Fire In A Ghost Town: Rebuilding the American Hotel at Cerro Gordo

i haven't even told many people this yet but my goal and something that i would work until my hands bleed on is i want this hotel open july 4th of next year by july 4th 2021 i'm hoping we have a grand opening party of the new american hotel and a lot of you can hopefully join that point [Music] so it's been about two weeks since the american hotel burned down and admittedly that first week was really hard it was one that i don't know i don't think i've ever been through a traumatic event like that and see that burn down in front of you it was pretty raw it was pretty difficult the first couple days i stayed in my house didn't really do much but uh i want this to be more of a positive note you know over the past two weeks since this happened we've seen an outpouring of support we've had 150 people volunteer to help out money on gofundme letters of support all sorts of great stuff and you know after i kind of hibernated for the first week that weekend even the first weekend we had seven people up here helping move sheet metal scrap out of the way the next week was full of just a lot of paperwork and bureaucracy type stuff we had a number of fire investigators come out the conclusion seems to be that we had old wiring and one specific wire that the fire investigator found was a contracting wire that was running directly from the box in something called a double lug where i guess they put it on a breaker that already existed they brought it down they had spliced it into a smaller wire to run smaller wire around and in that splicing that kept being reduced i guess caused a lot of heat cheated up some stuff and you know cause the fire ultimately [Music] i feel like i'm a lot better place than i was you know when i put out the last video it's it's been one where now it's just part of circle's past and we're trying to look to the future so if i'm looking to the future and i'm looking to positives you know we have the original blueprints of the hotel they were gonna do a remodel in the late 90s and they created the exact floor but so luckily we have those the original plans of the bar so the beautiful bar that was in the hotel as you went in and you look to your left you would see it we have those plans and we have the guy willing and ready to rebuild that once we have the building we have the support from the county the county has been very sympathetic and understanding so far we've met with a number of officials there and they also want to see this this thing come back to life quick you know we have the support of a lot of our followers you know a lot of you have come out and helped move stuff or donated money or bought some merchandise to help you rebuild and that's been fantastic as well we have you know a clear direction now we before we're doing a lot of different projects and that was important to get a lot of things done but now it's a very clear focus you know the american hotel has to be rebuilt and so everything that we're doing is laser focused in on that and for me what it's done is just even further emphasize my dedication to the place you know even i have to be up here 12 hours a day working in the middle of the snow or whatever to do uh we're gonna do it you know yeah my hope is that in 300 years from now you know sarah gordo is still here and at that point the hotel will be 300 years old yes the rest of the buildings will be 400 years old but it'll still be a really old town and this town will still exist for people to come learn about its history learn about its impact in los angeles and california as whole and you know there's a responsibility there now you know we have to rebuild this thing and we have to get back up and so i've been working pretty hard um on you know directly in the dirt moving sheet metal to working with architects to working with planners to get the plans in to get the permits that we need so it's been a non-stop couple weeks but uh i'm feeling a lot better about it and that's that's a pretty good thing and as far as like what needs to be done now you know the plans it stands this there's a lot of moving pieces but we're clearing the site we're going to clear the site of all the blade the large debris now that all the investigations are done let's eventually get all pushed in so could become a parking lot for the place house but some of these stoves are pretty heavy and uh a lot of fun you know picking up moving and dumping the building you love but hopefully one day yeah we can move these down create a flat area maybe even a new building move that to landfill we're gonna then comb through the ashes to make sure we don't lose any artifacts four days after the fire put out i've been putting dirt on it every day and still four days later keeping a close eye on i'm not going to sleep and just putting dirt and dirt and dirt on it but just won't go out original nails from i got this magnet trying to just know pick up some nails and stuff so comb through them with magnets and rakes make sure that we get everything out of there we're gonna preserve as absolutely much as we can you know i'd love to work in some of the old charred wood into the new flooring it's kind of a nod to what happened looks like some of the original floor that was preserved i tried to dig that out see how much of it is preserved because that would be amazing to put into the new hotel then we're going to dig a little bit you have to think this is a section of earth that hasn't been uncovered in 150 years directly next to the hotel there used to be a dunk and so you know we've had a number of archaeologists reach out we're going to do a very coordinated and planned dig to hopefully under some artifacts that otherwise wouldn't have been found and go in a little room of the new hotel is something that people can learn from as well after we do the dig you know obviously by then hopefully our plans are approved by the city so we can start rebuilding this hotel and we'll rebuild the hotel we will hopefully have a foundation of some type poured by this winter that's my goal i haven't even told many people this yet but my goal and something that i would work until my hands bleed on is i want this hotel open july 4th of next year by july 4th 2021 i'm hoping we have a grand opening party of the new american hotel and a lot of you can hopefully join that point it's it's gonna be a ton of work it's not gonna be easy we don't have approved plans we don't have the money for it we don't even have the site cleared yet so that's it july 4th 2021 i'm kind of obsessed now with getting the hotel open by then and getting it opened safely you know one of the silver linings if we're looking at several lightings nobody got hurt that's really important you know uh it was a really scary time but luckily nobody got hurt we've already had four electricians come and walk the property with us and point out any problematic things i've heard of the county we've already got electrical permits to replace a lot of the wiring we're actually replacing the wiring as we talk now doing everything that we can to never have a fire appear again fires are a huge part of ghost towns unfortunately you know this town used to have 500 different buildings and now it has 20. so we're going through we're reinforcing some of the structures that may have been falling down we're putting in water prevention systems we're that we're working with a lot of different people to come up with a lot of ideas of how to do that um i've even been looking into purchasing a fire truck uh there's a bunch of them on facebook weirdly enough and so if nothing else to have some type of thing to do you know however anything like this happens here again so that that's kind of the plan of the next year you know it's going to be a lot between now and july 4th of next year it's not even 12 months we have to work with and we need to clear the site get permits get money and rebuild this thing but like i said i'm obsessed this is this is the only thing i'm working on um i'm gonna put everything that i can into that making that happen i'm hoping to put a lot more updates on here not just about the hotel that we're working on but the rest of the property as well like i was doing before maybe even weekly updates so if you want to help um subscribe to this channel it does mean a lot you know it helps get the word out there what we're doing comment below if you want a specific video or to look around or have any questions about it we have a gofundme link if you have any extra cash every single dollar is going to go into the hotel if you want to volunteer if you have an extra truck even some pair of hands or a specific skill you might want to volunteer we need all the volunteers we can get i'll throw a link below or you can sign up for different volunteer elements and beyond that all the funds from our store go directly into the american hotel and so we have bandanas that have the american hotel on it coins shirts we even have original nails from the hotel 100 year old males that we're trying to sell to raise some money but i just wanted to say thank you guys so much for the support so far it's been a little bit more of a roller coaster than i would have hoped for early on in the channel but uh hoping over the next year to show some cool stuff you know we'll be doing the dig the rebuilding the renovation of all the other projects so there should be some cool stuff coming hope you stick with it check us out and a year from now i hope you know to be sitting on the bar in the new hotel celebrating the fact that we got it done see you guys later and thanks for all the support

Channel: Ghost Town Living

Views: 523,208

Rating: 4.9762025 out of 5

Keywords: cerro gordo, death valley ghost town, ghost town, nevada ghost town, california ghost town, death valley, inyo mountains, inyo ghost town, urbex, urban exploration, death valley urbex, abandoned cabin, death valley cabin, jody patterson, abandoned, abandoned house, abandoned mine, mining town, inyo mine, keeler ca, owens valley, eastern sierra, eastern sierra ghost town, wild west ghost town, wild west saloon, adam lambert ghost town, building destroyed, building fire

Id: Rq1iGv0njNw

Length: 9min 44sec (584 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 12 2020