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    LIFE Ghost Towns
    LIFE Ghost Towns
    LIFE Ghost Towns
    Ebook144 pages1 hour

    LIFE Ghost Towns

    By The Editors of LIFE

    ()

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    About this ebook

    LIFE Magazine presents Ghost Towns for LIFE Ghost Towns.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherLife
    Release dateOct 25, 2019
    ISBN9781547850112
    LIFE Ghost Towns

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      Book preview

      LIFE Ghost Towns - The Editors of LIFE

      ghosts.

      THE SHERIFF’S BURIED GOLD

      BANNACK

      MONTANA

      Many of Bannack’s buildings, including the schoolhouse that served as a Masonic Hall (note the symbol on top of the building, center), still have furniture inside. Some are allegedly haunted—including the Hotel Meade, where specter of a drowned girl has reportedly been seen.

      On July 28, 1862, prospector John White discovered gold in Grasshopper Creek in what is now southwestern Montana. The find attracted a flood of prospectors to the unincorporated area, which soon became Bannack—Montana’s first boomtown and the territory’s first capital. By spring 1863, the town had a population of 3,000 and a growing reputation for the lawlessness that came to epitomize the Wild West. Bannack’s sheriff, Henry Plummer, was an ex-con who’d recently spent time in California’s San Quentin State Prison. According to local lore, he was the leader of a gang known as the Innocents, who had hijacked gold shipments on the stagecoach route between Bannack and Virginia City, reportedly killing 100 people in the process. Though Plummer’s guilt was never proved, a group of locals called the Montana Vigilantes hanged the sheriff and two deputies in January 1864.

      Ah, but here’s the rub: Before he died, 27-year-old Plummer claimed he had hidden his weight in gold in an unknown spot; if the vigilantes would give him two hours on horseback, he said, he would bring it back. Of course, two hours would have given the lawless lawman plenty of time to escape, so the vigilantes hanged him anyway. Contemporary historians have questioned these accounts, suggesting that Plummer was innocent and that the stories are, in the words of one biographer, fabulous tales . . . created in an attempt to exonerate the vigilantes, as well as increase newspaper sales. Nevertheless, news of the supposed treasure sparked a furious, if ultimately futile, search.

      Thanks to Bannack’s explosive expansion, President Abraham Lincoln officially established the Montana Territory in 1864, but gold was becoming harder to find, and prospectors moved on to richer lodes. Mining in Bannack continued until the 1930s, but the depleted town became a state park in 1954 and is now a National Historic Landmark. More than 60 well-preserved buildings still remain on the site. And Sheriff Plummer’s legendary gold continues to attract fortune hunters—including local William Jappe, who is convinced that the treasure is hidden in multiple locations between Virginia City and Bannack. Nobody would bury their eggs in one basket, he said.

      Among Bannack’s eerie ruins, you’ll find an old barbershop (left), what’s left of a hotel (top), and a rusting car.

      Bannack is somewhat unique among American ghost towns in that most of its 60-some surviving structures can still be explored by the public.

      GENOCIDAL GROUNDS

      KAYAKÖY

      TURKEY

      Your race will be destroyed, the displaced Greek Christians of Kayaköy were told in 1916 by a Turkish magistrate who threatened them with genocide if they did not convert to Islam. All the Greeks refused, according to the Greek Genocide Resource Center.

      Beginning in the 14th century, Anatolian Muslims and Greek Orthodox Christians cohabited peacefully in the mountainside town of Livissi, now known as Kayaköy. Located in the Taurus Mountains of southern Turkey’s Kaya Valley, the area comprised two settlements: The Christians, who made up most of the population, lived on the hillside, while Muslims inhabited the valley. Over time, the population grew to 20,000, but the relative harmony ended in 1914, when the outbreak of World War I led to widespread Turkish persecution of the Greeks. Hundreds of Greeks were murdered during these offensives, according to the Greek Genocide Resource Center. Women were raped and their clothes and shoes taken from them. By 1918, Kayaköy was almost entirely deserted.

      In 1923, after the Greco-Turkish War ended with the defeat of Greece, the Treaty of Lausanne instituted a compulsory population exchange that forced Turks out of Greece and the Greeks out of Turkey. The Turks who were forced to relocate from Greece to Kayaköy found the windy, arid area inhospitable and were cowed by rumors that it was haunted by the ghosts of the Greeks who had been slaughtered there. They eventually moved on. In 1957, the 7.1-magnitude Fethiye earthquake destroyed most of Kayaköy’s structures, and the area was abandoned.

      In 1988, the Turkish Ministry designated the Kayaköy remains as an archaeological site and turned it into an outdoor museum. Later, it became a filming location for The Water Diviner, actor Russell Crowe’s 2015 directorial debut. Now two decaying Greek Orthodox churches, a 17th-century fountain, and 350 roofless homes are all that remain of a place that proved—for a while,

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