Drought Revives Ghost Towns of California’s Gold Rush

As if it were a spell, the pertinacious drought that threatens California has caused the skeletons and remains of old ghosts from the past to resurface. Abandoned and forgotten towns of an era that attracted millions of people to the West Coast in hopes of finding a seam of gold and becoming rich overnight have been resurrected from their centuries-long slumber.

1849 was the year when the Gold Rush began and the age when miles of makeshift towns were constructed in order to house the multitudes of gold seekers, who, attracted by its shine, gathered in the Golden State. By 1860, the Gold Rush was already dwindling and, 20 years later, it would be extinguished forever.

It was then that the towns were abandoned. In many cases, the destiny of these towns came from being buried by the waters that make up the reservoirs and lakes created to satisfy the thirst of California’s growing water needs after having grown s it grew and been became populated.

The ghost town of Mormon Island, near Sacramento, exemplifies that piece of history that can now be examined through the its resurfaced remains that have resurfaced. .Established in the middle of the 19th century by a Mormon community, from which the city gets its name, it housed up to 2,500 residents during its glory days. After being abandoned at the end of the Gold Rush, the town was inundated under the waters of Folsom Lake.

The Mormon town was erased from the face of the earth for 58 years, until, as irony would have it, the drought has saveddrought saved it. The lake has decreased to one-fifth of its capacity, and the remains of the old town have surfaced to the delight of many onlookers and hunters after of the ancient relics who, since the good news traveled mouth to mouth, are heading to the town.

Some arrive equipped with metal detectors to find coins, keys, doorknobs, rings, and other objects scattered and buried between the ruins of rocks and walls of the ghost settlement for a long time. For the Lake Forrest Reaction Area, the issue has become so extreme that supervisors saw the need to prohibit the use of the toolse apparatuses and threaten the distribution of fines for disregarding the warning of rangers who patrol the zone.

“Like many of the towns inundated by reservoirs, the structures of these buildings were taken down and trees cut down in order to clear the surface of the lake from obstacles. However, even with this, the walls outlining the town, and even the structure of a very well conserved winery and the route of an old water canal, can still be appreciated,” explains archaeologist Jenifer Padgett.*

From an archaeological point of view, “these relics are a treasure that are already helping us to better understand what life was like in California during the middle of the 19th century,” explains Padgett.*

The Ghosts of Texas and Utah

California is not the only state where ghost towns, allied with the drought, are regaining life. Texas and Utah also have settlements from a past thought to have been forgotten forever.

In 2011, in Texas, the dwindling waters of Lake Buchanan allowed Bluffton, a town that had been inundated since the lake’s creation in 1937, to resurface. The place joins the long list of more than 200 archaeological sites in the state that have been discovered thanks to the drought, including a cemetery, according to facts from the Texas Historical Commission.

In Utah, many of the ruins of the indigenous American settlements were discovered in the past decade, after the water level of Lake Powell in the Colorado River dropped to less than half its original level. It was even possible to recover the spectacular Cathedral in the Desert waterfall, which had been inundated by the reservoira huge dam constructed in 1960.

*Editor’s note: Correctly translated, these quotes could not be verified.