The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1903-06-02
DEAD CITIES.
Many American Towns, Once Popu-
Ions, Are Now Abandoned.

Many American Towns, Once Popu-
Ions, Are Now Abandoned.
From the Chicago Inter Ocean.
Not in the old world alone is to be
found the silent Amyclae" over which
Virgirs two words have kept schol-
ars puzzling for nearly 1000 years In
this United States, which we are wont
TO think so new, there are scores of
dead cities" Nor are they prehis-
toric. Many of them rose, flourished,
declined and died within the memory
or living men. And most of them the
spade of the excavator will never dig
up. They have vanished completely
In the era are published some ram
bling notes of a score of these dead
cities. Naturally most of them were
mining towns, and when the mines,
producing a crop that cannot be re-
newed, were exhausted, they died.
Some of them, such as Bannock and
Virginia City. in Montana, were even
political capitals. Now there are few
er than 100 in Virginia City. Then
there was Bodie, Cal, which less than
fifteen years ago had 5000 people, and
whose mines had paid in five years
$22O0O,000 in dividends The mines
failed, the town was deserted, and a
few years ago fire swept the site bare.
Dul Tic ldiluIG Ol mines docs not
account for the death of all these dead
towns Springfield, Kan, was once
large enough to build a $4,000 school
house, and to put in water works.
At last accounts there were 200 houses
and fewer than 100 people in the town,
and the hydrants were hidden in the
prairie grass. At Saratoga a $50, 900
theater finds none to tread it's boards
save the wandering tramp. At Fargo
Gnrinpc 8OO ~
rings when the wind is strong, but no
children come. These dead Kansas
towns are the fading monuments of an
error of observation as to the normal
rainfall of the western part of the
state. Ancient Troy was found to be
buried in its own rubbish. That also
was the fate of Yam Hill. In the lat
ter sos it was a prosperous gold camp
The placers there were exhausted, but
new ones were found further up the
stream. The impatient gold seekers
deserted the old town and built a new
one. The earth and gravel from the
new placers were washed down upon
the old town and covered it's build
ings Now only the gable of a large
livery barn energies from the soil to
show where Yam Hill was. Perhaps
when Macaulay's New Zealander
comes to sketch the ruins of London
bridge an antiquarian colleague may
dig up Yam Hill and draw all sorts of
conclusions as to the civilization of
prehistoric America.
Nor are these dead towns to be
found in the mining and semi-arid
regions only. At the junction of the
Savannah and Broad rivers in Georgia
are now only fields if grain and graz
ing sheep. Yet there once stood Pc
tersburg, a regularly laid out and
prosperous town of the days before the
railroads came. Now there is not
single house upon the site and the
wheat grows where was the public
square. The railroad unmade Peters,
burg, as it has unmade dozens of other
towns after first making them.
When we speak of dead cities" we
usually think of towns overwhelmed
by some convulsion of nature such as
Pompeii and St. Pierre. Yet these are
comparatively few. The vastly great
er number of these silent Amyclaes,
these TroyS which were swept
away because their builders misjudged
industrial conditions, or because new
conditions arose and trade routes
changed. Men made them and men
in the pages of romancer or poet The
genius of Bret Harte preserves the
memory that on the bare brow of
White Plain mountain there was once
a city of $4,000 people, full of human
hopes and fears, loves and hates. For
tunate is the city that like Troy finds
a poet to sing her story. or that like
Amyclae finds a poet even to mention
her. AS for the others, the unsung,
There lives were a watch or a vision,
Between a sleep and a sleep.