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
