Trip to Gold Hill UT

Wed, April 5th, 2017
Written by Oscar Aguayo
Photography by Alvaro Aguayo

For those who find remote, abandoned towns fascinating, the western US is the ideal place to explore.

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Rich in mineral deposits, the deserts of the western US have been the scenario of many mining booms from the times of the Conquistadors to the mid XX Century. Utah is one of those western states where explorers and prospectors roamed vast distances through arid, endless deserts in search for opportunity and, hopefully, wealth. As a result, many towns and small cities were founded in the most remote and arid places, areas that didn't offer any of the natural features needed to sustain life.

But human perseverance and ingenuity knows no limits. Obstacles might be unsurmountable when discovered but, given enough time, we always end up finding solutions or workarounds. This is particularly true when we are motivated by the possibility of riches and wealth. And the ghost towns of the western US are a visible testament to this.

Set in remote corners of the desert, surrounded by dirt that can't be farmed, salty beds of long dead lakes of prehistoric provenance, and barren mountains; these towns were build from scratch by pure human determination. These are not places where previous colonizers lived, or the traditional dwelling for some old culture. Instead, these are places where even animals are hard to find, let alone water and decent temperatures . Every single thing had to be built without the guidance left by previous inhabitants. Deciding what part of the desert is best for a dirt road, or what part of the rocks could be best for the supply store... I mean, how do you decide those kind of things in a desert where there's no water, where winds sweep mercilessly every evening, and where there is no protection during winters?

But where there is will, humans find ways. And few things provoke stronger wills than the idea of becoming rich. Then, water is dug from deep under the surface through wells and pumps; electricity is produced by portable generators, or is brought through hundreds of miles of cable, after thousands of poles are planted through the worst of geographies; roads are carved by hand and, voila: a new town is established.

Gold Hill is one of the best examples I've seen of this kind of phenomenon.

In a nutshell, it's history as heard from the mouth of one of its only three residents still living there, goes something like this:

Talk about a rich region!

The Planning

As an avid traveler, AL always has his ears open about interesting places to visit. He had heard about Gold Hill some time before and when we were planning our next trip by the end of February, he proposed it as our destination.

To the map we went.

The remoteness of the location was a definitive plus. We were planning a one-day-only trip so the distance to cover had to be reasonable. But how remote - as in "apart from civilization" - Gold Hill is was an instant enticement. Not too far away from our point of origin (~180 miles from the Salt Lake City area), but in the middle of the emptiness on the western shores of a prehistoric lake now known as Lake Bonneville.

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As the map above shows, most of the trip would be over asphalt (I80 freeway) all the way to Wendover at the western border with Nevada. At that point we would go South on US-93 for 26 miles. Then we would take Ibapah Rd going South East back into Utah for 16 miles; and traverse the final 12 miles on a dirt road to Gold Hill.

The idea of going over dirt on heavy street bikes was not all that heartwarming, but on the other hand , no respectable ghost town in the world has paved access.

Another concern had to do with gas autonomy. My motorcycle (1993 Yamaha V-Max) is not exactly a traveling bike. It runs fast and smoothly over long distances but, having a small gas tank, I usually run out of gas at the 110 - 115 mile range. According to the planned route, the last gas station is in Wendover, NV. After that point it would be 54 miles to Gold Hill, and another 54 miles back to Wendover for a total of 108 miles without being able to refuel.

The final concern was the temperature. Although we set the trip's date towards the final week of Winter, Utah is a particularly cold place. The dryness of the desert allows the temperatures to remain low well into Spring. Traveling at freeway speeds for most of the trip early in the morning on the way out, and late in the afternoon on the way back was going to require some protection.

We planned to take with us some snacks for the route and lunch for when hunger demanded it. As it is our tradition, we decided to buy dinner somewhere on our way back.

And thus, the date was set: Saturday, March 11th.

The Trip

AL arrived at my house fully packed and ready to go at 8am as I was fastening a gallon of gas to the back of my motorcycle. We both checked each other's equipment, took a picture for the website and left into the crisp and dry cold of the morning.

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After a couple dozen miles the urban areas finally started to fall behind as we headed West. The sun shining on our backs, the desert extended forever in perfect view. This is what you yearn for when riding a motorcycle: open distances and landscapes extending in all directions, each one a promise of adventure.

Our first stop was Stansbury Island. Located in the southern end of the Great Salt Lake, it is not a real island as a narrow dirt road connects it to the shore. It is an inhospitable and arid place mainly used by weekenders for shooting practice. It is a big, mountainous place and there's plenty of space to explore, find your own private corner to camp, play, shoot, do off-road, etc.

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All the roads in the island are unpaved which makes the advance on street motorcycles slow and somewhat of a delicate process. After exploring a little we returned to I80 and kept riding West until we reached Delle, the last gas station for the next 70 miles to Wendover, NV.

Delle is a small complex formed by the gas station, a small motel that looks like it is no longer functioning, and a couple of trailer homes. There's also an old and dead school bus parked a little farther into the desert from the gas station. A sort of dirt parking lot exists by that bus where weekenders bring their off-road toys to run and play on the long network of dirt roads, paths and circuits that comb that whole area for several acres.

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We refilled our tanks and climbed back to the freeway.

As we made progress towards the border with Nevada, the immense dry lake bed from ancient Lake Bonneville appeared on both sides of the freeway, extended literally all the way to the horizon. This area is so vast and so horizontally smooth that is place to the renowned Bonneville Salt Flats International Speedway. Race drivers from every corner of the world come there to test they speed machines, many of them trying to break land speed records.

We couldn't resist the temptation and left the freeway to ride our bikes on the flats themselves. It was a surreal experience riding without lines or surfaces limiting us and leading us in particular directions. Here we could, and did, ride in any direction you want. Everything is dozens of miles away so you can steer your machine towards any angle of the compass and ride forever without finding one single obstacle.

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Or so we thought. In reality, there's water under the otherwise seemingly dry and cracked surface. And in some areas that surface gets particularly thin. After riding unmolested for a couple of miles, the dry crust started yielding under the weight of our bikes. When we realized we were actually sinking as we rode, our tires were already spinning in mud with no traction whatsoever. It took us some effort to get the heavy bikes out of that area and back on to solid ground.

Unfortunately we didn't take photos of that ordeal, our minds were busy trying to get out of that unstable terrain. However, a short clip of it is included in the "Gold Hill promotional video" available on the Videos page.

With all those stops and detours we finally reached Wendover after noon, which coincided with our hunger. We found a nice little park downtown and had lunch on a picnic table between a playground and a parking lot.

Wendover proper is a Utah town that ends linearly along the border line with Nevada. In fact, the border line is prominently painted on Wendover Blvd's pavement. Although the town seems to continue uninterrupted beyond that line, anything on the Nevada side is called West Wendover. Since gambling is illegal in Utah but not in Nevada, casinos in West Wendover have been built right at the border line: as close to Utah as possible.

Wendover was our last refueling before reaching Gold Hill and back. In fact, there are no other towns or settlements in between. The upcoming roads would be almost deserted and certainly devoid of resources. Gold Hill itself would be unable to offer us any help if we needed it, being a ghost town. So we topped our tanks, checked our machines' conditions (oil, tires, etc) and left Wendover towards the South on Nevada's US-93.

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At around 4pm, after 11 miles of driving on a dirt road that went up and down snaking through arid hills, a strange sight came into view. Houses, trailer homes and an array of other strange buildings appeared suddenly as if they would have been dropped from a height, falling in random places. We had arrived at Gold Hill.

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Here I have to explain that I am calling it a "town" because of what it was in the past. In its current conditions I am not sure Gold Hill would even qualify to be called a settlement.

The dirt road goes into the town all the way to what appears to have been the town's central intersection. On the corner at our right there is big old and ruined building made of bricks still standing. On the corner to the left there is a metal plaque with historic facts about the town. On the other side of the intersection there is a normal house that appeared to be currently inhabited, judging by the modern car in its driveway. The rest of what we could see beyond looked like a mixture of buildings in what seemed to be random places. Some of them are in poor state, others are destroyed; but a few seems inhabited.

As we were there, in the middle of the intersection, visually absorbing the town, a big pickup truck appeared from one of the streets. It stopped next to us and its driver lower his window. That's how we met Tom. Lean and energetic despite his rugged appearance, Tom welcomed us warmly and engaged us in a quick and colorful history lesson about the place.

He told us how the gold mining of the past was abandoned because the concentration of ore in the dirt kept diminishing until it reached a point where it wasn't profitable anymore using the methods of that time. Then he proceeded to explain that today's extraction methods are much more efficient and extracting gold from the original mine is profitable again. This was surprising to us. But we got a bigger surprise when he told us he is the current mine owner.

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Official plaque with a brief history of Gold Hill.

AL then asked about the unusual concentration of cats. In fact, since parked there in the middle of the intersection talking with Tom, we had seen at least a dozen cats crossing the roads around us. "Ah, those are feral cats", he responded. They didn't look feral to us, just normal domestic cats like those you see living in homes.

"These are normal cats, but have never lived with humans," he continued. "They've been born in the grassland like wild animals, and tend to avoid contact with humans. We brought them here after we had that rat infestation some years ago. We couldn't get rid of them, so we brought these feral cats. In a year the rats were gone. All that's left are the cats. But they take care of themselves."

Finally, after a good 15 minutes talking and learning, we asked the question in everybody's mind: "Is there any permanent inhabitants in Gold Hill?"

"Linda, the mine administrator; George, a retired gentleman that does things with wood; and myself," Tom answered. So, there you have it. A town that once housed three thousand people, with jobs, school, city hall, police department, postal office, stores... is now residence to only three people.

And then, the second question in everybody's mind: "And, do you guys get together once in a while?"

"All the time!" answers Tom laughing.

After he pointed to a couple of prominent places to visit "in town" (yes, let's be generous with the term), he drove away up the road that, according to him, takes to the actual mine, several miles ahead. And we turned to the old brick building to our right.

It was a Mercantile or general store when the town was in its prime.

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The building, although still standing, is in ruins. The outside was build with bricks and cement all the way to the basement. But the inside, from ceiling to floor (which also works as the basement ceiling) it is wood. After so many years without maintenance, the wood structures inside are crumbling. Walking inside the mercantile is iffy and the planks groan under each step (please be careful if you venture inside). Once inside, however, we were awarded with a very evocative view of the past and the effects of time and nature.

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The roof has lost its protective layer on the top. As a consequence, the wooden ceiling is yielding under its own weight and threatens to collapse soon. The floor is following a similar path and, as with the ceiling, you can see through the cracks.

The stairs to the basement are long gone in pieces, so we had to exit the building through the front and walk around it to the back where a back door at basement level leads the visitor in. Here we were also rewarded with a very atmospheric portrait of abandonment and decay.

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I believe we humans are instinctively fascinated by this glimpses to the past, when we come across them. Something about the things left behind by others in the past captures our interest, allowing us to spy however briefly into their daily lives and affairs. Our imaginations can't avoid being fully awake and at work filling with color and sound the emptiness left behind by others.

After exploring the old Mercantile at our leisure for a significant while, we left and walked the short distance to what Tom had described as "The First Bowling Alley in the whole state of Utah".

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What remains of "Utah's first bowling alley."

The building is considerably unassuming even if you exercise your imagination and visualize it as it should have been in its good times. It is very narrow in comparison to today's bowling alleys. Like, very narrow. Maybe it only housed one alley where only one group could play at a time? In any case, when we entered the building we found it is being used as a warehouse of sorts where old things of all kinds are being stored. From rusty tools apparently meant for trains or big trucks (ah, mining trucks, most likely), to sealed cylinders full of who-knows-what, to repair parts, to kitchen utensils, to thousands of mineral samples carefully stored in cardboard boxes that are succumbing to the hardships of the elements.

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The inside of "Utah's first bowling alley", looking in from the main entrance.

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The inside of "Utah's first bowling alley", looking from the back towards the front.

We spent a good couple of hours exploring these buildings, touching its surfaces and the surfaces of the things they contained, breathing the silent history floating between their walls and letting our minds and heart be inspired by their enduring presence. We also stopped at a disintegrated travel trailer from at least 40 years ago (judging by the articles we found among the ruins) that still had some bottles of grain and liquids from that time. Somehow, these sights inspired some philosophical thoughts in me, most of which were recorded in video until unfortunately the camera ran out of battery (better that way).

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After a brief stop at the modern yard of the mining company (closed by that time on a Saturday) to walk among some big old rusty equipment laying around by dozens, our expedition to Gold Hill came to an end. With minds and hearts full of inspiration and history we said good bye to the ghost town having seen not one single person other than Tom.

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It was dark when we finally reached West Wendover, NV. There we refueled our empty tanks and our empty stomachs as we prepared for the last leg back home, riding long on I80 East towards Salt Lake City. ◼

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