I Survived the Insane Road to an Abandoned Ghost Town

trapped under her bike I'm so sorry this is an abandoned Ghost Town or at least it was abandoned until this man bought it for 1.4 million dollars armed with the excitement of seeing our first ghost town the ignorance of what lay ahead and a riding buddy with mistake and trust in me we are going to Sarah Gordo abandoned ghost mining town I confidently led the way expecting the town to be right on the side of the road like so many abandoned towns I had seen on this cross-country trip what I didn't know was that the town sat 8 000 feet at elevation it wasn't a town just on the side of the road you had to Traverse miles of steep and narrow dirt roads and anyone afraid of heights is worn not to come at all my experience level with bikes like mine on roads like this was about four days worth Amanda was much more experienced so I was slowing her down she went ahead and we knew we'd meet each other at the top or so we thought as we climbed temperatures plummeted snow got thicker the road was getting more and more difficult and to think people used to do this on foot with mules winners at Cerro Gordo are complicated on the best days it's the most beautiful the town ever is and then I saw her but on the worst days winners at Cerro Gordo can be held on Earth [Music] Amanda was trapped under her bike and I was the only one around to get this 500 plus pound bike off of her I wasn't able to get the bike off of her but I was able to move it just enough so that she could get her leg out from underneath I did not know the road to Cerro Gordo would be as gnarly as it is Amanda was handling this much better than I was glad to see you smiling and walking I was really worried here oh I'm fine look I can do a dance oh oh that was nothing this was nothing what I've been in much worse believe me are you kidding me oh no [Music] and then when I tried to get back on my bike this happened it's like I dug real deep into the sand there you want to walk it up there um I think I'll walk it okay oh I know of at least two riders that have gotten in accidents while wearing glasses one ended up with a piece of glass lodged into her skull and the other in her eye shout out to one of the companies I reached out to about sponsoring this three-month cross country video series because I want you to know about the safety item you may not even know you needed these glasses are shatterproof flexible and the temples are thin enough that you can fit them comfortably in pretty much any helmet yes they offer prescription and polarized and non-polarized versions the link below will get you 10 off I thought there's no way this could get worse but I was wrong as you may be able to tell it is very cold up here right now and you know living in a ghost town is challenging on the best days and in the winter it can just become extremely challenging mud and Ice got thicker and thicker we were stuck we couldn't go any further that's not exactly how you pictured it no and yet by the kindness that comes when someone is living their dream the owner still agreed to give us a tour welcome to Sarah Gordo thank you this is an abandoned mining town the house established in the 1800s 1865 the mining company that had at the time they were paying a caretaker to be here just to look after the place they went bankrupt they couldn't pay him they gave him the whole town as payment I've been up here living up here full time for about three years now property itself is about 350 acres and it's surrounded by all BLM lands there's no old neighbors anywhere I've only recently well I guess three years ago now I've gotten into dirt bike riding and I saw you guys came out on bigger bikes than that I am uh very jealous how good you guys were to get up here I just wanted a comfortable place to sit wanna trade uh this is the original General Store for the town oh my gosh [Music] they would leave that fourth lead and silver for a couple reasons because one uh the process of getting the silver out of the lead is pretty much the hardest part of that process so they wanted to do that in San Francisco and the second reason is that if those were pure silver bars like every bandit in the west would just Rob the stage coaches leaving here all the time back used to be a butcher shop these days it's our like uh more Museum we can check that out so all this is like things that we found around the property there's a large Chinese population here as one is the mining town so we found a variety of like old Chinese coins and and Tin boxes oh wow that's Peak the town had 4 000 residents or artifacts I should say Dynamite boxes that I found this came from the 700 foot level down in the union mine so if you're ever walking through the desert and you see like a tobacco tin nailed to a piece of wood it probably has it might have like a really old piece of paper inside of it that shows like whose mind that was back in the day so originally this is like a mechanics garage so the center piece of the entirety of it and then slowly they added on the wings and then the old owner made it into uh or put in the stained glass in remembrance of his wife who passed away and so we're making it into a little bit of a movie theater they like kind of have like a uh like a film contest even you know people come up and film something and yeah but we'll see we got some snow coming in um it seems that we have some snow issues to deal with too to keep that around oh no got a problem it appears that the door is over to the assay office there's a lot of snow is gonna get in there you can see the drifts so a lot of times right now we have self-guided tours the ultimately the door open but snow inside of buildings equals moisture inside buildings each one was rot so I'm gonna have to get all this snow out of here because eventually we I hope to push people overnight you know the destination thing is where we're building a hotel just over here with all the snow we couldn't access many of the other buildings [Music] wow what's your favorite building in Cerro Gordo probably the museum and then I like the the Hoist house or the building that hosts the Big mine shaft I'm taking that 150 year old cage 900 feet down into an abandoned silver mine I think the whole mood in the cage turned from one of great excitement of what's below of oh I hope we can make it back up just because of the history there it's really cool the photo in the General Store here of one of the old owners in the late 1800s or 1900s is taken at this exact point of the 900 foot level where this black and white sign is that so shows different things about the different levels as a sign that's still there that was incredible well if it wasn't so much snow there's some really cool routes to ride around here you know there's like if you were to go if you were to continue on our main road six miles that way is Death Valley National Park yeah and you can take that through everywhere this building's over here yeah there's little cabins and so uh you have to figure like originally there was so many people living here that any of these old roads that you see would have been lined with cabins and Tents and houses the hotel and so like we finally finished the basement which is really big they'll be dirt around all of that yeah we luckily have an old military truck uh five ton as we bring everything up with that I don't know if you guys watch Heavy D's videos ever oh Heavy D Sparks yeah yes so he's he helped out oh pour a lot of the concrete with this and stuff so that was cool he's the one that gave us the uh the old five-time military truck [Music] trying to leave before the sun here in the cold snow and starting to turn to ice so it was just luck sometimes I feel like wind only exists to remind us that things can always get worse it was so cold our cameras did not survive the ride down thank God we did [Music] I never ever never never never never of course so much of course thank you guys for coming I'm so sorry beautiful pavement has never looked more beautiful you're you're God that playground can become a prison when those days are passed they definitely make you appreciate the things we take for granted next week we'll be somewhere warmer in the middle of the desert staying overnight in another piece of History 40 feet below ground in a decommissioned missile bunker foreign [Music]

Channel: Doodle On A Motorcycle

Views: 93,013

Keywords: abandoned, ghost town, abandoned mining town, ghost town living, cerro gordo, insane road, winter, abandoned places, road trip, cross country trip, women who ride, biker chicks, biker chick, adventure bike riding, adventure bike, triumph tiger 900 gt pro, triumph tiger 900, doodle on a motorcycle

Id: KrSBcf4oDVE

Length: 10min 37sec (637 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 09 2023