—December 18th, 1934. Empire Mine, CA

 

It takes approximately 46 minutes and 54 seconds to descend the deepest mine shaft in Ophir hill. Approximately–because the only way to keep time is with the rhythm of your own heartbeat. Personal effects that are worth a dime like stopwatches are left in the company provided lockers; so that should an error occur, nothing of value would be buried–save the gold that was left un-escavated. 

 

Luckily, it's impossible not to hear your own heartbeat. Each meter traveled reverberates a deeper echo in one’s chest cavity, as if the body recognizes the similarity in the artificially dug tunnels with its own veins and capillaries. While the organic metronome isn't the most precise–it does make for… uniquely time-kept shanties, should the miners feel bold enough to use the limited oxygen for such a frivolous endeavor. 

 

The only sounds 11,007 feet below the roots of the trees are pick-axes against rocks. And the foreman’s calls that signal lunch and the end of a shift.

 

— March 17th, 2006. Empire Mine, CA

 

“This place should be a ghost town,” said no one in particular.

 

“What do you mean? It’s a State Historic Park–no one lives here,” said a different no one.

 

“I know no one lives here,” no one said while gesturing to the mining museums and Edwardian reenactors. “I mean this town. I just don't understand why it still exists,” 

 

“Why Grass Valley exists? I mean it's not big, but they have a lot to offer for artists and hippies and drug addicts. If it didn’t exist, where would the outdoorsy folks stop for gas? Or a bite to eat?”

 

“A bite to eat?? There is one fast food joint in this town. And it's not even in this town! It's in the next town over.” This no one in particular is starting to sound a little particular.

 

“Yeah but it’s THE Taco Tree! The chain so popular they spun it off once.” 

 

“That’s my point! What the hell is even a Taco Tree? Can’t they have a Taco Bell like a normal town?”

 

—

 

What the hell is even a Taco Bell?

 

—

 

Honestly, this place should be a ghost town, or at the very least a town that never existed at all. But it did exist, to no benefit of the ghosts still in this town.

 

—December 18th, 1934. Empire Mine, CA

 

Agnes Bourn, Born Agnes Moody, keeps the terranean rose garden quite well. The manor–or cottage as they liked to call it, is surrounded by greenery and fountains. In the heart of the Sierra Nevadas, greenery is easy to come by. The fountains, however, were imported. With a mere 777 acres to work with, it was difficult deciding how large the reflection pool should be. It needed to be large enough to compliment the towering oaks and pines, but it couldn't be so large that it dwarfed the painstakingly imported fountains. 

 

Her gardens are beautiful. Loved. Well-tended. It was hard to imagine the hundreds of miles of hollowed earth under such lush and cultivated landscape.

 

—17 minutes and 32 seconds- give or take a tachycardic time skip. It was impossible to hear the sound of powder igniting a little over half a mile below the roses and oaks and pines and fountains. 

 

—March 17th, 2006. Auburn, CA

 

The first no one and the other no one with them are each enjoying a gourmet taco at the infamous Taco Tree. Well, in the parked off-white 2004 Buick Lucerne in the parking lot. They went through the drive thru.

 

Ground beef (lightly seasoned), shredded cheese (cold), sour cream, chunks of tomato (roma), and shredded lettuce. Flour Tortilla, naturally.

 

The static in the car radio is a little unbearable, but it's an unavoidable price to pay to listen to AM news stations. Unfortunately, the news story that will rock the Sierra foothills won’t occur for another 38 days–when a sinkhole caused by a collapsing mine shaft opens up in a 32 year old man’s living room, swallowing him whole. 

 

—

There is something beautiful about a ghost town. The decayed wood and rusted fixtures that outlast the hands that made them. The graffiti and urine soaked walls of passersby’s unwilling to leave a corpse undefiled. The ivy and wild grasses that grow in man-made crevasses because they don’t know how to do anything else.

 

The silence of a place that was built and then abandoned.