GOLD CITY
Location: Gold City is located 145 miles north of Las Vegas, Nevada on Highway 318 in Nye County about midway between Lund Township and Hiko. It is not far from the Roan River or the White Mountain Range.
Description: Gold City is a small ghost town in the foothills of the White Mountains composed of about eighteen intact structures and eleven dilapidated structures over the area of four and a half acres. Several of the structures are open for exploring while several have been condemned. Today, it is the location of a very modern recreation stop called Gold City Ranch, a tourist spot for vacationers appreciating the American Southwest. A main guest house, twenty-five cabins, an in-door dining area, an exterior swimming pool, riding stables and camping areas are made available to guests along with Old West recreations, history guides and a Ghost Tour once a year on the week of Halloween.
Ghostly Manifestations:
The American Southwest is full of ghost stories about lost desperadoes,
wandering travelers and phantom Indians going back to before the American Civil
War. Gunslingers known as Billy the Kid, Jesse James, Clay Allison and the
Dalton Boys left their marks on many of the structures in the area and according
to some who believe the legends, they are still coming back. Among them, ghosts
like the Miner Forty-Niner are said to frighten away would-be treasure-hunters
hoping to get rich and end up attracting a lot more.
Wandering the old paths of the former town,
his appearance rarely changes. A very tall, very thin old man with a thick beard
of course brown hair, he is dressed in worn clothes and a large gallon hat
from another time and ambles along like an old man who has been under the hot
sun for too long. He wanders behind the old abandoned structures as a creature
of habit, a figure with a set routine, and often vanishes from view. He has
appeared in photographs. One tourist returned home to Tennessee and developed a role
of film containing photos from her trip. In the photos were of her and her
husband standing in the old hotel. In one picture, the blurry out of focus image
of a tall skinny figure in old clothes appears sitting alone at a deserted table
where no man had been before. Other guests have experienced orbs or “ghost
balls” in their photos that defy explanation.
Today, the old mines are off limits to both
ranch staff and tourists. Over several years, landslides, rain and wind have
rendered them inaccessible and dangerous. One obvious tunnel runs underground
for seventy feet to a large chamber connected to an underground well. Ben Hardy
used to escort tours through this tunnel for guests to experience a memory of
the mining experience, but today, he won’t even go down there. An old track
still marks where mining cars once rolled even deeper into the earth and
sometimes the sound of an old car rolling around underground can be heard
anywhere from ten to twenty feet from the cave. A flickering light as though
from a electrical light flashes deep inside, but no one goes in there. At times,
the caves come alive and loud moaning sounds emanate through the area at night.
It’s been attributed to winds pouring through the Swiss-cheesed mountainside,
but then the plaintive mournful cry has also been heard as far as the Goldfield
Market on the highway when there is no wind to generate the sound.
In the ranch, the guests report incidents the
staff is often unprepared to handle. Objects sometimes vanish to turn up later
and fresh mounds of dirt appear in innocuous locations. A housekeeper vacuuming
the lobby in the main building one night finished up her closing duties and
placed away her vacuum and began checking the doors. As she came through ready
to leave, she found a fresh series of dirty footsteps start before the
registration desk and end suddenly near the bottom of the staircase. A few
months later, the bartender closing his counters near the pool pushed the chairs
under the counter and lifted his stools up to depart. In the time it took for
him to turn his back, all the stools were back off the counter and on the floor
again.
Guests on the first and second floors of the
main guesthouse have noticed figures hovering outside their windows. One young
lady who was supposed to be very alone in her room when she looked in her mirror
and found the extra image of the Miner Forty-Niner in the room with her.
Whirling around, she found herself alone once more but exceptionally uneasy as
if she were being watched. Cold spots are sometimes noticed. One night, five
members of the staff called Ben Hardy to experience a cold spot they had noticed
in the dining area.
Sounds though occur more often than physical
appearances of the ghostly prospector. Footsteps, creaking noises, echoes of
something rapping from somewhere on the property and the murmurings of several
people at once has been heard. The voices always sound as if they are coming
from a large room full of people, but such a crowd is never found. Hank the
caretaker has described hearing the player piano running in the derelict old
hotel in Gold City, but it always stops when he comes to investigate. The old
piano is over a hundred years old and falling apart, and despite missing keys
and broken strings, it still plays in the middle of the night.
There are more than just a few popular
accounts of the Miner Forty-Niner to prove his existence. Back in October 1969,
when the ranch was struggling to get started, a number of young adults
heading
toward the lodge down in Hiko stopped off looking for directions and decided to
change plans to stay at the ranch. During their stay, they claimed the Miner
Forty-Niner was following them around the ranch and their exploration of Gold
City. The Great Dane accompanying one of them saw the ghost at least twice and
ran to their van to cower underneath it in fear.
In May 1998, a plumber came to the ranch from
nearby Castleton was called upon to fix a leaky pipe in the main guesthouse
kitchen. While the kitchen was closed, guests were treated to barbecue by the
swimming pool and the plumber had the entire kitchen to himself to work without
anyone bothering him, or so he thought. As he worked under the sink, he reported
that a tall old man with a beard stood over him briefly asking him if he could
fill up his flask. The plumber didn’t think anything of it; he just told him
to wait a few minutes for him to get out from under the sink and turn the water
back on, but when he stood up, the old man was gone.
In recent years, Gold City Ranch offers a lot more than it once did. Plots of land are posted for people who arrive with camping gear to rough out their stay. One particularly favorable spot up on a bluff overlooks the ghost town and allows one a glimpse of the lights in distant Lund Township. On one dark summer night, an architect, his wife and six kids were camping up there when they heard someone coming up to check on them. Figuring it was an employee from the hotel, the architect started down the path to meet him guided by the lantern in the dark, but as he got closer, that’s all he saw: just a glowing lantern floating through the darkness on the way up to the bluff.
History: In 1851, a band of hearty travelers moving west from Greencastle,
Indiana founded Gold City. While encamped on the site, a number of industrious
young men noticed gold dust washing into their canteens as they refilled them
and within a few months, they were building permanent structures and having
dreams of being rich men. Gold City was established in 1905 and quickly grew to
over a thousand residents. Homes were built from anything possible such as stone
and brick or from wood carried down from off the mountain. However, by 1922,
there was less and less gold to be found and people started moving west to
California or south to try getting rich in Las Vegas. By the end of World War
One, less than fifty people lived in town. Among them, Isaac Laurel refused to
give up on the mines and continued trying to find a new vein up until his death
in 1944. His son, Hank Laurel, meanwhile stayed on and after his father, he
remained as Gold City’s last known citizen.
In 1958, though, Benjamin “Big Ben” Hardy, the son of the first and only mayor of Gold City, returned to build a ranch on the site with Hank as his caretaker. Things started slow at first as contractors and carpenters started making up ghost stories as they slept in the old town structures and abandoned former homes, but it was those ghost stories that have made the ranch more successful in recent years. Today, with the construction of a modern market and a gas station in the area, a number of retired couples live near the ranch and the old ghost town now boasts a population of a hundred and fifty-three.
Identity of Ghosts: The identity of the tall, thin and sullen Miner Forty-Niner is a matter of debate. Hank is unshaken in his belief that the ghost is that of his own father, Isaac Little, still searching the mines. The more interesting story is that the Miner Forty-Niner was in life another miner who was robbed and murdered here at the turn of the century, and his ghost is supposedly searching for his lost gold or his killers. Still another confuses him with the legend of the Old Dutchman Mine claiming he was here before the town was built. Another caravan had left him behind two years earlier and it was his mine that was discovered. Whatever his identity, his presence has been felt by several guests over the years. On the other hand, several guests believe he is not alone and a few other presences might lurk in the old bank, former tavern or even the old cemetery. In the shell of the old chapel, reports of a nun have been reported, but she can’t be a real nun because she’s described as being headless - she has no face where her head should be - just empty space.
Comments: Scooby, Doo, Where Are You (Episode: “Mine Your Own Business”). Hauntings loosely based on Rhyolite ghost town near Beatty, Nevada, the Garnet ghost town near Missoula, Montana, Stevenson Ranch near Mentryville, California and the Inclined Plane Hiking Trail in Johnstown, Pennsylvania.