- When Brent Underwood was 30 years old, he left Austin for an abandoned mining town.
- While restoring the town, he realizes that people are trying to find purpose in the wrong ways.
- Underwood spoke to Business Insider from 900 feet underground, sheltering from a snowstorm.
This told essay is based on a conversation with Brent Underwood about his experience moving to a California ghost town. The following has been edited for length and clarity.
In 2018, a friend sent me property information for Cerro Gordo, an abandoned mining town in California. “This could be your next project,” he joked.
The idea of a remote town in the American West was very appealing to me. It reminded me of the old TV Westerns my grandfather used to watch every day.
I was running a very popular bed and breakfast in Austin, and I felt like I was just looking for something to shake me up from the monotony of everyday life.
We did that by purchasing this ghost town. It cost him $1.4 million, more than half of which was financed by a lender. My friend and I shared most of the rest, but a few other friends also helped out.
living in a remote place
On the surface, it's understandable that it would be difficult when you don't have running water and are at the end of an 8-mile dirt road from the nearest store in an hour.
But I don't think you can really understand the logistical difficulties until you're actually inside it, either until all the pipes are frozen or you trudg through waist-deep snow to get to your outhouse. .
Living in the middle of nowhere can be very lonely and isolating. All my friends probably went to lunch together in Austin yesterday. But now I'm sitting 900 feet below a ghost town, miles away from them.
As I got used to the city, the ghosts either got used to me, or they got more used to the sounds I thought were ghosts. However, I once saw a figure in one of the windows of the tavern, and have avoided that building ever since.
However, staying here requires patience.
Since I arrived, Cerro Gordo has experienced storms, fires, floods, earthquakes, and snowstorms. It's very easy for him to throw in the towel and say, “This is too much. You know what I like.”
I needed to acquire many skills, both practical and mental, to make my daily life easier.
find purpose
Instead, I get to do what I believe is really important: working to preserve the history of this town.
A lot of people talk about finding purpose. They bounce from job to job, hoping that one of them will provide what they're looking for.
But I think you define your purpose. You can choose something that is purposeful and meaningful to you.
Not everyone will become an abandoned mining town, but remember the interests that excited you as a child and find a way to combine them.
People also forget that long-term goals have a sense of security. People who start businesses these days also do so with the goal of selling in a few years. I think that's insane.
There's something long-lasting about what I'm doing here. I could work on this project for the rest of my life. This will help you feel less anxious when things don't go as planned. I feel like I feel a little more at ease when I look at this as a project that spans decades rather than months.
how do you make a living
Life here is slower than in the city. Your day doesn't just evaporate into 100 small tasks like running to get gas.
But in a way, I'm busy because I have a dozen or so meaningful projects going on at once.
I earn my living through my day job at a company called Brass Check. We run a platform called Daily Stoic and produce podcasts and newsletters.
Then I also have a full-time job trying to rebuild an abandoned town and creating content for YouTube about it.
I have never received any money from the town. However, I would like to reopen the hotel as soon as possible, and eventually reopen the campground and cabins where tourists can stay. Tours of the town are always welcome and free of charge.
I'm currently spending a lot of money to keep my job, so I'm stressed out, but I hope it stabilizes and heals naturally.
Save history
In its heyday, Cerro Gordo was a silver and lead mine, so there are also 30 miles of shafts beneath the town I'm exploring.
The scale of the operations that existed here is extraordinary. There are shafts, rest rooms, changing rooms, dynamite storage, and even animal cages.
They rebuilt the old elevator, but it still takes 45 minutes to get down to the 40' x 20' area where I'm staying while waiting out a snowstorm. It's warm and quiet here so I can record audiobooks.
I mined about 100 pounds of this mineral called galena, and it's still here. You reduce it to make sterling silver badges, then make rings, pendants, and silver coins to sell to raise money for the museum.
If I hadn't made this change in my life, Cerro Gordo, like hundreds of other towns founded in the American West, would have been forgotten. My hope is that this work will live on a little longer and that people will be as inspired by it as I was.
