HE BOUGHT AN ABANDONED GHOST TOWN (full tour)

all right welcome to a crib this is our new friend brent what i'm really interested to know is what you were doing before this and how you ended up buying an abandoned mining town in the middle of nowhere i asked myself that question quite often two years ago he purchased the entire ghost town of cerro gordon i was 1.4 million dollars which is way way way more than my life savings he's been living here full-time miles away from civilization by himself for the last 10 months in this video we're going to give you a tour around this incredible ghost town i can't believe i'm folding it and we're excited to share brent's story with you and look at what we have here how we ended up here what his goals are all the stuff we had been wondering ourselves over mine wow missed it okay just don't move for your chance to win an epic trip and support an awesome organization just go to omaze.com forward slash k m after a very interesting week in las vegas we rented a car ready to go to california for the first time yes received two negative cova tests and drove four hours west into the middle of nowhere california to meet the man behind one of our favorite new channels on youtube we spent 30 minutes climbing to 8 500 feet in elevation before we finally laid eyes on the small town of cerro gordon we do not call 9-1-1 oh we're uh we're here i don't even know which house is it it's so quiet not really in like a creepy or eerie way at least not yet what's up man thanks for coming hi friends hey how's it going i was like is this what they do in the old days i don't have cell phone service i was like knocking on doors i think about this in the old days they used mules to get up the road that's so crazy it was worth the journey out here just to get to drive up the road it's so beautiful you guys made it not everybody makes up the road unfortunately yeah thanks for the tip on the four-wheel drive take a little tour or settle in or what are you thinking you want to show us where we're staying sure yeah from there i got you guys set up and uh the only potentially haunted uh i'll be honest with you i don't really love the book house i have my one and only ghost story from in here originally it was a bunk house for some of the miners here yeah it was built in 1900 i generally avoided it at night this is the kitchen it's sweet it's a cast iron so you guys got this the microwave refrigerator this is not the haunted room this was a one of the projects over the summer because this building originally had like carpet in it yeah the floor was great i standed it myself so i'm pretty proud of it that's awesome so what's the ghost story with the bunk house so so we'll go back to the kitchen okay so one of my favorite places to watch the sunset is just above us on the ridge there yeah so i was walking up one night and this is back when the caretaker was staying here i was walking by and i saw somebody look out this window there used to be like these lace curtains there very you know like horror movie so yeah opened up somebody looked at me for sure and they closed it and i wasn't super blown away at first because we had contractors up here helping work on the property yeah this was a year ago so i figured oh the contractors you know i'll forget about it so i watched the sunset came back next morning i went to robert who's a caretaker hey robert how long are the caretakers staying here they kind of looked at me he's like they left two weeks ago and then like immediately i'm a very rational person right so i'm like a very like i was like all right there's a draft you know this is you started rationalizing in the way so i was like all right so i came back over here this is like a twist light like this to twist it right yeah so it was on so i twisted it off and then i left i put a padlock on the door so like the padlock thing and i was like no one is getting in here and i was the only one in the world with the key so i forgot about it went out my day that night i went to go watch the sunset again and as i went back the light was back on and i was like i know i know i was the only human being in the world with the key and so yeah i avoid this house this is where we're sleeping [Music] this town doesn't have running water [Music] all right we're all settled in brent's about to show us the entire town but first we're going to give you a tour of the bug house where we're staying so he's already showed us around the kitchen i'm really excited to try to cook a meal on this thing and this hallway is pretty much just six bedrooms this is our bedroom where we're staying this is another bedroom with a twin bed and some scary looking dolls i love this bedroom it has these beautiful doors and this super cool fireplace smells like fireplace in here this is a storage room this is another bedroom a really cool dresser and bedroom number six it's a pretty sweet setup yeah and that's it i don't know if you've noticed or not but in this whole house there is not a bathroom let me show you where it is that's our outhouse this is gonna be a cold walk in the middle of the night the ghost left a little note on here that says please latch the door oh wow it doesn't look too bad oh look he even put a real toilet seat on the on the wood bench toilet paper hand sanitizer we're good to go fancy i was expecting a hole in the ground honestly if you'll excuse me i'm gonna try it out as i mentioned at the beginning of this video we are partnering with omaze to give away a six night stay at this incredible arctic tree house hotel if this is your first time hearing about omaze it's an awesome company that partners with content creators like us to host giveaways that raise money for charity we actually had a chance to stay at this treehouse resort and it truly is a winter wonderland finnish lifeline as a whole might just be the best winter destination in the entire world top five funnest things i've ever done in my life yeah the winner and a friend are gonna be flown out to lapland plus you get a thousand dollar travel stipend to spend on whatever you want if you go to oas.com forward slash k n and donate 10 you'll be entered for your chance to win plus you'll be supporting sea legacy which is one of the world's leading ocean conservation organizations whose mission is to lead a movement to create healthy and abundant oceans so to support an awesome cause and the chance to win an incredible trip just go to omaze.com forward slash k n so as soon as you saw it were you like yes oh yeah the whole ride up you know it's just like i mean it's a long road and so i remember being wow wow wow it builds a lot of anticipation yeah exactly and i like that and then you go on the final turn i remember the whole town presented and i was like wow yeah that's exactly what just happened to us and i remember i just came and they hand you like a set of 50 keys and then they're like good luck i heard it's thinking like aha you know you're excited so i remember coming up and i had like three friends with me we found an old bottle of whiskey in the saloon like we drank that and we're like ha ha and i remember waking up and i was like hungover i was like oh well now we gotta do something you know and for the last two years is figuring out what to do that is the best story the cats look like they run the show here yeah it's their house i was gonna inhabit it occasionally no we rescued them a farmer called me one day and he said you're very friendly you want some cats good to have some company there's borderline star of the show okay so two questions yes before we start the tour yep what i'm really interested to know is what you were doing before this and how you ended up buying an abandoned mining town in the middle of nowhere i asked myself that question quite often but before this i was running a backpacker hostel in austin texas and so you know like bunk beds in the rooms meeting travelers it was my way of like traveling without going anywhere i always liked like hospitality and especially like hospitality with history and so the hospital was doing good i was looking for a bigger project and my buddy texted me this link to buy your own ghost town and it takes me like two o'clock in the morning as a joke he was like i know you're looking for a bigger project you know is this what you had in mind the next one i woke up and i started reading everything about sarah that i could i just became obsessed you know it was just like this is it this is the one growing up my grandfather watched gunsmoke all the time you know the western show like on repeat and so i used to wear cowboy boots around while i was living in florida sounds like trouble well that's the way you make a living in it i think this like sparked something in me about that and then here we are living your childhood dreams most days what's the vision five years from now i'd love for more people to be able to come up and experience the place i think it's one thing to come for the day and take a day tour and all that but so something else to spend the night here you know see it in every hour of the day how the sun hits the mountain at different hours so i want to offer overnight accommodation so the first step of that is we're rebuilding the american hotel which burned down in june so that'll have six rooms so the first hopefully by next summer we have the hotel up and running and then after that who knows i mean it's one of those projects that like it's my life you know it's not one of these things where i can see in two years i'll be done there's 400 acres so i could always add more little cabins out back and stuff like that yeah i'm okay with it i'm okay thinking that i'll be here kind of for the rest of my life i guess wow yeah something cara's made a new friend i love these kids they have a lot of energy yeah they're they're spoiled they live their best life the town was out from 1865 and they mined silver here primarily for about 20 years and then by about 1880 1885 the silver ran out so the town became a ghost town this guy ld gordon came up and he realized that they were just missing zinc so he mined zinc for another 20 years and then after he died different independent owners owned it and then the last people that lived here full time were a couple named mike and jody we got it from their son and so yeah they were the last ones that lived here full time and they just left everything everything gosh so much history here that was the gordon house and this house across is the bellshot house it was owned by a guy named mortimer belshaw and he's the one that really made sarah gordon what it is today kind of like jeff bezos and next to it he had a personal chef so that was his cook's house i hope to one day open this up so people can stay in like the house of the guy that founded the town stadium he looks like a guy who would have a private chef yeah and own a mining town yeah he looks like he fits the part i feel like he started dressing in three-piece suits you know well now you've been here too long when you start doing it yeah i think i've already been here a little too long but right across the street was his general store was like the general store where they sold all the supplies and the back was a butcher shop and then one day leading by the back and i started finding like all sorts of bones before i knew it was a butcher shop and so you're like abandoned with bones i like that you decorate it for christmas oh yeah yes how'd it get in character this was built in 1868. wow when we bought it it was kind of just oh my god being used for storage and so a lot of this has been kind of curating it and sorting through this here you never know what you're going to get you know it's like from all different eras so there's like a bunch of old dynamite boxes which i think are really cool so this is what they're mining here this is galena which is like a silver lead ore do you feel it's quite heavy oh wow this is probably my favorite find like down in one of the mines i found this jacket if you feel it it's really stiff and it's well preserved because they yeah rub uh wax into it to make it waterproof and the craziest thing is so i looked it up and it's this company called black bear and it's actually this guy bought the brand a couple years ago he's trying to bring it back to life wow there's a lot of parallels between like what he's doing and sarah gordo and he was able to date it that's 103 years old that's awesome see like every day back in the mines is like a treasure hunt like these are original uh dynamite instructions from like 18 years and it's like that wax paper i feel like this is all stuff that i shouldn't get to touch yeah i feel that way sometimes back in the morning and for me each of them sends me on a different google hunt to try to figure out what how old each one is where it's from do you have internet up here i have a hot spot so i can hospital my att but no streaming no watching too many things up here unfortunately yeah that's okay it could be a good thing yeah exactly these are the ghosts hey guys they're new additions to the property the star of the goats is definitely tofu tofu is the smallest one this one she's the crowd favorite okay here we go be nice be nice oh sorry oh look at tofu being all sweet so we have elon tofu and that's beretta they are so fun so what do they do like why are they here just pets uh i just wanted some like life of any type up here you know you want a whole tofu hi oh little girl he's like a really big fat puppy with horns i can't believe i'm holding a goat good girl that was super fun this is a the assay office so the assay office is where they tested the quality of the minerals coming out of the mine so they would say oh this is 18 silver this is 25 silver and what i think is kind of uh an interesting contrast is that they would determine whether they were rich or not there then this used to be one of the original brothels so it's like they would strike riches and immediately go to the brothel wow some interesting setup like that so before you came here did you have any experience with like construction and building no nothing nothing so to start off there's a little cabin over the hill over there quite a ways so i started working on that first because i thought the stakes were lower like if i messed up that cabin nobody could at least see it yep it's not like in the middle so i built up my confidence over time and now yeah now this is like a bigger project you know it seems like a whole thing come on that's like one of the original bars from the town so they would stamp at cerro gordo so that way if anybody got caught with the bar that wasn't supposed to have the bar yeah obviously they'd be in a lot of trouble this is silver silver and lead mix yeah even if you were to tell me that that bar was ten thousand dollars i would still keep it just because it's part of the history here and yeah i haven't seen any other silver gordo bars since so i feel like we have a pretty good advantage point from here yeah how much land do you like how many acres do you have the property is about 400 acres okay and so about 100 of it is here so it goes to like the peaks and valleys above us and then if we were to go to the saddle right over there then it looks into death valley national park and we have about 300 acres over there and originally this building was like a mechanics garage to work on the wagons and stuff over the years it became a church and the stained glass is they shot a movie up here called nevada smith there's a steve mcqueen movie like an old western they donated the stained glass after the movie was done don't even trust a friend so one of the owners incorporated that and then now it's kind of like a movie theater chapel mix i think it'd be hilarious to have like a film festival of sorts where like everybody gets dressed up in like almost tuxedos and we have like a red carpet you know and all that you're like come on in and this is like this old crappy building everybody has to wear three pieces exactly yeah the chairs so we're done with the vlog there you go we'll send it to you it's pretty neat because this is just like an old sheet metal building but because it's in a ghost town and because they've put some cool like theater chairs in here it feels really special just for where we are on the tour this is our haunted bunk house that we're sleeping in tonight the church friend's house saw that on your video we were like not going in there and that's like where for the full experience if you want to come and stay at a ghost town then why not stay in the place with the ghost that's true at least you didn't put us in her bedroom no back left room all right so just picked up a couple lights and we're about to go check out our first mine brent's done some some renovations to this one i recently flattened this with tobacco because that's the mine and my hope one day is to create a cabin here because the views of mount whitney and then the town would be beautiful and then i want to create like a bookshelf here and you'd slide the bookshelf and it would show my secret private mine and i'm even gonna like backfill it so it looks like the mountain so you'll never know mine was here unless you open up the bookshelf so you have to have some like willy wonka like hidden stuff up here you know in a ghost town this is the brightest flashlight in the world is that like a true statement yeah like actually right it's like boom whoa i don't even need my headlamp i know this is crazy wow so yeah this is like an actual silver mine and i think a lot of times when people see something there's fans inside of the flashlight okay cool we're not all about to die i still have my sunglasses on and i can and i can still see this is massive yeah there's something like 30 miles of mine underneath the town back in the day this is called the safeguard mine i think that's that i think we just passed a bat [Laughter] it's a bit messy back in this mine because this is where i celebrated christmas this year oh wow ouch it's not easy to drag back here did you do this by yourself it's back here there's a lot of dragging and a lot of time on my hands can you imagine just opening the bookshelf to the cabin that you're staying in walking a hundred yards down a mine and then just having this place to hang out yep this has to be the only mine in america that has a christmas tree snowman in it i hope so this is like a vertical shaft from the mine that just goes straight down oh wow oh my gosh that's not where we want to drop the camera no have you made it down there i did yeah i used rope just to be a little more safe were you terrified uh have you always been this brave i don't know if it's brave or stunned a little further i have more uh creations of my own boredom ahead okay uh which include a mini golf course no way you are like the willy wonka you know i got too much time right here that's so creepy excuse excuse me man i don't have the carpet down yet but this eventually will be a mini golf course that i put put on you were the right person to buy this though because if somebody would have bought this just like trying to turn it into a resort to make money it just wouldn't be the same like you could tell that you're doing it for the love of it yeah i have fun with it which i think is important um yeah this is the you know just put line up your putt and i'm going to cut the hole in there this is another kind of heavy crystal um yeah thanks just another i'll do the light just another kind of sketchy pit to wow oh gosh oh that's deep okay no it will be completely dark let's do it okay just don't move all right ready nobody step two yeah don't move one [Laughter] yeah i can't see my hand in front of my face sorry i was scared you were moving there's a bat right above me so right there oh it's super furry that's a big transition california desert sun from a cave does she start doesn't sound too good no all right we'll take the car that was fun that's a fun idea let's go up this road okay i'm gonna turn up the other road this is just all so much fun because i feel like i'm doing something wrong yeah but you own it right so we can do it it is huge this is the hoist house inside is the union mine and the union mine is the main minus rogoto it's the mine that goes 900 feet straight down and every 100 feet there's levels to it and they pulled something like 500 million dollars worth of silver out of the hole what it's yeah it's the reason cerrogodo is what it is so i'll show you how you get down into the mine but keep in mind when i show you the cage all that rock we see all those big dirt mounds all came out of this cage so it was just running 24 7 up and down up and down wow well the whole building is to support the running of this cage this cage and that cable is how everybody would go down into the mine and so you would stand here this goes down much like an elevator but obviously there's no buttons or anything so there's a wheel back there that guy's looking at a dial kind of guessing how far down you are i'll take care of that's a combination of the safe where'd you hide all that money in that suitcase oh man all supported by that cable all above me that looks like it might have been here since the 1800s yeah i don't have any records of it being replaced so i think that's the unfortunate truth it feels to me like an amusement ride so there used to be a movie right called the tower of terror yeah studios it feels like that but then you have to remind yourself it's not disney it's not meant to be safe exactly this is actually dropping like that it takes 45 minutes to get down to the 700 level in this cage no he's waiting waiting waiting waiting and then you're thinking the whole time if thinking anything's false i'm falling the whole shaft is 900 feet i'm falling 900 feet that's going to be the last 900 feet that i do yeah right they say it's the it's not the fall that kills you it's the impact you know yeah my favorite part was that the guy with the wheel would just kind of guess yeah he kind of guesses i'll show you though yeah we need to learn how it is yeah and that's the original hoist that would let people up and down so there's guys running so who is he who's doing this we have a guy named cody that operates it for us but if you look at that very uh primitive dial yeah that shows you how many feet down in the earth you are so the shaft is all the way over at that end of the barn and the guy in control is over here so not very close there's a lot of yelling cody's got to be a huge guy he's a very good guy this thing is so heavy and he so he just sits here with his own body weight and slows you down yeah you have a lot of faith in kodi as you're getting lower down there no thank you but we've never taken it past the 700 foot level but there is a 900 foot level which the indiana jones treasure hunting part of me is like i have to get to the 900 you know so far i've been able to convince them to waste their whole day sending me down to treasure hunt but maybe one day i can get something to do that gotcha is still working all right we are going up to watch the sunset the only thing i'm not excited about is that means next time we come back to the bunkhouse it's gonna be dark right over there is death valley and then right over there is mount whitney so you see kind of both the highest and lowest peak in the continental u.s in one spot i just love that high low i think even in town i want to be able to have everything from nice hotel rooms to like basic campsites to kind of play off that yeah high low across the whole board i think that'd be a lot of fun [Music] who would have thought daryl gordo cheers cheers thanks for having us out of course yeah thank you for coming [Music] or twist this thing oh yeah i can't remember how to do it oh there we go nice let's go turn all the lights on in here if i'm staying in the haunted cabin i'm sleeping with the lights on such a scary cat i don't want to like look down the hallway [Music] don't taunt them like that what are you doing my lunch it's cold up here yeah the contrast of the old cash register but really it doesn't work so just just pin mommy and usually people can't venmo because they don't have service the only time that i really realize how sketchy is it it is is when i'm editing videos after the fact yeah oh look at him like oh come on it goes knock over your lamp yeah dang it ghost not again i'm glad you uh you gave me this light that's all right it doesn't that's crazy this tiny bottle has to be like 15 pounds i was cleaning up the shelves like wait i thought it was glued down at first what do you do with mercury i think it's very toxic yeah i don't think you want to drop that you won't believe how heavy this is can i hold it can i hold it with once wow that's insane i'm trying to think i do my curls with like 15 and 20s right thank you

Channel: Kara and Nate

Views: 1,491,346

Rating: 4.9342756 out of 5

Keywords: abandoned, ghost town, ghost town living, california, vlog, travel vlog, cerro gordo, cerro gordo ghost town, travel, kara and nate, kara and nate vlog, abandoned town, scary abandoned places, abandoned ghost town, abandoned mining town, staying overnight in a ghost town, abandoned urban exploration, 24 hour ghost town, abandoned mining town california, van life, husband and wife, couple vlog, couple travel, unique accomodations, california vlog, buying a ghost town

Id: QS0kyvIXOu4

Length: 25min 46sec (1546 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 07 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Lucazzo123]

This is a cool look at a lot of the buildings in the town from a perspecitve that isn't Brents. I really enjoyed it!

[u/dron3390]

This was the video that I first watched about Cerro Gordo!