Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1903-05-29
DEAD CITIES.
Many American Towns, Once Populous
Are Now Abandoned.

| From the Chicago Inter Ocean.
Not in the old world alone is to be
found the silent Amyc1ae" over which
yirgirs two words have kept scholars
puzzling for nearly 1900 years. In this
| United States, which we are wont to think
so new. there are scores of dead cities
Nor are they prehistoric. Many OF them
rose fourished, declined and died within
the memory of living men. And most OF
them the spade of the excavator will never
dig I'D. They have vanished completely.
In the era are published some rambling
notes of a score of these dead cities Nat
urally most of them were mining toWhs,
and when the mines, producing crop tnat
cannot be renewed. were exhausted they
died Some of them such as Bannock anu
Virginia City, in Montana, were even poHti-
cal capitals. Now there are FEWER tna an
fifty people in Bannock, and fewer than loo
in Virginia City: Then there was po t,nS
Cal. which less than fifteen years ago had
5000 people and whose mines had PAID IN
five years $22o000O0 in dividends me
mines failed the town was deserted anu
few years ago fire swept the site bare
But the failure of mines does not account
for the death of all these dead towns,
Springfield, Kan. was once large enough 70
build a $4,000 school house, and to put In
wafer works At last accounts there were
200 houses and fewer than 100 people IN
the town. and the MIGRANTS were hdden III
the prairie grass. AT Saratoga a S5oooo tne-
alter finds none to tread its boards save the
wandering tramp. At Fargo Springs the
500 OO0 school house bell rings when the
wind is strong but no children come These
dead Kansas towns are the radins monu-
ments of an error of observation as TO the
normal rainfall of the western part OF the
state. Ancient Troy was found 10 pc
buried in It's own rubbish. That also was
the fate of Yam Hill. In the latter aus II
was a prosperous gold camp. The placers
,fa1 hut NJ
found farther up the stream. The i'm
patient gold seekers deserted the old town
and built a new one. The earth ana gfaVei
from the new placers were washed down
upon the old town and covered Its build
ines Now only the gable of a large livery
barn energies from the soil to show where
Yam Hill was. Perhaps when Macaulays
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 pre-
historic America.
Now 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 OF
grain and grazing sheep. Yet there once
stood Petersburg, regularly lald out ana
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 rail-
road unmade Petersburg. as 1t has unmade
dozens of other towns after first making
them.
When we speak of dead cities we usual
ly think of towns overwhelmed by some
CONFUSION Of nature. such as PompeH and
ST. Pierre. Yet these are comparatively
| few. The vastly greater number of these
silent Amyclaes, these Troys which were,
were swept away because their builders
| misjudged industrial conditions, or because
| new conditions arose and trade routes
| changed. Men made them and men de-
| stroyed them. A few of them live 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 city of $4,000 people, full
! of human hopes and fears, loves and hates.
| Fortunate Is the city that like Troy finds
| a poet to sing her story. or that like Amy
| clae finds poet even to mention her. AS
| for the others, the unsung,
| Their lives a watch vision,
Between a sleep and sleep.