History
10 stories
The Town Bisbee Became After the Copper Ran Out
Bisbee, Arizona, was built on copper; after the mines closed in the 1970s, it rebuilt itself as something else.
Leadville, the highest city in the United States
At 10,152 feet above sea level, Leadville, Colorado, remains the highest incorporated city in the United States.
In Moab, the uranium boom left more than a pile
A Cold War uranium boom made Moab a mining town, and its mill tailings stayed beside the Colorado River for decades.
The decade-long boom of Rhyolite, Nevada
Shorty Harris and Ed Cross found gold in the Bullfrog Hills in 1904; the town that followed had a decade of life.
Wallace and the Interstate Above It
In Idaho's Silver Valley, Wallace refused to let I-90 demolish it, so the highway crosses above the town.
What Chinati Did to Marfa
In the high desert of West Texas, a minimalist art foundation turned a shrinking ranching town into a destination.
What the Wind Keeps at Bodie
In the high country east of the Sierra, a gold town from the 1870s still stands, held upright by wind, snow, and the policy of arrested decay.
The Copper Town Built on a Slope That Moves
Jerome still hangs off Cleopatra Hill above the Verde Valley, a copper town whose streets keep creeping downhill long after the mines went quiet.
Medora, at the Edge of the Badlands
A town of barely a hundred in the North Dakota badlands, where the frontier is re-enacted every summer and the wind never stops.
The Road That Stopped Being a Road
Two hundred miles of old US highway, and the towns the interstate left behind in 1962.