very aware if that's open on yeah besides we kind of had to watch each other yesterday yeah be aware yeah we got to hold on to these things right here yep i got it that one whatever yeah i put my arm through a rope yeah cool oh there you go okay tell me tell him take us down tell my wife i love her there's water leaking right here just as a note coffee water's leaking that looks like a check maybe what do you think yeah yeah i wouldn't yeah and no more leaks you know we need to look for loops down here right below because if it doesn't leak from here down which i don't think it is right we wouldn't have this kind of water so that would be our junction right there that would be just so cool yeah it's raining on us in here mastering fear the ultimate challenge that is pretty precarious yes okay obviously if there's any of that timber for the guys again okay this stuff there this pipe must lead to that yeah don't be too worried about heavy metal in here because i don't think you're going to be drinking this water anymore right now for flushing toilets and stuff oh yeah that's that's these these are new this is old i know and i know how particular you are we're uh we're gonna load up here give us about a minute or so we're gonna load up and uh let's head up to the 500 and stop there look around this is the first time that that hoist has been a 700 level in 15 years we are replacing the pump next then we're going to pressurize the system follow it back up for leaks survey how much pipe we have to replace shut it down come back replace the pipe and sarah gordo was going to have water for the first time in 15 years i went down there saw the water with my own eyes that's it right all right that's the pool just some yeah the water okay and it was like a series of exciting events you know you didn't know the water was going to be you didn't know that the hoist was going to work hoist works that's exciting don't know if water's gonna be down at 700 feet go down 700 feet water's there that's exciting you don't know if you can replace the pump pump gets replaced and it's working that's exciting then 500 feet of piping was burst so we'd replace 500 feet of pipe and then that gets replaced and water starts trickling out up here 2 45. that's right water afternoon water is coming the first time since uh well hell's been 14 years almost 15. look at that water oh hell yeah and it's just the first time i'd seen running water at cerro gordo ever for me that was a big moment but then you have to get the water from here down to the main town and to do that you rely on these underground pipes that have been down there for who knows how long decades 50 60 years and so that happened the cart just moved a little bit and my stomach kind of dropped if this thing falls i fall straight down so i just completely lost my train of thought oh um so the water gets from here it goes down to the town and then when the water got down to town that was an exciting day so probably the most exciting day that i've had at cerro so far was the day i saw water trickling down by the bell shot in the gordon house that's something that we had heard might happen but to actually see it happen and to get the job done we relied on a lot of local support we had some amazing guys out of independence bishop lone pine that really kind of made this thing happen and it's not an overstatement to say that's historic because it is you know water is the missing piece here and we somewhat got it back it's not perfect in fact it stopped going down there and the pump turned off after about a week so we're going back down in this cage in three days to see why it stopped but as far as projects go this was a big one you know getting water back here getting this thing working again and for me going down there and seeing a level of the mind that hadn't been explored in a really long time was super cool but water is amazing i'm going to get off this thing because it's moving around a little bit i don't know if it's the wind but this thing drops i mean you won't see this video this thing drops so if you're seeing this video you know that it didn't drop but i am getting up [Music] all right i guess a six months update wouldn't be an update without an american hotel update uh the american hotel burnt down june 15th of this year it was kind of the crown jewel of cerro gordo it was a center building it was built in 1871. and burned down and it's tragic you know it's still hard for me to talk about i try not to talk about it that's probably why i'm dealing with it last but it burned down numerous fire investigators have come up they found the wiring it was 100 years of people tinkering with wiring that probably shouldn't be tinkering with wiring it's nothing that we did we hadn't done any electrical work in that building but it burned down and the first two weeks were really tough um i just didn't really see what we were going to do but since we've had a huge rallying support both locally and abroad uh the support for this channel has been so awesome you guys don't know how much it means even just a comment or subscribing to the channel just means a lot and we've begun the process of rebuilding it you know we've had volunteers up here a lot of people finding out about from the youtube channel coming up and helping clear the site we've been actively working with an architect to get the proper plans in place to get our permit we have an engineer doing the plans so in the 23rd of this month hopefully we'll get the final thumbs up to rebuild and the plan is yeah we're going to rebuild as close to how it used to look as we could using original wood the inside will have fire sprinklers fire suppression um things of that nature and it's been difficult but really motivating the same way i think a lot of people from the local community were sitting on the sidelines now that they see how serious we are about it people coming forward with their time you know their donations their equipment that we can use their expertise that we can use and we've had an outpouring of support all rallying behind getting this building built again you know these people from all different types of backgrounds and it's been really inspiring and motivating for me to get up and work all day on this project when all these other people are helping as well and it's just been amazing and so plans will hopefully be improved in a few weeks we'll do as much work as we can until the winter winter's gonna hit in about a month and we won't be able to do too much hit the ground running really hard in the spring get all the final ducks in the row as far as any paperwork and engineering and yeah open this thing up next summer i know it's an aggressive timeline but that's what we're trying to do and i think we have the i think we can pull it off and so stay tuned for the american hotel updates so that's six months here at cerro gordo thank you so much for watching this video this has been six of the best months of my life i feel like i found you know a calling a purpose here in this property something i'm passionate about i'm passionate about sharing it i'm really grateful you guys watch that you guys are supporting the town the way this happened if you haven't already as i always say subscribe to the channel leave a comment of other videos you want to see uh stay tuned last night i actually spent the night 100 feet down in the main union mine i had to get there with the cage lower down dropped off dropped off at six or seven p.m picked up at eight a.m so i'm a little bit tired so from that but i'm excited as always so stay tuned a lot more cool things come on this channel hopefully a lot more of these six month updates but uh until then signing off thank you have a good day

Channel: Ghost Town Living

Views: 489,529

Rating: 4.9746099 out of 5

Keywords: ghost town, terrifying experience, bloody hospital, abandoned church, abandoned hospital, 24 hour challenge, scary abandoned places, abandoned urban exploration, abandoned town, staying overnight in a ghost town, abandoned places gone wrong, urban exploration gone wrong, abandoned mining town, 24 hour ghost town, 24 hours overnight, 24 hour overnight challenge, 24 hours sneaking in, adam lambert ghost town, abandoned ghost town, secret abandoned zombie apocalypse ghost town

Id: r9PPgAvXkEY

Length: 38min 44sec (2324 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 24 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Shnifty]

I've watched all of his videos and I don't understand why people are hating so much.

[u/fabbricator]

investor group bought it for 1.4 million dollars

[u/raspberriesofwrath]

Imagine being so mentally stable that you could be alone with your own thoughts for 6 months...

[u/ShoebarusNCheverlegs]

Wow going down into that mine to find the water was insane. Bummer about the hotel as that was arguably the best piece of the town but it can be rebuilt (to code) and still fit the overall aesthetic with the right architect.

[u/Dad_of_the_year]

This is a weird fucking comment thread for such a cool ass video.

[u/Old-Ostrich-9238]

With all the snow you get build your own water reservoir. Find the best place to channel the water and build a water storage structure!

[u/shawster]

It's really tragic that their hotel, their main attraction and the place they would house guests and the building in the best shape burned down. I feel really bad for him. He's determined, though, but I worry that it will be a setback that is too large to overcome.

[u/sleeping_currently]

Watching this is making my lumbago act up

[u/youramazing]

There's a caretaker who lives there. Although he went home to family during COVID.

The church burned down which was a shame to see. But the guy in the videos seems really motivated to renovate this place out and I enjoy his videos.