Discover hundreds of ghost towns throughout Utah with this guidebook filled with pictures and directions. Penny Spackman Clendenin, who grew up exploring ghost towns, divides them by county, sharing fascinating details that paint a portrait of Utah history. Towns include: • Bradshaw City, which was founded by John Bradshaw after he dreamt of a cave high on a mountain and a pack rat’s nest filled with gold nuggets. His dream was so real that he set out on foot to find his dream mine. • Mercury Springs was a terribly isolated camp, but gold finds and mercury discoveries brought in miners. Later, tungsten was mined in great quantities, but over the years fluorspar has probably bought more whiskey, bread, and beans than anything else. • Star City was the namesake of the Star Mining District and was six miles southwest of Milford. During the 1870s, it grew from a tent town into a mining camp. Filled with tales of outlaws, insights on the mining way of life, and explanations of how these places became ghost towns in the first place, you’ll love the stories behind these fascinating places.
The story of the American mining frontier can be traced through the ghost towns that dot the western landscape to this day, from the camps of California’s forty-niners to the twentieth-century ruins in the Nevada desert. These abandoned towns mark an epoch of high adventure, of quick wealth and quicker poverty, of gambling and gunslinging and hell-raising. Those who have seen the Old West movies sometimes think that the legends of the Wild West were invented by screenwriters. The ghost towns remain, and their battered ruins testify that the legends are true. Behind the tall tales is a history where a fortune could be made in a week and lost over the course of an evening. With a historian’s attention to fact and a novelist’s gift for dramatic storytelling, celebrated science fiction author Robert Silverberg brings these adventures back to life in the rowdy splendor of their heyday in Ghost Towns of the American West. History and travelers’ tales are woven together with clarity and wit to create a lively account of a fascinating era in our history. Lorence Bjorklund’s illustrations, rich in detail, portray the ghost towns in their glory and in their dusty decline.
Dear reader, the first novel of this series is titled OHIO. And, maybe you are on your computer right now, trying to decide whether or not to purchase it. Maybe you are in a bookstore and holding it in your hands; you have studied its cover, you've already read the opening lines, and you've flipped to the middle and read something there. Maybe you have read the last paragraph. Maybe you have done the same with all three novels. Dear reader, the novels are not for you, unless you possess the desire to listen with all your heart to the words you will find in them. If this desire is yours, I, Jonathan Kensett, welcome you into a world I could not have known if I had not listened with all my heart, as well, that fateful evening when I had dinner with Abby Vredenburgh in Sunbury, Ohio. That night the real journey began for me. Dear reader, I would invite you to journey with me through OHIO, and then to continue the journey through IN THE DAYS OF CORONADO and TERRAM NOVAM. After you have read the first three there are more. NOWHERE, soon to be released is the story of a ghost town in Southeast Utah, but it is much more than just a story about a ghost town. ROSE OF SHARON 1896-1974, also soon to be released, is the story of a little town in Northern Ohio established in 1866 in the novel OHIO; it is the story of the town seen through the eyes of three generations of another family, and it too is much more than a story about a small town. And, the next novel in the series, THE SIX POINTS OF THE STAR, is still a shadowy sketch inside my mind. But, it can't remain a sketch for much longer. Sometimes I wish I had never gone to Ohio to observe that Civil War Battlefield Reenactment of the Battle of Second Bull Run and to write that series of articles for Stars and Stripes Magazine. Sometimes I wish I had not met Abby Vredenburgh, may he rest in peace. Sometimes I wish I had not gone to New Mexico and found what I found on the mesa. Sometimes I look into the mirror and wish so many things could have been different. I wish I would not have to think about certain things like war and death, like pain and loss and grief, and deception and betrayal. I wish life could be free of such things. I long for redemption and freedom from suffering. I long for a world where nothing is hidden because there is no reason to hide. And, I long for the day when this story is finished but the more I write the more I understand it can never be finished until... Jonathan Kensett was born in 1952 and spent his youth traveling and living in many, many places on planet earth. At age seventeen, he lied to get into the U.S. Army, was sent to Viet Nam and served in Company D, 1st Battalion, 501st Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, 1969-1970. After that, he went to Harvard and earned degrees in journalism and law. He has not practiced law, choosing instead to be a free-lance writer. He will always wonder if he made the right choice. Now that he is too old to change he might as well try to enjoy every day as much as possible. No one writes like him. No one.
Dear reader, the first novel of this series is titled OHIO. And, maybe you are on your computer right now, trying to decide whether or not to purchase it. Maybe you are in a bookstore and holding it in your hands; you have studied its cover, you've already read the opening lines, and you've flipped to the middle and read something there. Maybe you have read the last paragraph. Maybe you have done the same with all three novels. Dear reader, the novels are not for you, unless you possess the desire to listen with all your heart to the words you will find in them. If this desire is yours, I, Jonathan Kensett, welcome you into a world I could not have known if I had not listened with all my heart, as well, that fateful evening when I had dinner with Abby Vredenburgh in Sunbury, Ohio. That night the real journey began for me. Dear reader, I would invite you to journey with me through OHIO, and then to continue the journey through IN THE DAYS OF CORONADO and TERRAM NOVAM. After you have read the first three there are more. NOWHERE, soon to be released is the story of a ghost town in Southeast Utah, but it is much more than just a story about a ghost town. ROSE OF SHARON 1896-1974, also soon to be released, is the story of a little town in Northern Ohio established in 1866 in the novel OHIO; it is the story of the town seen through the eyes of three generations of another family, and it too is much more than a story about a small town. And, the next novel in the series, THE SIX POINTS OF THE STAR, is still a shadowy sketch inside my mind. But, it can't remain a sketch for much longer. Sometimes I wish I had never gone to Ohio to observe that Civil War Battlefield Reenactment of the Battle of Second Bull Run and to write that series of articles for Stars and Stripes Magazine. Sometimes I wish I had not met Abby Vredenburgh, may he rest in peace. Sometimes I wish I had not gone to New Mexico and found what I found on the mesa. Sometimes I look into the mirror and wish so many things could have been different. I wish I would not have to think about certain things like war and death, like pain and loss and grief, and deception and betrayal. I wish life could be free of such things. I long for redemption and freedom from suffering. I long for a world where nothing is hidden because there is no reason to hide. And, I long for the day when this story is finished but the more I write the more I understand it can never be finished until... Jonathan Kensett was born in 1952 and spent his youth traveling and living in many, many places on planet earth. At age seventeen, he lied to get into the U.S. Army, was sent to Viet Nam and served in Company D, 1st Battalion, 501st Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, 1969-1970. After that, he went to Harvard and earned degrees in journalism and law. He has not practiced law, choosing instead to be a free-lance writer. He will always wonder if he made the right choice. Now that he is too old to change he might as well try to enjoy every day as much as possible. No one writes like him. No one.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the author of Into the Wild and Into Thin Air, this extraordinary work of investigative journalism takes readers inside America’s isolated Mormon Fundamentalist communities. • Now an acclaimed FX limited series streaming on HULU. “Fantastic.... Right up there with In Cold Blood and The Executioner’s Song.” —San Francisco Chronicle Defying both civil authorities and the Mormon establishment in Salt Lake City, the renegade leaders of these Taliban-like theocracies are zealots who answer only to God; some 40,000 people still practice polygamy in these communities. At the core of Krakauer’s book are brothers Ron and Dan Lafferty, who insist they received a commandment from God to kill a blameless woman and her baby girl. Beginning with a meticulously researched account of this appalling double murder, Krakauer constructs a multi-layered, bone-chilling narrative of messianic delusion, polygamy, savage violence, and unyielding faith. Along the way he uncovers a shadowy offshoot of America’s fastest growing religion, and raises provocative questions about the nature of religious belief.
