Granite, Montana Ghost Town

I knew that Bruce Gregory and Stephen Johnson would enjoy Granite, Montana based on my visit there in 2005 with my wife and our neighbors.  So, Granite was one of our destinations on our summer camping trip.

There was a silver bonanza in the 1880’s on Granite Mountain, and soon the mountaintop was packed with buildings.  The centerpiece was the magnificent Miner’s Union Hall, now a big brick ruin.  The elegant building once had a dance floor / auditorium, lodge room, office, library, and more.

Mae Werning’s house is down the street.  She was the watchman and last resident of Granite and died in 1969 at age 75.  Most houses now are just piles of lumber or overgrown rock foundations.

Granite Mills A and B together ran 80 stamps until the 1890’s.  In the 1950’s the buildings were intentionally burned for safety reasons, leaving these gigantic foundations.

Just down the road along the face of the mountain ruined structures of the Ruby Mine are on the verge of collapse.
Granite has some of the biggest ghost town structures we have found on our camping trips.  It is amazing to think about what it was like to live and work here more than a century ago.
I hope you enjoy these photos, but please be aware that they are copyrighted and can not be used for any purpose without permission and reasonable compensation.

Humboldt City, Nevada

About 500 people lived here once, but Humboldt City has been a ghost town since the post office was removed in 1869.  Silver was discovered here in 1860, and the city was built here to support several mines.  But, it didn’t last long.

A dirt road runs from the valley through the center of town.

Humboldt City is located along a creek that runs through a canyon high on a mountain in the Humboldt Range of Nevada.  There were 200 buildings here, and now you can still find many rock ruins scattered through the underbrush and on the hillsides.

Some of them, like this one with the double windows, have signs that people tried to move in here long after the city was abandoned.  We found a cinder block fireplace added to this old rock wall.

This cabin also has some modern materials like rusty window screens.  It was hard to get to because it was built in a deep gully next to the creek.  I don’t understand why it wasn’t washed away years ago.

There were two hotels here; the Coulter House and the Iowa House.  I’m guessing that this ruin was one of them because of the large front room and a smaller room in back that could have been a kitchen.

The view from the hotel looked up the canyon toward the mountains where the mines were located.  It looks like it has been a long time since the last “No Vacancy” sign went up.

Humboldt City is just a couple of miles from busy Highway 80, near Mill City, Nevada, but being there is like being in a different world.

Remember, all my photos are copyrighted.  Please do not use them for any purpose without permission.

Knight Mill, Silver City, Utah

People seem to be attracted to large building ruins.  The Parthenon in Greece, Coliseum in Italy, Machu Picchu in Peru, and Mayan ruins in Central America are all big tourist attractions.  We have our massive ruins here in the American west too, but they are largely ignored except by ghost town hunters.

The Knight Mill ruins are a good example.  This massive concrete ruin is on the edge of Silver City, Utah, a ghost town that has nearly completely disappeared.  The smelter was built here in 1907 and it shut down in 1915.

Jesse Knight found several mines in the Eureka, Utah area, including the Humbug and the Iron Blossom lode, so he built this smelter and a railroad to process the ore.  The mill was closed and dismantled when it became more economical to ship ore to a more modern mill.

There are extensive ruins of solution tanks just outside the more massive ruins of the main mill building.  These tanks could be a source of dangerous contamination and should be avoided.

So much of the building has been destroyed that there aren’t many small details to photograph, but there is still some interesting rust on site.  It looks like iron beams were cut off and their stubs left to rust into fantastic shapes.  Is this a nightmarish bird or a bat?

Ore was crushed and mixed with mercury, resulting in an amalgam that had to be heated to separate the valuable metals.  I think this was a kiln used to cook amalgam to separate mercury from gold and silver.  Of course, the kilns could also be a source of contamination that should be avoided.

I like this desert arch, which is probably all that is left of another kiln.  It seems so out of place out there by itself.

While I can’t say that ruins like this are beautiful, like the classical ruins mentioned above, they are interesting and awe inspiring.  They are a big part of our western history, which is disappearing fast, and they deserve to be documented.

All photos are copyrighted and must not be used for any purpose without my permission.

Little Planets

Here's a fun creative Photoshop project that is much easier than it looks.  To get your attention, I will start by showing you the end product, then describe how it was done.  My title for this photo is "America On A Stick".  It was taken in an area of Wells, Nevada that was destroyed by an earthquake in 2008.  An American flag has been painted on a wall next to ruins that have been neglected ever since the earthquake.

I used Photoshop Elements version 9 for this project.  The hardest part of this is to pick a photo that will work well.  It helps to have a photo that has sky colors that match on the left and right edges, and a horizon that is the same height on each edge.  Here is the original photo:

I rotated this photo left 2.5 degrees (Image > rotate > custom) to get the tops of the far left and far right buildings even, then cloned out the power line across the sky.  It helps to overlay a grid across the image to get it even (View > Grid).  The next step is to rotate the adjusted image 180 degrees (Image > rotate > 180)

The next step creates the Little Planet.  The results are pretty unpredictable, so it is always kind of exciting to see what happens.  Filter > Distort > Polar Coordinates.  Select "Rectangular To Polar" and click OK.

Next, fine-tune the image.  In this case, I chose to rotate it back so that the lamp post was on the bottom.  I also blended the line in the sky and some other parts of the same line using the healing brush and clone stamp tools.  Many images will have distracting patterns in the corners that you may want to crop out or retouch.  The final image, as seen in the beginning of this post, was stretched to a circle.  Resize > Image Size, then uncheck "constrain proportions" and type in new dimensions so that width and height are equal.  Finally, crop, retouch, and adjust as desired to get your masterpiece.

Metropolis, Nevada Ghost Town

Summer was way too busy to find time for updating this blog, but a camping trip last week included a photo opportunity that I just had to post.  I was on the way to Elko, Nevada to meet a friend for our second camping trip this year, and our 31st consecutive year of camping and photography.  I took a side trip north of Wells, Nevada to the ghost town of Metropolis.  This was a planned farming community started in 1910, with irrigation provided by a dam on Bishop Creek.  However, the planners never bothered to get water rights and were sued by the town of Lovelock, Nevada.  When Metropolis lost their water, the residents gradually moved out, and Metropolis was a ghost town by 1950.

The most spectacular ruin is the arch of the old Lincoln school.  The town once had a railroad station and daily passenger service, but there is no trace of the station.

This is the basement of the ruined school.  Spooky, to say the least.  Someone has shored up the stairs with a couple of 2 x 6's, and there are ceiling holes everywhere, but the debris-filled space is a ghost town classic.

The other major ruin was once a hotel.  Notice how isolated this place is.  There are miles of treeless sagebrush plains in every direction.  There is probably a cemetery somewhere, but I couldn't find it.

If you wander through the sagebrush, you will find a few foundations, the usual small artifacts like broken glass, and this wonderful rusty wreck.  There used to be a city here, with houses, stores, and about 700 people, but the desert has reclaimed nearly everything.