Ghost Towning With CNN
Llano
by
THE phone call came
around 11:00 on Friday, October 11, 1996.
I was busy with a customer, and our departmental secretary showed me a
note that a gentleman named Jim Hill called, and wanted me to call him
back. Since being a municipal building
inspector in
First off a little background...
Ever since my book, Dust in the Wind – A Guide to American Ghost Towns, was
published in August 1996 by White's Electronics, life has changed
slightly. The news media (television and
local newspapers) have a tendency to publicize everything bad that happens in
our local cities, and to combat this, we have a full time public relations
person who constantly barrages the local media with news releases when anything
positive happens here in our town. About
a week after my book officially came into my hands, she sent out a small press
release to the two local newspapers. It
said something like..."Next time you come to city hall and talk to
the counter building inspector, you just might be speaking with Gary Speck, who
just had his first book published..."
Anyway, that press release netted a phone call from a reporter at
each of the papers. The local weekly,
published here in town, printed a small article, and two days later, it was
followed by another one in the daily paper out of
About two weeks later I started receiving calls from the
That got the ball rolling.
Then as previously mentioned above, I got THE phone call. My customer recognized the name and media
affiliation of the caller, and he told me "Go call him back, I can
wait."
I did, and he did.
"Hello, This is Gary Speck, and I'm
returning your phone call..."
Two hours later I was sitting in front of a television camera,
being interviewed by Jim Hill, a reporter for Ted Turner's Cable News Network
(CNN). At the end of the interview he
asked if there were any good ghost towns nearby that "we" could
visit. I said yes, as two of the ones
featured in my book were within a two-hour drive of LA.
"Could you take us to them?"
On Monday Oct. 14, I didn't have to work, so I drove into
Our first stop, just as the sun was about to rise, was at Llano
del Rio, an old Socialist colony site in the
LLANO DEL RIO
is located on State Highway
(SH) 138, 20 miles east of Palmdale.
Here in 1913 Job Harriman, a political activist, and avowed socialist,
purchased an old temperance colony site, and sold shares for a cooperative
venture to prove to the world that true socialism could work. Shares were sold for a dollar each, and
enough people purchased them, so in October 1913, the Llano del
Rio Company was incorporated. By May of
1914, Llano del
Within 18 months, 500 people lived in the self-sufficient
colony. However not all was rosy. Water supply problems affected crops, the
state dogged Harriman, and friction in the community threatened the very
harmony of the colony.
By 1917 most colonists had left, and in 1918 Harriman lost Llano
del
The three-person crew was impressed by the ruins, and I could see
that they too had picked up the ghosttowning
bug. After an hour or so, we loaded up
and headed north towards the hundred-year old gold mining town Randsburg, which sits in the heart of Southern California's
premier mining district, the
When we rounded the turn into Randsburg
the camera operator (who was also driving) slowed the van and made a comment
like "Oh wow!" I could hear
the gears turning in her head as we slowly drove through the old town.
Location
(present Llano):
·
Ctr
E Sec line, Sec 21, W Sec line Sec 22,
T5N, R9W, San Bernardino Baseline & Meridian
·
Latitude: 34.5058282 / 34° 30' 21" N
·
Longitude: -117.8178409 / 117° 49' 04" W
Llano del Rio (Hotel
ruins):
·
Ctr
Sec 21, T5N, R9W, San Bernardino Meridian
·
Latitude:
34.506415
·
Longitude:
-117.827114
RANDSBURG
is located in the northeast
end of the Rand Mountains, a mile west of US 395. It is the best semi-ghost
town in
For more about
this old mining town’s history, see our Randsburg
page for additional details.
Wandering through the town with a camera crew attracted very
little attention, and it was amazing how long it took to actually film a
two-minute segment. We wandered along
some of the backroads, and they filmed chocolate
colored wooden shacks, rusty tin roofs, and a leaning two-holer. We drove up to
Ducking into the store, I introduced myself to Mike Hillenbrand
the owner of the Randsburg General Store &
Boarding House (in 1996). We chewed the
fat for a few minutes while the camera crew interviewed one of his employees, a
long-time resident of the old mining town.
Then we sat down for an inexpensive lunch, after which the four of us
boarded the CNN van and headed back home.
To say that leading a
Unique is more like it.
Of course as we walked and talked I spoke about treasure hunting
in general and how various laws have impinged on the hobby. I also mentioned Western & Eastern Treasures
Magazine (who I write a monthly ghost town column for), and how the
magazine is in the forefront of education and awareness. I showed them a copy of The
Treasure Hunter’s Code of Ethics, and explained how
responsible metal detectorists and ghost towners abide by its tenets.
Unfortunately, none of that was shown on film. However, the general gist of the piece was
good positive press for our hobby, especially since it appeared as a
human-interest story on a national news broadcast. I don't really know how many people actually
watched CNN that night and saw the piece, but if only one person was
made aware of treasure hunting and ghost towning in a
positive light, then Ghost Towning with CNN
was worth it!
I guess this shows that you never know what will happen when you
reach out and try to share your love of the hobby!
Location
(Fire Station)
·
E-Ctr Sec 35, T29S, R40E, Mt. Diablo Baseline & Meridian
·
Latitude:
35.3678963 / 35° 22' 04" N
·
Longitude:
-117.6521884 / 117° 39’ 08” W
This was our GHOST TOWN OF THE MONTH for August 2002.
***************
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FIRST
POSTED: August
01, 2002
LAST
UPDATED: April 28, 2013
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