Friday, September 07, 2012

White Hill Addendum

September 7, 2012
   Here's the irony of visiting White Hills ghost town, and for that matter, Oatman, Gold Road, Chloride and Mineral Park. Those are all "ghost towns" in Mohave County when I was growing up (Oatman and Chloride never went totally bust). When Dan Harshberger and I were playing among the ruins, we envisioned these buildings as being from 1881, but in fact, most of them were from the 1920s, 30s and even 40s. All the above mentioned towns were active until WWII when silver and other minerals tanked as investments. So the wooden (key word) buildings in the pictures are probably only about twenty years old. That's why they're still standing! I know this now, because I have a chicken house built in 1986 that looks exactly like this.

   The moral: if it's wood, it ain't going to outlive a turtle. This is why ranchers went to pipe fences and corrals. Wood looks great, but it don't last for beans. End of sermon (for today). Ha.

"Historic buildings are by and large a mirage, hyped by the living to embarrass the dead."
—Old Vaquero Saying