A Solid Ghost Town

 I usually think of ghost towns as being towns built of wood which rotted and fell away when the people disappeared and the termites took over. Rhyolite was a town built to last. The buildings were of stone and cement. They stood proud and tall against the mountains. Pictures by the side of the road showed flourishing businesses, a Shriner’s parade, and other scenes of a thriving town.

There was not a complete building in town. The Miners’ Union Hall was gone. All that was left of Overbury’s Bank was broken pillars and enough front wall to show some windows. 

The school’s front wall was all that remained.

And yet, these buildings were built for a future. One large unnamed building was still standing but condemned as unsafe and therefore fenced in. 

Interesting ~ the original building still standing was the brothel. It was on the dirt road named Main St. It was two small rooms built of rock with cement mortar leaving us to speculate how many women worked there, how often, and, given the location, how comfortable the town must have been with the enterprise. 

There was one more house, not destroyed on the outside, made totally of bottles. The bottom of the bottles were surrounded by the cement mortar. It operates as a little museum.

In the yard is a square of cement on which sits the remains of life: horse shoes, nails, spoon, fork, broken pottery, the foot of a statue - and given the painted sandal, probably a religious figure, even more probably, Jesus. Little bits and pieces which people treasured, used, made and then left to the elements until some one in some historical society, made an effort to gather it all together. Fascinating and sad.