The Lewiston teller. (Lewiston, Idaho) 1900-1905, 1903-06-05
mead American Cities.

s;tv and interest. To add to thi
history, incredible labors in un
earthing buried cities has been per
formed and the learning of the age
has been drawn upon to deciphe
the hieroglyphics that tell tales o
vanished splendor and human
mower. Of the ancient city, deac
when history dawned, we have
learned something through pains
taking research. But of the dead
cities of the New World and OF
modern times we may yet learn
much from the open page or the
record of personal experience.
Most of these dead and gone cities
were a few years ago, relatively
speaking, prosperous mining towns
Of the Rocky Mountains or of the
great plateau. Some of them, in
deed, were political strongholds,
and others were educational centers.
Bannock and Virginia City, in
Montana, are examples of the first.
Both in their brief day flourished
and waxed powerful, but the mines
that supported them were worked
out. the empty bag could not stand
upright, and there are now not half
a hundred people in Bannock, and
scarcely more than twice that num-
Der in Virginia City.
But the death knell of the dead
cities of the country was not always
sounded by the failure of mines.
Railroads have made towns; they
have also killed them. An example
of a fatality of this kind is found in
the fact that at the junction of the
Savannah and Broad Rivers, in
Georgia, where now are waving
fields of grain, there stood before
the railroad era the flourishlng town
of Petersburg, a regularly laid out
and prosperous little city. There is
now not a single house upon its
site. In the railroad life of the
Northwest we find the history of
this old Southern town repeated in
the tale of old Yakima.
An error of judgment that grew
out of lack or knowledge in regard
to the normal rainfall of large areas
in Western Kansas resulted in the
death of several towns in that state.
Springfield, tor example, was once
so we'll established that it was able
to build $4,000 school house and
to put in water works. There are
now not more than 200 houses and
less than 100 people in the town,
and the hydrants are hidden in the
prairie grass. At Saratoga, in the
same state, $30,0 theater stands
as a monument to fading city,
and at Fargo Springs "the $4,000
school house bell rings when the
wind is strong, but no children
answer its summons"
these and other dead cities that
mark the track of the civilization
of the great west were swept away,
not by a convulsion of Nature, but
because their builders misjudged
industrial conditions arose and trade
routes changed" In other words
linen made and men unmade
them" They were experiments
in civilization which at the time
were fair of promise, to which the
future brought no fulfillment. No
one could have said thirty years
ago that Denver would live and
Virginia City, Mont, would die.
The promise of bountiful and practi-
cally exhaustless resources has held
good in the case of the former; in
the latter it fell to the ground, and,
falling, buried a once pretentious
city. Fading monuments OF "hopes
abortive. victories half blown and
cltadelS begun, reduced to dust"
are these and other cities of the
New World. Made in expectation,
unmade in disappointment, happily
the country was wide enough and
Its resources were grand enough to
AFFORD refuge for the disappointed