I Bought An Entire Town! Here's A Tour. (Cerro Gordo)

all right well the trek to Cerro Gordo actually starts down here we are at the beginning of Cerro Gordo Road I can't wait to show you guys around the town we're gonna look in a bunch of the buildings go places nobody's ever seen before maybe find some artifacts give you a little bit of history of the town just finding the different artifacts from around town holy this whole wall was here almost nobody has seen upstairs of the saloon [Music] we are headed way up there beautiful scenery and a giant Dust Bowl they used to be Owens Lake Keeler the time you see right there used to be a very important town in the mining the silver would come out of cerro gordo go down there be shipped across the lake and then trained in los angeles but since the lake dried up so did Keeler in a lot of ways so we are a headed up all right so we are right at the entrance of Cerro Gordo so this is after the seven mile road this is right what you can first see the town the first building you see on the right is the hunters cabin and that's where Robert stays so it has the best view in the town it overlooks the road there's even a sensor in there that lets Robert know when somebody's coming up the road so nobody can come up unannounced as you look that way you see the saloon and the American hotel that's so what's the second building you'll see in town with the old ice house right next to it closer to the center of town that's the general store or the museum I've been cleaning up recently right next to that the old mechanic's garage it's now a church or movie theater to the left of that the bunkhouse and above that is the Bell Sean the Gordon which you can't really see then way up there kind of above those hills that's what the hoist houses that's the main mineshaft and you can't see the main mine when you first come to town it's behind this tailing piles but we'll go up there and check that out as you look past down this road over that way is the saddle towards Newtown and towards Death Valley so that's kind of the outline of the town as you're walking into it we are here in a very messy bunkhouse it's a current project of working out and ripping up carpet the last couple days and howling a bunch of dust as well but I think one thing that's crazy I haven't touched on yet is is why you know why buy an abandoned ghost town our from any major city with no running water and I think what we want to do the property is just create an overnight destination you know create a outpost where people can come stay you know stay for the weekend and a long weekend three or four days experience the history of the town the history of the town is is so rich and interesting and then also just experience the natural beauty here every building here has a view of Mount Whitney which is the tallest peak in the continental United States and off the back of the property just over there you can see all of Death Valley's you see all the lowest peak in the US so to me this is this is just such an important and interesting place that I would just love to allow more people to experience it and experience it firsthand you know there's other ghost towns but a lot of those are stuff kind of like museums where it's like look but don't touch here I want people to be able to stay in the Bello shell house you know stay in the house that the original founder of this town built himself and lived in you know stay in the Gordon house stay in the house of the guy that brought 20 years of prosperity to the town after everybody thought that it was done you know stay in the saloon stay in that building that an infamous gunfight happen and there's still a bullet hole and blood stain on the wall those are just experiences that to me you can't get anywhere else and I'd love to be able to share them you know it seems a bit selfish just to hold this town and myself so what we'd love to do is just get into that point and we're not do there's a lot of work between where it is now and accepting overnight guests you know we're still figuring out the water issue still cleaning up a lot of fairly dangerous stuff I'm still working on some different permits and things of the county so we're not there yet but that's why I'm up here that's why I'm you know putting in the work every day to try to get it to that place sooner it's something that I think a lot of money into and I need to at least have it breaking even which it hasn't been recently and so that's the plan for it you know it's to kind of create this artistic outpost an area that people would come and enjoy so right now there's about 22 buildings left at Cerro Gordo and they're in various states ranging from amazing you know structurally sound something that just needs a little bit of shine and could probably be rented out to structurally sound but certainly needs a lot of work to basically just the shells of their former self so project number one for us right now is the Gordon house and the Gordon house is a house that was originally built for mr. Gordon and he is somebody that brought zinc to Cerro Gordo and the building itself is located pretty much in the center of town and what we're trying to do with this building is create one of the first buildings that we're gonna Airbnb so until we can have a full-blown hospitality resort we're gonna try to use this kind of test the waters show some people at Sarah waters about and give them a taste we bought the place this portrait is filled with junk just stuff as far as you can look so even sometimes removing things it's a big battle but using this house just unparalleled this is the house that if we have people coming to stay you know friends and family we usually put up in here it's closest to being in good shape it's most comfortable it's the largest house at Cerro Gordo and the views are just incredible oh no yep I think looks like we lost a window I was wondering why it looked so clear out there well Brett because there's no window views even better now anyways there is a bathroom here which is just beautiful with kind of the clawfoot tub a lot of dead bees there's a bee nest in the bugs and live bees - got a real bee problem this bathroom apparently I like that - the project list little living room over here is the second bedroom downstairs which again just has stunning views about Whitney you'll upstairs oh she could do that edit like on cribs where they speed up here this bedroom as if you pretty much the talent center she's pretty nice walk back down this hallway and find just a beautiful restroom the claw this is one of those rooms that we just don't have to do anything to because this is exactly how it should be so we're hoping that our view this house it's not going there yet we did add running water which is a big feat but it still needs to be a little more comfortable so I'll be still 20 reason right here right now it's very difficult to eat upstairs but we helped out this online in a month or two and depending on how the coronavirus thing goes this could be the first place you come and stay if you visit us here the second house we hope to get on Airbnb is the fellow shot house and the bellow shot house the house directly behind me the house that I typically stay in it's a two-bedroom one-bath it's in pretty good shape you know it's where I typically stay so I try to keep it a little nice all right so this is project 2 or 3 that I've been working on for the past couple weeks and it is church building it wasn't originally Church there's actually a maintenance garage but the former owner out of that steeple and that stained glass is from a Steve McQueen movie called Nevada Smith and a week or two ago this thing was just full of wood you know you can see some of it here still but it was floor-to-ceiling just essentially junk so past number one was just clearing out all the stuff those in there and that project took a long time but uh pretty pleased with the results so far as you can see the former owner just put these movie theater type seats in here and so back to the zero protection box so one day we hope to create this as a place where people can come we can screen movies you know a ten in the senator town maybe we'll even create a contest but if you will come teams film videos on site and then we screen the the results here but this building is one of the projects we've been working on over the next few months if you go into the backyard this backyard is where the juices store all sorts of junk you know it had again probably four foot high of scrap metal and stuff but a lot of work cleared out this yard I hope to build a deck back here eventually I've got a visitor look is that hey race this is the American Hotel and American Hotel is kind of the crown jewel of Cerro Gordo it's a place that everybody loves it's one of the first buildings you see when you come into town it was originally built in 1871 and so go in there you organize as you can tell some pitch [Music] so when you go in the first things you see is the saloon this is one of the favorite places of mine here at Cerro Gordo to place only have friends family anybody that comes up in visits this is where we usually entertain it has the infamous card room that still has a bullet hole in the wall and a blood stain on the floor that's the hole let's not like this hand and that's the blood stain but almost nobody has seen upstairs of the saloon in the old hotel it's a spot that essentially nobody's allowed in the stairs are pretty dangerous but count when the next projects I'm working on so I figured I'd give you guys a shot what's going on up here as you come up to the right there's two rooms that were used as bed and breakfast rooms even in the early 90s so they're not in too bad shape this one actually leaked out to the porch of the hotel just a beautiful view but where I've been working is back here and this room just a number of days ago was stuffed with crap on top of it it had they had nailed down wood with these annoying nails like this and they put carpet squares on top of that so step one was just taking out those squares and stuff today I'm gonna try to stain it you know this wood is beautiful but just needs a little more color and something to seal it a little bit so I'm going to try out a couple a couple colors never sealed anything in my life so it's not like I know what I'm doing but could be interesting and then next after that tackle this basically everything I brought out of here went in here this is a another large room these tubes are drafting all sorts of stuff it's funny if you look at the old old owner's books there's stuff like tax loopholes hopefully over time you want to show you a lot better spot but today we're going to stain so we're here at the infamous bunk house where for the past few days I've been ripping up carpet and so it's a bit of a mess right now but let me bring you into my least favorite building so this is the kitchen this is where the haunting happened I saw that curtain open and closed face coming out but you know I've made my peace of this building there was a lot of just terrible Brown carpet in here that just attracted dust and I was told when we purchased it the floor was terrible underneath it unusable and the floor in the hallway is admittedly not the best but it's workable and then you go into the rooms beautiful hardwood a little sanding staining on that so so much better than brown carpet the building itself has seven rooms there's four on either side but they made this middle room a kind of den with a fireplace there used to be a couch there that I almost ripped my finger off getting out of here it's gone now I'm gonna burn it so I'm gonna sand these floors and then stain them I haven't stained much of my life but I think it's gonna really bring out a lot oh this is a very light stain so you can still see the grain in the wood and this is where Creepo lived before he murdered somebody had to go on the run but now it was generally used for an antique store so it's got different things that Robert made souvenirs from the town in a long-term I don't know if we keep this is a store thing we merge this into the general store maybe make this into another cabin but for now it's got all sorts of just old stuff in it Dahle Shaw's Cook's house dog saw was successful enough to have his own cook and he lived right next to the doll Shaw house and so this is a little house it's a little one-bedroom cabin kind of in the north-central part of town is the old assay office so this is where a test of the quality of the mineral is being pulled out of Cerro Gordo right next to it is some of the standing structure from Lola's Palace of pleasure and so Lola Travis the town madam this is one of our old brothels I guess I'm just kind of cool let's go in here it's been a ton of work on the general store recently it's one that even come weeks we can even walk in after cleaning out a lot curating some of the old stuff up here he's looking pretty good so I think the long term vision of this guy at the general store maybe loss of souvenirs in here for sale as you walk back to the back room this was completely storage to is its furniture mainly but they had these ole display cases and so just finding the different artifacts from around town and putting them on display here so you'll get a sense of what happened in this town you know even that old canteen different items old workbench bunch of old guns and knives that were found in the property I mean look at thing that's crazy cap guns obviously but it's not done yet but making a lot of progress back tears we're really happy about how the museum / general store is coming together you know look at this furnace that's crazy there we go through a whole process of knocking down some samples into little cones like this pinching off the end with the tools such as this they go down pinch off the end put the sample and something like this this made out of bone and then melt it to test the purity and these crucibles yes look 1875 some of these crucibles are so old and so cool but when they melted it down back in the day when they would ship it there's shipping ingots like this and I believe this is what 50 pounds maybe 70 pounds and they would stamp us that way you know if you got caught with a bar that's at Cerro Gordo and you weren't supposed to have Cerro Gordo you're in some big trouble so that's why they would stamp that on their crucible is back in NASA office and it's cool you know cuz it's uh this is a town that was responsible for close to half a billion dollars of minerals and it would help build Los Angeles and a lot of miners hopes and dreams came to life or died right here in this office so it's an important part of the town's history it stands pretty much in the center of the town they call this the Widowmaker because used to bore into the mountain Lou this to then pack the dynamite and the dust coming out would not do so good on your health what are their outhouses have a window in the back for the perfect view of Mount Whitney none other that I know but that's a special little part of Cerro Gordo we are at the top of Cerro Gordo we are at the main hoist house and this is where the main union mineshaft was so the hole that made Cerro Gordo Cerro Gordo and the building it's pretty big it's one that even when people take tours and not allowed to come up here just because it's inherently dangerous I mean there's a hole inside this building that goes 1,300 feet directly down so obviously we don't people ain't near that but before we go in there this little building up to the side was the miners shower room and it's not quite as sweet as it sounds that they had a shower room for the miners it was yes to get clean but also to make sure that the miners weren't hiding anything as far as silver in their hair or in their pockets or anything so that was just off the main mind building head on into the hoist house it's one as soon as you enter a reveal is pretty quick that is the Union mineshaft and that is the mine that is the cart that goes 1,300 feet under the ground supported by that hoist that you see down there and it's called the hoist house for that reason but as you can see very unsafe this cart right here don't feel underneath there's tons of cold air coming and it's not one that loves standing on just because I mean right there if I were to if I were to drop my sunglasses right now right there they go at 1,300 feet down and there we go back but anyways the might the coal don't worry used to come up through there on or carts will stand on this and hope we don't die and then it would go on this track and this track would go around and it would go to a processing station just outside those doors where it would be sorted potentially refined or sent on buckets down the hill into Keillor the track is still here they have to think that this track you look at that hole there's levels of these tracks every hundred feet there's another level to the mine and each level as these tracks so they would blast back into the mountain pull the stuff out put it on the carts put it on this Cup this thing right here and bring it up so this K just held something like 500 million dollars worth of minerals have come up right through that cart but as you can see the building's huge it's one that is gonna be beautiful but it needs a ton of work you know who knows one day maybe this is a brewery or a banquet hall but for now it just kind of sits here you can't see it from the main town core and it's too big a project to even think about tackling for now so we're essentially just leaving this as is nobody really comes up here but it has this beautiful machinery like look at this Ingerson r and i believe this is a hundred and ten horsepower I like how big it used to have to be to be 110 horsepower and that thing used to bring the cable up and down until they replaced it with a slightly smaller one but it's just this beautiful machinery that one day I would love to you know clean all the rest of the stuff out of this building believe those machineries I mean Ollie I could take it anywhere anyways but just clean it up a little bit or this old smelter that has 1890 right on it it's just such a beautiful thing Ivan back here in over a year so I can't even really fully remember oh yeah there used to be is kind of one of the old smelters or furnaces I mean obviously the nice wood storage for quite some time oh holy this whole wall was here oh there used to be a wall here as of a month ago oh man well that's a lot more light and for you to see but that's not a project I had signed up for man it sucks yeah looks like you can I suppose having so much snow sitting up there they just pushed it over you look at electrical wire yeah that's recent it's not too heavy will help I can get it back up we are now at an undisclosed location at Cerro Gordo undisclosed because in this rock right there that door leads to the dynamite vault so there is dynamite stored on property it's illegal to tell people where it is but that is what the door looks like and has just carved directly into this rock which is pretty crazy when you think about it that's it dynamite do not enter so if that's the main town there as you walk this way the property keeps going because the road that's leading towards Death Valley Death Valley's are just in the distance there and the property itself it's pretty expansive down there you can't quite see it is the little cabin I've been working on the new town cabin and the property goes probably about to that spot you can see I'm gonna take you down the road just give you a little better perspective you know one day I mean this is far off but it's so much more heavily wooded over there be beautiful to start something like a campground other things you know they'd have to all be off the grid just because there's no power over there but it's beautiful over there as I come to show you and new towns a spot where a lot of the miners work or live particularly the Chinese miners and a lot of the time houses over there weren't necessarily made of wood they were made of stone so these little roads you see lead up to old houses that are actually built out of caves so there's a cave over there that just has a door on it and that was somebody's house there's a little bed back in there there's got your old tailings from other mines but this is the back side of Cerro Gordo I'll take you down a little ways you can see how far it goes should have been a cowboy should have been a cowboy so here we are at take a property border let's take a peek oh so here I mean you can't even see it anymore but trust me that the property way back up there with this area I mean imagine just having these small campsites where you just come camp be peaceful have you like that I mean I'm so old so that's gonna be a wrap but I hope you like looking around Cerro Gordo this is the peak this is where I come about thirty minutes before the Sun sets to just reflect on the day it's beautiful I've just I've never experienced anything like this I hope you share with you guys one day but until then I'm gonna keep making videos please subscribe to this channel if you're liking these you know the support so far has been amazing it's been something that I never would have expected but till then I'm signing out and I guess I'll see you next time

Channel: Ghost Town Living

Views: 1,280,868

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, us395, eastern sierra, eastern sierra ghost town, wild west ghost town, wild west saloon, adam lambert ghost town, 24 hour overnight challenges

Id: bMRyfgjpaa0

Length: 26min 22sec (1582 seconds)

Published: Sun May 10 2020