Were Small Western Towns Doomed To Become Ghost Towns?

Were Small Western Towns Doomed To Become Ghost Towns?

Old western ghost towns still exist. They are fun little places to travel to and check out to make you feel like you're in an old western movie or even back in the Wild West. But have you ever thought to yourself as to why the town still exists and why it became abandoned and turned into a ghost town? Small western towns were a dime a dozen during the Wild West, meaning they could be just as easily built as they were destroyed. Small towns were built because many settlers, slaves, and even immigrants during the Wild West era all wanted to get away and all shared the same goal: a place to call home. So what did they do? They traveled long and far, and when they came across a good-sized portion of land, they built a town just like the people of Jamestown did before them long ago. However, small western towns were many times considered to be a temporary solution due to the negative factors such as outlaws ruining it, seizing it, or setting it afire, the weather, Indians wanting to take back their land, plague, just to name a few. Some of these, perhaps even all of these, were reasons why towns crumbled, but they are big reasons why they became ghost towns.

In the western book, "The Gun Town Gun Ghost" by L. Ron Hubbard, it tells of a man who comes across a ghost town with nobody in it...or so he thinks. He finds out that there's only one man still calling this ghost town home, and the man acts as the mayor, sheriff, and anything else needed in town because it's just him. I use this book as an example because back in the day, during the Wild West, it was very likely to come across a ghost town with a few people still living in it, or in this case, one man. Does this mean it isn't a ghost town? No, it does. To me, a ghost town is any town that is deserted of people, and one or a few people still there only prolongs the inevitable. Were these small towns doomed from the start? Think about this: today, there are thousands upon thousands of cities and countries, and many centuries have gone by, and these plans are still very much intact. Sure, our means of building them have changed, and instead of wooden buildings, we now build with steel. But many small towns still exist, and many of the buildings and houses made of wood still stand. It almost seems that while it worked during the Wild West era to live in a small town or to quickly build one, at some point, the people would have to leave to set up a new town because the old one just wasn't going to cut it, or had something happen to it.

I think today that while ghost towns are fun to visit and check out, they are reminders of what life was like during the Wild West era. The abandonment and silence that runs through it is eerie and surreal, considering the fact that in the 1800s, the very same towns were booming and full of life. The next time you find yourself in a ghost town, ask yourself this: was this town you're standing in doomed from the start? What happened to it, and what made it become a ghost town?

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