Showing posts with label ghost town hunting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ghost town hunting. Show all posts

Tuesday, October 8, 2013

Of Books and Ghost Towns

Today's post is brought to you by Janalyn Voigt. Escape into Creative Worlds of fiction. 

My husband and I are about to head for Montana, where I've been invited to participate in a the Festival of the Book. I'm thrilled to be included in an author panel with Tracie Peterson and Janet Chester Bly, among other favorite authors.

It's a thrilling opportunity to spend time with other writers and with readers, all celebrating our passion for books! 

There's already a lot of excitement in the air. You can check out the on-the-street buzz on the Facebook page for Humanities Montana Festival of the Book.

This all came about in an amazing way. My friend, Angela Breidenbach invited me to stay with her when I visited Montana for a research trip in August. We set a date and my husband took time off work, but then circumstances prevented our going. It was disappointing, especially since going on research trips for the books I write is one of my bucket list items. We rescheduled the trip for October, and that's when Angie told me about the Festival of the Book. Had I gone on my research trip in August, I would have missed out on a golden opportunity. But the story is even more interesting.

You see, my main research destination is the city of Bannack, now a ghost town protected as a state park. In July it suffered from a freak flood. Much of the town suffered water damage, old boardwalks washed away, and one building was destroyed. One woman suffered a horrible ordeal in the flood but came through it through prayer. Click here to read her account. Bannack was closed to visitors as workers restored buildings, rebuilt walkways, and even resurrected the fallen building. 

I wondered if the town would ever be the same until I read a post online about the loving care with which it has been restored. Bannack is now open to the public again and ready for my visit.I'm looking forward to seeing the town and grateful I didn't go on my trip at the wrong time. 

We'll also explore Virginia City, Nevada City, and Robber's Roost, all of which will feature in the first novel in my Montana Gold series. My agent and I haven't found a publisher for my series yet, but I believe in this story and will do my research against that possibility.

I now have a professional Canon camera and will capture images on the trip. If you share my love of ghost towns, you're welcome to stop by my Historical Worlds site, where I write about my ghost town adventures and post photographs I take.

Meanwhile, I'm giving away three digital copies of my medieval epic fantasy novel, DawnSinger, at Debbie Lynn Costillo's  The Sword and the Spirit blog. Entry is easy, so I hope you'll click over for a chance to win. There's also an entertaining interview (Debbie asks the best questions) in which I reveal something I kept hidden for many years. The giveaway ends soon, so don't be slow! 




As an author, I offer readers escape into creative worlds of fiction. DawnSinger, book one of my epic fantasy series, Tales of Faeraven, published with Pelican Books in 2012. To learn more about me and the genres I write, visit me at the author website for Janalyn Voigt.



Thursday, August 8, 2013

The Night I Slept in a Ghost Town

This post is brought to you by Janalyn Voigt. Escape into  Creative Worlds.

I peered out the tall window and across the wide, deserted street to a collection of dilapidated buildings, including one just large enough for a door and window that boldly displayed a weathered sign: Shaniko Bank. Shadows lengthened toward dusk and the horizon bloomed with the colors of sunset, but heat blasted me without mercy and the air did not stir.

My fantasy of sleeping in a ghost town somehow hadn’t included being baked alive in a hotel room without air conditioning. Ah, the joys of reality!

1910 photograph of the Columbia Southern Hotel, now the Shaniko Hotel , Public Domain Image
I’d first discovered Shaniko while on something of a zany ghost-town-hunting vacation in the high desert of eastern Oregon. My family had spent countless hours navigating winding roads through barren hillsides, peering in the windows of locked buildings, worrying about stepping on rattlesnakes, looking for gold near an old mine, and driving onto private property (with the puzzled farmer’s permission) in search of what turned out to be a couple of swaybacked buildings too dangerous to enter. Ghost town hunting has its share of pathos but it also can reward the diligent with unexpected moments where history comes alive.

This was one of those. Daydreaming caught me up. Who else might have looked from this very window, watching the sun go down in a similar heat wave? What stories did the empty rooms tell? No concierge had greeted us when we arrived, and no one was on duty now. Check-in had been through the hotel’s restaurant, which was now closed. From the silence, we were the only guests.



The historic Columbia Southern Hotel (built ca. 1900), located at the corner of 4th and E Streets in Shaniko, Oregon, United States, is listed on the US National Register of Historic Places (NRHP). The hotel, currently named Shaniko Hotel, also lies within the NRHP-listed Shaniko Historic District.


Image by Ian Poellet (User:Werewombat) (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AColumbia_Southern_Hotel_2009_-_Shaniko_Oregon.jpg
Shaniko’s bent toward tourism had come as a surprise on that earlier trip. We’d stopped to eat and learn a little about the town. Shaniko, built on sheep farming, was once the wool capital of the western United States. An interesting fact about the town is that spring water pumped from the Cross Hollows canyon to the south was kept in two wooden tubs in the water tower and distributed to the town through pipes. 

Although I prefer ghost towns in an arrested decay state of preservation, when I discovered you could actually spend the night in the hotel, the idea took hold of me. I promised myself I’d come back someday, and now, years later, I'd returned. 

I reflected on the intervening years. So much had changed in my life since my younger self had entered this hotel. What had happened to the ghost towns we'd visited on that earlier vacation? Was the leaning stamp mill in Susanville still standing or had time erased that remnant of the past? Had the farmer’s canting buildings finally collapsed? 

An awareness of the fleeting nature of time ached through me. Perhaps this was why I’d come back to Shaniko, to reconnect with my own yesterdays in this place of history.



For more of Janalyn's ghost town stories, visit Historical Worlds
Note: Shaniko Hotel is currently closed and not available to the public.