In which our intrepid hero puts another notch on his Rust Belt…
When I was a young child, my parents took me to visit a ghost town, the old mining town of Mogollon (of Spanish origin, now pronounced muggy-own) in far west New Mexico in the Gila Mountains. In the 1890s, Mogollon was a happening place, with thousands of residents who were involved, directly or indirectly, in the mining of gold and silver (the same mining that would give nearby Silver City its name). However, by the 1920s, many of the mines had shut down and an exodus followed. By 1930, its population was only around 200. When the last nearby mine shut down in the 1950s, the remnants of its population blew away like dust. When I visited the town, probably circa 1973 or so, it seemed to have been abandoned for a century.
That’s one type of ghost town. But there’s another.