What the West was built on
Ghost towns, stamp mills, a false front on a main street, three-foot-gauge rails, a motel sign that no longer lights — the places where the past is still standing, and what happened there.
The Paper Bags of Canyon Road
On Christmas Eve in Santa Fe the street stays dark, and thousands walk an old footpath by the light of sand, paper and one candle at a time.
The Cowboys' Christmas Ball
A dance from the 1880s still fills a stone hall in Anson, Texas, on the weekend before Christmas, and the gentlemen still check their hats.
The Old Faithful Inn and the Chimney That Holds It
In the heart of Yellowstone, a 1904 log lodge gathers travelers around a stone chimney that has burned for more than a century.
Gold Hill, Nevada, 1867
A survey photograph from 1867 shows Gold Hill, Nevada, as a cluster of mine works in a bare valley, and nothing of the silver under it.
The Drugstore That Gave Away Free Ice Water
A pharmacist's wife sent him out to paint signs on the prairie, and a dying town on the edge of the Badlands became a destination.
The Hand-Worked Quarries at Pipestone
At Pipestone National Monument, the red quarry is still worked by hand by the people whose right it is, and the stone is as sacred as ever.
How a Comstock Stamp Mill Crushes Ore
In a Virginia City mill, ore follows a fixed path from the grizzly to the tailings flume, each step set by gravity and camshaft.
The Unlit Neon Sign of the El Trovatore Motel
A Route 66 motel's neon sign stands unlit in Kingman, Arizona, its glass tubes still spelling out a name no longer advertised.
The Long Stand of Nicodemus
A Kansas town founded by freedmen after the Civil War, built on homestead claims and hope, still holds its ground.
Three Feet Between the Rails
A close look at the Durango and Silverton's three-foot-gauge track, a working piece of nineteenth-century iron still pinned to the canyon ledges.
The Courthouse in the Center of the Square
The building in the middle of a Texas courthouse square, told through its stone, steps, clock, and the way it sits in the ground.
After the 1905 Storm, a Light on the North Shore
On a cliff above Lake Superior stands a lighthouse born from one lake storm, preserved with its machinery, rooms and view intact.
The Year the Corn Palace Is New Again
Every summer Mitchell, South Dakota, strips the Corn Palace to its bare walls and recovers them in fresh grain — a civic ritual now a century old.
The Copper Left, Bisbee Stayed
When the copper mines shut down in the 1970s, Bisbee, Arizona, kept its stairways, its storefronts and its canyon light — and became something new.
The Adobe Mission the CCC Put Back Together
La Purísima Mission near Lompoc crumbled into ruin and was rebuilt adobe brick by adobe brick by young men of the Civilian Conservation Corps.
Route 66 Is More Alive in Oklahoma
The old two-lane still carries daily traffic across Oklahoma, while California keeps the road as a monument to where the dream ended.
The Copper Town Built on a Slope That Moves
Jerome still hangs off Cleopatra Hill above the Verde Valley, a copper town whose streets keep creeping downhill long after the mines went quiet.
After the Black Blizzards, Boise City Endures
The Dust Bowl nearly erased the Oklahoma panhandle town of Boise City. Irrigation and stubbornness brought it back.
Fort Union, Field of Standing Walls
At Fort Union National Monument, the adobe walls of the Santa Fe Trail's great supply fort still rise from the shortgrass prairie.
Timberline Lodge, Built by Hand, Still Open
At the edge of Mount Hood's snow line, a New Deal lodge made of stone and whole timbers still stands open to all.
The Only Royal Palace in America Is in Honolulu
The only royal palace in the United States survives Honolulu’s rain and the governments that outlived its kings.
What the Berkeley Pit Left Behind
On the rim of the toxic blue lake that swallowed a city's eastern neighborhoods, Butte lives with what a century of copper cost.
Kennecott, Where the Town Outlived the Ore
In the Wrangell Mountains, the copper mill town of Kennecott stands just as it was left when the ore gave out.
The False Front on Wallace Street
A board wall a story taller than the roof behind it, holding up a painted name above the board sidewalk of a gold town that survived.