I've Been Living In A Ghost Town For 18 Months!

hello everyone my name is brent this is sarah gordo and for the past year and a half i've been living in this abandoned ghost town trying to bring it back to life and in this video i'm going to show you everything that's been going on here in my 18th month [Music] so 18 months i've been up here now i remember in other videos i used to say you know six seven however many months on my hands i don't think i can accurately put up 18 fingers a year and a half which is insane to think about and you know there is no telling what a day at cerro gordo might hold it seems that you know no matter how much planning i do for the day or the week or the month those plans inevitably get thrown out the window you know one day i'll be trying to figure out how to get a million pounds of concrete block up on the top of this mountain the next i'll be finding 100 year old jeans 400 feet underground and then next i'll find myself in a battle with an international mining company but even with all of the uncertainty and kind of the changing nature of day-to-day life here i'm more comfortable than ever you know comfortable in the path that i'm on comfortable with the fact that there is a future here at cerro gordo you know this month to see the support for the town when you know there was a a threat of this mining company just gave me a second breath you know another wind under my sails to just keep going so first before i get into i just want to say thank you all so much for checking this out it does mean the world to me and on that we're going to get in to everything happening around cerro gordo in my 18th month here [Music] you know if i had my way up here every day would be split between a little bit of an adventure exploring a mine taking a dirt bike ride something like that a little bit of renovation working on the buildings restoring a cabin working on the hotel and then a little bit of time to reflect maybe watching the sunset or something like that and if i had a perfect balance of all three things i think i would be living an ideal life and admittedly over the last few months the renovation part of that pie has been a little bit too lean that's for a variety of reasons you know i'm waiting on different permits and contractors and all sorts of different things have come up but i did make some progress on the town this month you know sometimes when you just don't like something you got to change it you know it's on you and i i'll admit i have not liked my diet since moving up to saragora 18 months ago when i was younger working out and eating healthy was such a big part of my life to me at that point it was the most important thing in the world so how could anybody not have time for it and here i am 18 months into living in this ghost town and i think i've lifted weights about four times in 18 months and my diet primarily consists of canned goods and whatever else might be around and this month right around lunchtime i finally hit the breaking point where i decided to do something about it well it's about lunch time here at cerro gordo and you know what i miss more than almost anything up here when it comes to food is fresh fruits and vegetables you have to imagine the closest grocery store of any substance is a bishop which is probably hour and a half to two hours away and so you would think after 18 months i'd have a better way to figure that out well the time has come it's time for me to make a garden now speaking of gardens i'm going to need water which we're going to get from the mine and we need soil and the soil up here generally is not the best but i have animals and i feed these animals and after you feed animals hello tofu hello elon beretta alpacas oh spicy elon oh there you go tofu fight back now that is our soil or manure for our soil hello alpacas you all look friendly today they're getting a little bit more friendly every month you know look at that look how close he is clearing these weeds is actually quite difficult there are desert plants so the roots are just so deep in there got my tools including my favorite tool to get out weeds the golf club i miss golf a lot you know what better way just to pack it some weeds [Music] all right as you guys can see just rocking and rolling on these gardens raised beds are going up i think eventually i'm going to facade it probably with some of this older wood just so it blends in to you know the rest of the town a little bit better next steps that black plastic is going to line the insides of these over here is going to be a station to make soil make soil here on site this will be a little work bench you know to put oh i don't know like seedlings or whatever we need to work on there and then this will be the garden [Music] all right is this getting a little carried away no no actually it's not uh you know if you're gonna try to maintain a couple plants why not try to maintain a lot of plants this is it this is eight boxes you know gotta put legs in a couple more it's a real garden you know [Music] and so this is it this is the ghost town garden you know it's got a little bit of the old wood to facade it to make it blend in a little bit better but i'm stoked you know this is something that just over a week ago wasn't a reality and now it's here plants are growing i'll give you guys a little bit of a tour this is a deeper box so this will be for potatoes or something and so this won't be a winter project but it's there lift it up get your tools drop it down there just beyond here this is where we're trying to make some soil so we got all the organic matter any waste any compost type stuff goes in there along with some of the alpaca manure and a little bit of dirt from around here so hopefully we're making soil for uh almost for next season that's what that's for and at the end there's eight boxes and there's some method to this madness you know we we cheated a little bit and got some plants going that were already started but this one a little baby tomato going that wasn't there when we got the plant so that's the official first official saragordo tomato over here these are seeds and you can look look already sprouting which makes me so stoked and as far as water as you can see there's a drip system in place and the water kind of goes like this there's a water tank over there if you see that white water tank and that was filled from the mine back in the day when the pump in the mine was working so we have another pump over there that pumps it from there up to here this is a makeshift water system and it goes into this and then from there you can turn it and the gravity brings the drip over here overall i'm really excited about this you know it just feels like another step towards a bit of self-sufficiency up here the ghost touting garden exists and i'm hoping it just gets better each time i show it and that's just a start you know i plan to continue the garden over the next months and years up here so if you are a gardening expert and you know basically anything about growing plants let me know in a comment below i really want to try to get plants growing through the winter i don't know how possible that is but if you have any tips i'm all ears because i'm now a gardener or a gardener in training or amateur gardenist whatever you want to call it i'm excited about the garden it's something that i think will bring a little bit more joy up here so if you have any tips please do let me know as always this month explorations of the union mind continued you know this has become a personal quest of mine to explore every inch of the union mine here at cerro gordo and so when i see the map of the mines and i just spend my evenings pouring over it it just gives me excitement you know it gives me that personal quests that's always something to look forward to and i think you know those types of personal quests are important you know and up here this month it was very stressful and so i found myself leaning a little bit on the exploration of the union mind as a way to just take the stress of that away even for a moment that i was down there and kind of give me something to look forward to some excitement and obviously my exploration of the jefferson chimney didn't necessarily work out as i would like you know i'm not going to say that it's dead in the water but it is currently stopped but that led me to something that i've been looking for since i started this channel and that is levi strauss jeans and as you know if you watch his channel old levi's can be very valuable but for me it's almost like a white whale sort of something to look for and always kind of search out and this month i can say i found them they are not in the best condition they are not perfect but that just leaves me to believe that there's more down there you know there's more to explore so that quest continues i'm not done yet and after i found the jeans i went back down to the 400 level you know where i found them and i did some other exploring on some different avenues that might lead to bigger adventures dude that's just going to drop straight the ladder is there but it's off to the side i know i think with the rope it'd be all right [Music] [Music] all right so i just came down this ore chute there's another platform it just keeps going i'm pretty convinced this must lead down to the 500 or the 550. oh yeah foreign holy look at this hey i need to get anything out of here at least i got that now i wonder what level i'm i assume i'm at the 550. whoa well i guess this answers my question obviously if i'm down to the 500 and then back to the 400 i came down this ore shoot as you see where the rope is but maybe this ladder also is up there it might be easier but that means i think we're beyond a collapse in the 550 that should open up all sorts of new exploration and about halfway down this ore shoot there's a face of the mind that is just filled with a massive galena deposit you know obviously they're following a vein down and they left a little pocket of it because they probably had so much other galino you know why get these scraps but for me it was really exciting you know so i grabbed johnny we went back down and i started just roto hammering some of this glean out of the wall going the right places [Music] look do all of it like so [Music] that is a very nice piece and in the end i ended up with about 120 pounds of galena that johnny and i pulled out of the mine and this month i also had a new friend named jason come to visit and jason owns a small mining equipment operation up in washington where he refines some more as well and so in a very near video you will see jason and i try to create a large quantity of official cerro gordo silver which is very exciting for me you know i did make my little bead that took me multiple days during an assay process but this time i'm going to go for a little bit more quantity to potentially make some interesting things with the silver here so that was a big thing for me this month you know that makes me believe that not only is there potentially genes still left in the mind there's still some ore that maybe they left on the ground behind maybe i could use it for something in the future and so my explorations continue look out and over the next few weeks there's some really promising leads is what i will say down in the union mind still and that gives me a lot of excitement you know something to look forward to as i just continue this personal quest of exploring every single inch of that union mine so on the animal update front this month all of these fine animals took a trip to the vet that wasn't too bad guys was it now you're all healthy the vet said you look great you're dewormed and you will be headed back to sarah lordo gordo here got fixed so no more cats for you unfortunately gordo and they all got any vaccines they might need and a lot of these cats were adopted you know this is zoe's little cat now this is zoe we just celebrated her birthday this is uh one of the cats here from cereal girl that we adopted what did you end up calling her him that's sarah and where does sarah live now um california near santa barbara awesome well i'm glad that the cats are getting out there and you're taking such good care of them thank you for all the help up here and uh happy birthday thank [Music] you and i kept one cat levi as you can see levi has brilliant blue eyes and i hope one day levi becomes my exploration partner you know going to the mines on some long hikes train him to smell out hundred-year-old levi jeans what do you think about that levi you think you can do that for me find some old levi's well i got some sample packed so you can start understanding the scent so that's the update this month on the cats we all took a big trip to the vet all got fixed up nice and levi here remains just a purring machine hello animals elon what's going on how are you today yep as usual tofu you're looking great beretta excellent so the next animal of choice is going to be chickens to continue this self-reliance thing this is going to be made into a coop and so i'm hoping to get you know 10 or 15 chickens because i eat eggs almost every morning and so to join the goats and alpacas that's the animals for the month and we'll continue on our way [Music] so as you can see obviously not as much work done on the american hotel as i would like to the county wanted some changes to our plans related to the basement but i finally have a date i can say that on 25th of this month which is just over a week away the block will be finally going up for the next stage of the american hotel i appreciate the patience you know not all things are in my control and when the county wants some changes the county wants some changes but those are complete and so hopefully in just a week time this basement will be done and i'll just continue rocking and rolling on this hotel [Music] some of you guys may have seen but earlier this month i decided i wanted to make pure silver for the first time in about 100 years up here at cerro gordo so i took some raw ore that i found into mine and over the course of three or four days made into a little bit of silver and that took forever to create a tiny bit of silver but while i was doing that i decided to make a base bar so both silver and lead and the result was this and in the video i said i was going to give it away to somebody that watched this channel and i selected that this month so congratulations to billy who lives in australia it's gonna take you a while to get this but uh billy said in an email correspondence that he would send me a photo of this bar um in his house in australia which is cool to think that a piece of you know history from here in california is gonna be halfway around the world but thank you all so much for your support uh i'm gonna continue trying to do stuff like that you know find some way to give back to people watching this channel um and this month it was giving this way to billy [Music] and on the adventure side of things this month this was a great month for dirt bike riding you know i i guess any month would be a great month as far as dirt bike riding goes when you get two new dirt bikes and that is exactly what happened this month you know much like goldilocks i've gone through phases where i've had a too small dirt bike a two larger dirt bike and now i have three total dirt bikes that are just the right size i got an incredible deal on this old xr this is a 100cc so it's a little guy just to get around town it's fun it's a blast i had a great time breaking this in at bode actually tim and i brought our dirt bikes and we took a little side adventure and cruised around to some other abandoned mines around bode [Music] so [Music] not too far away from bodhi and obviously this is public land and so you're gonna have a lot of this you're gonna have a lot of bullet holes and graffiti that's why places like bode and cerro gordo are so special because you know unfortunate reality of public land is a lot of people love this place want to see it preserved but a lot of people just want to come out here and shoot bullet holes and spray paint apparently but it's really cool i mean the fact that all this is still here you know i guess you should just appreciate what is left [Music] there are these towns that might have had thousands of residents 100 years ago a thousand people who to them that place was everything you know that's where they lived worked and played and now only 100 years later it's a blip on the map and then another 100 years it'll be rotten through and totally forgotten when i see places like that that are going away it's a reminder that you also have to enjoy the present you know i have to enjoy the process of rebuilding this town and not just be fully reliant on some future outcome that i might not have complete control over all you can control is your effort and if my effort is here and it's good and i'm enjoying that effort that's the win-win you know the win of doing my best of enjoying the process wall minute and also the win that in a few hundred years this town might still be here and a lot of people might experience it learn from it and love it and so anytime i see that i try to remind myself that our best efforts are only that our best efforts you know you can't control everything so it reminds me to enjoy the process while i'm here [Music] so that is a new addition this month also if you might notice this dirt bike and my 250 are not plated and i want to go on to the road i would love to be able to take my bike not just all the way down to keillor and transfer into my truck but all the way into lone pine to get groceries and such and so my neighbor was selling their kawasaki and so now i have an official plated dirt bike that i can take you know not just down to keillor but all the way into lone pine and beyond this is a 650cc so i have all sizes i have a 650 i have a 250 and now i have a 100 and i was talking to this guy that used to sell motorcycles and he said yeah you used to play golf right brent i'm like i did and he goes you need multiple clubs for multiple situations right i'm like i do and he's like same with dirt bikes and so uh this was a hobby i had no interest in a year ago and now i find myself with three dirt bikes dory just rip up straight up this road yeah just keep going to the gate you know i have to say as far as new hobbies go dirt bike riding might be my favorite that i've developed in my time up here you know it's one of these things that month over month i can feel myself becoming more comfortable on the bikes and getting better and being able to go on routes that i couldn't before and be more comfortable on the route that i'd already gone on and it's a skill that i really wanted to develop you know and if it's one of those things that you want to get better at just intrinsically and then you see yourself getting better it creates this feedback loop where you just want to keep pushing it and pushing and pushing it and i have you know i've tried to keep going after more difficult things because if you stay in your comfort zone you're never going to learn you're never going to grow and that's a fact in dirt bike riding as much as it is in all of life i think i keep pushing myself to try harder tracks with the dirt bikes and i think dirt bike riding is one of those skills that is actually more fun the better you get at it and i would argue that's not the case for all skills you know i remember when i played a lot of golf i don't know if golf was more fun as a scratch golfer than it was as a 10 handicap there's this you know you're still playing the same courses getting better golf doesn't unlock brand new courses for you in a way that getting better at dirt bike riding truly unlocks paths that you just can't do when you're not that good and so i've absolutely loved learning and i think this month is the first month that i've truly been able to just enjoy riding the bike i haven't had to focus every single second i'm not crashing and dying i've been able to experience the things around me and it's opened up just a whole new experience on all the different bikes [Music] [Applause] [Music] so that's my 18th month up here at cerro gordo and you know i've been thinking back to the last year and a half a lot over these past few weeks and i see it as three main phases you know the first phase was kind of isolation a lot of time alone me getting to know the property and kind of by extension getting to know myself i think that was a very important phase for me personally and then shortly thereafter i started sharing these videos online and that was kind of the intermediary phase and i think it was an attempt at me to try to create some type of social connection during the pandemic you know i think a lot of people felt very isolated during that period and i was part of that group you know living up here can be very isolating and so sharing these videos allowed me to connect with other human beings in some way you know as that started to grow i think it morphed into a phase now of community you know and so when i think back over the last month that's the word i keep coming back to is community and sharing and it really hit me this month when it was the public comment period for the mining operation you know i remember one day i was sitting in my cabin and i checked in the blm website and there's something like 15 000 comments and i was just floored you know to think that 15 000 people took time out of their day to leave a comment supporting the history here was amazing and i remember walking out and seeing four volunteers that were up here you know donating their time to help restore some of the different projects up here and it just stopped me in my tracks you know it truly made me speechless to be honest it just it just floored me in the way to realize how many lives cerro gordo is now a part of you know before it was very much just you know this little bubble of me up here now to see people from all over the world enjoying the history here and coming together on different online communities you know there's a discord there's a facebook group there's a subreddit and i see these familiar names getting to know each other and and sharing this excitement around history and going down different rabbit holes about the american west or plants or hikes or mining or whatever it is it just fills me with joy you know it makes me very excited about the future here and it just reminds me of the importance of community you know no matter where you are even if you live you know out here in the middle of nowhere community is still very important you know and i think 18 months in that's something that i try to remind myself and think about it like every week i get to share in the collective knowledge for people all over the world inevitably whatever project i'm working on whether it's the pump down in the mine or you know restoring some building somebody with much more knowledge in that subject gets to email in and i learned something and then there's the support element you know of a community where when something like the threat of the mining operation came up there was just this swell of support that just gave me such confidence and and kind of ease my mind in that situation and then there's accountability you know every month i make these videos and they're kind of to recap what i've done over the last month here both to share it but also to remind myself maybe what i did and maybe what i didn't do over the last month and there's something that i didn't do then i try to make it a point to do more of it the next month so all that to say i really really appreciate the community that's developed around sierra gordo it's one of the most supportive friendly and just amazing communities that i've ever seen online it's by far the best community i've ever been a part of myself and i just really want to say thank you all for being part of that community and i just can't wait to see what the next 18 months holds both for the property and the community itself so thank you all so so much until next time i'm signing out i am going to try to make a more regular schedule these videos and saturdays at 1 pm so i hope you guys tune in in the future for that but i hope you all have an amazing week and you guys find even more community out there wherever you are and just know that i'm here if i can ever help in any way my email is very public i would love to chat with more of you just feel free to shoot me an email and uh thank you guys so much [Music] you

Channel: Ghost Town Living

Views: 782,217

Rating: 4.9664812 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: Xjsosaxgo4Q

Length: 32min 52sec (1972 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 11 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Crimson_ghost_mk2]

Gardens going to be helpful. Maybe try and get in touch with the YouTube channel epic gardening. He’s in SoCal and has a lot of knowledge.

[u/gr3enw1lly]

Always excited for a new video from Brent!

[u/JasonBourne008]

Love the Cerro Gordo Garden! Great idea with the chickens as well. Appreciate the update on the American Hotel, I think we all curious about that topic!

Not sure if this is possible, but it would be awesome if you could somehow get a 365 degree camera into the mines so people could view them online, similar to how you would if you were looking at a house online. Would be a great way to capture/map the mines for the future.

Loved the subreddit shoutout at the end!!

[u/ostrich9]

Great update video, interesting to see what he's been doing!

[u/palikir]

I thought the dirt biking bit was interesting. The drone shots Brent gets when he has is drone following the bike are pretty amazing.

I would love to see more exploration of the remote BLM roads between Cerro Gordo and Death Valley. Maybe even some bikepacking - all of has camping videos have really struck a cord with me.

[u/infinus5]

good too see Jason from Mount Baker Mining out at Cerro Gordo, he specializes in small scale mining mill equipment and assaying for precious metals. He can help a lot with smelting and assay experiments, he helped some friends of mine build a mill for their mine in the Lardeau district in BC.

[u/Kaonashi_NoFace]

I'm so excited Brent is growing his own food now, Ghost Town Living has turned into my favourite lifestyle adventure channel.

Once Brent's mastered the vegetables, I hope he starts growing mushrooms in the mines, dark, damp, rotting wood, seems perfect! I read somewhere that miners used to grow bioluminescent mushrooms in the mines to light the way, this could be a fun tourist attraction project.

[u/Turbotec]

Is there enough bees up there to pollinate the plants?

[u/Splatmaster42G]

Garden is a baaaaaad idea if using local dirt. There is so much lead in that from decades of smelting that it must be insanely toxic.