Google Maps is highly helpful when it comes to directions and getting from A to B. It’s also a very interesting tool for discovering locations across the globe one might otherwise never spot. One location many people may never have heard of is this abandoned town deep in Death Valley, California, USA.
Cerro Gordo was established as a mining town back in 1865 when silver was discovered on Buena Vista Peak.
Thousands of miners were brought into the town and among them some disreputable characters.
With little else to entertain, the miners often turned to alcohol.
A whopping of saloons popped up in the town making drinking a popular pastime – and there were three brothels, too.
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However, with all the boozing came trouble not far behind and the death rate soared.
The town in the Wild West soon lived up to the name of the area, Death Valley.
According to Atlas Obscura, the casualty rate was one person per week during the 1870s, the height of the mining era.
To make matter worse there was no sheriff for miles around either.
The site reported that even the doctor was too afraid to stay and fled Cerro Gordo.
The lawless town flourished for 50 years as silver, lead, and zinc were mined from the hills.
However, the population started to dwindle after the closure of the Union Mine.
Eventually, Cerro Gordo was deserted, leaving only ghosts of the departed behind.
Today it stands a sunburnt wasteland, the skeletons of its building still standing.
According to The New York Time, there remains “a single saloon with swinging doors, two out-of-tune pianos and a mysterious bloodstain on the wall beneath three bullet holes.”
These days, Robert Desmarais serves as the town’s unofficial caretaker.
Cerro Gordo was bought in 2018 for $1.4million by Brent Underwood and Jon Bier from Los Angeles.
