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This is Later with Lee Matthews the
Lee Matthews Podcast More what You Hear weekday

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afternoons on the Drive. Brent Underwood
is a character. You may not have

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heard of him, but he is
the owner of Cerro Gordol, an original

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Boomtown silver mine established in eighteen sixty
five. He lives on a mountain above

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Death Valley with no running water,
seven cats, six goats, and at

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least one goat, a ghost,
and he has written a book all about

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his experiences ghost Town living. Brent
Underwood's so glad to have you along.

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What got you to move out here
to this desolate place in the first place?

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Well, thanks for having me,
And that's the question I've had a

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long four years to think about.
You know. I moved up to the

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town in the March of twenty twenty, right at the beginning of the pandemic.

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But I think it was just all
love of his Growing up. My

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grandfather used to watch gun Smoke that
old Western shirt just over and over,

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and so the idea that this town, you know, right out of the

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American West, really was possible to
not just buy but live in seemed pretty

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uh, pretty good adventure. And
I think I signed up for an adventure,

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and I definitely got that. Well, how did you hear about in

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the first place? Were you out
there just exploring and came across it?

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Did you look at it online or
did you were you just did you come

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across it by accident? Yes.
So a buddy of mine actually sent it

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to me. He was living in
Los Angeles and he saw this you know

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link that says a ghost town for
sale, and he sent it over my

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way because at the time I was
I was living in Austin, Texas,

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and I had a bed and breakfast
in an old Victorian mansion, you know,

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one of the two story wrap around
porches, and I was running a

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bed and breakfast out of that,
and he thought, hey, man,

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this might be your next hospitality project. He sent it more as a joke.

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I don't think they. I don't
think he thought it as a as

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a serious prospect. He was more
like, Aha, you know, this

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is a funny link that I'll send
to you because the town sounds about four

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hundred acres. There's about twenty buildings
from the eighteen hundreds on it, but

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it's got no running water to the
middle of nowhere, and there's a lot

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of difficulty with it. But I
just I don't know, it just it

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caught something about me. I got
very excited about it. I'll love I

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guess. And yeah, I've been
not there for about four years. What's

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the elevation. We're at eighty five
hundred feet. Okay, that's pretty high.

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It's not. Yeah, it's the
high desert too, so it's not

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you know, there's very barren still
and our road to the town starts at

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thirty five hundred feet and so it's
the dirt road that eight miles goes about

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about five thousand feet in elevation,
so it's a it's up there. Yeah.

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So seroh, Gordo, How what
is the origin of the name Fat

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Mountain? Basically Fat Hill? Yeah, because you know, I guess back

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in the eighteen hundreds it was so
fat with silver. I mean, uh,

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eighteen sixty five is going to established
as a mining town, and if

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you adjusted for inflation, they pulled
about five hundred million dollars worth the minerals

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out of the hill. So it
was a very big boom count for California.

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It was the largest silver mining California
at the time it was operating.

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And so this is the town with
four thousand residents, hundreds of buildings,

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and just all sorts of different things
going on. And so, yeah,

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I guess the original miners that found
the place for Mexican miners, then they

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decided Fat Hill is the name of
the hill, and it still is today.

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And this is in the Death Valley
region. So do you look down

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upon Death Valley. Yeah, we're
at the ridge right about eight miles from

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Death National Park, so I can
see the whole park. Then if you

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turn the other way, you see
all of the Sierra Nevada and you see

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Mount Whitney, which is the tallest
in the Lower forty eight tallest mountain in

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the Lower forty So it's an interesting
contrast. You have the dominating mountains on

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one side and then just the vast
desert the other way. Brent Underwood,

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author of Ghost Town, Living,
Mining for Purpose, and Chasing Dreams at

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the Edge of Death Valley. At
what point did the town become a ghost

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town? Yeah? They stopped mining
around nineteen forty, which is actually a

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very long active life for a mind. Absolutely, nineteen sixty to nineteen forty,

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because usually that they thought these camps
were going to last by maybe eight

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years but it kind of had eight
two eras that had the silver and lead

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erat first, and then it had
a zinc era for about another thirty years,

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and so their mining a variety of
minerals. Is there anything left of

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the mine or there deep shafts or
was it more of a strip mining operation?

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Yeah, I was all underground hard
rocks. There's still about thirty miles

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of mines underneath the town. It's
crazy to think about. And the main

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mine shaft here goes nine hundred feet
straight down, and off of that mine

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shaft, there's about six different levels, and those levels just snake everywhere.

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Have you been down in that,
Yeah, I spent a lot of time

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down there. Actually. Now I
think it's fun. I think it's interesting,

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and it's the history of the town, and so I've explored I would

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say probably about half of the probably
fifteen miles of mines maybe down there,

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just looking for any artifacts or left
behind things that the miners used to leave,

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or maybe even so a little silver
or there's a little bit left.

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There's not enough to make a'recially
viable, but I've refined down a little

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bit of silver to make some rings
and coins and stuff. Have you found

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anything significant or has it. Because
of the life of the mine, A

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lot of that was already removed before
you came along. A lot of it

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was removed. They're still pretty heavy
machinery that was welded in place that they

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can't get out of the mine.
So there's still some pretty serious winches and

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different hoists that are down there.
But I think that the thing, the

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thing that mine explorers are always looking
for our Levi jeans. That's the real

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fine is Levi Strauss created the genes
as we know them for California silver mines

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in the eighteen seventies, and so
you can find essentially like the first pair

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of jeans as the world knows it, down in the mine. So that's

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what we're always looking for. Now, tell us about your weather. I

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mean we always hear about Death Death
Valley and how dry it is and how

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how how hot it is. But
you're pretty you're up higher, so I

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imagine your weather pattern's a little different. Yeah, well it's not as hot.

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I remember a couple of years ago, maybe two years ago now,

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Death Vally hit one hundred and thirty
one degrees. I think it was close

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to the hottest temperature every corn on
Earth, and I remember somehow the Weather

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Channel got my phone number. They
called me and asked me what it was

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like living in the hottest place on
Earth. And I looked outside of the

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temperature was only about ninety five.
So we're saved from a lot of that

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heat just because of the elevation.
But on the flip side of that,

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when it gets to be winter,
you just get slammed. We've gotten you

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know already. There's times this winter
and we had five feet of snow across

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the old town and so, you
know, moving around becomes pretty difficult.

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Well, all of California has been
getting a lot of snow this particular winter.

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Brent Underwood is the author of Ghost
Town, Living, Mining for Purpose,

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and Chasing Dreams at the Edge of
Death Valley. Your memoir, well,

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I don't know if it's a memoir
as much as meditation. Maybe.

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Yeah, I think closer to meditation
than the memoirs. This is the right

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way to describe it. And so
your book is about not just the town

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itself, but about being alone and
and what you have to do day to

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day. Yeah, it's about my
experience living up there the last four years.

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Kind of some of the things that
have happened, from the natural disasters

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to the friendships that are formed,
to exploring the minds, as well as

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weaving in the history of the town
the characters that were there in the past.

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You know, it's just a very
lively place back in the day,

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and a lot of the history has
been lost over time. So I try

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to recall what I can from my
research as well as weaving my own stories

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over the last four years. But
Cassidy Mark Twain were said to have come

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through that town at one point or
another. And you have a ghost,

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can you tell us about it?
Yeah? I have my one ghost story.

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But the most popular ghost people see
in town is a woman named Lola

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Travis, and Lola was the owner
of one of the brothels back in the

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day. Lola's Palace of Pleasure was
the name of it, and apparently she's

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seen as the woman in the black
dressed And my interaction with her was before

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I was living there full time.
I came up and I saw somebody in

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the window of a building that was
supposed to be vacant, and so I

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ended up locking the door, turning
off a light that was in there.

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In the next day seemed that maybe
she turned back on the light and kind

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of movesing things around. My way
of handling that was just to avoid that

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building. I feel like there's plenty
of buildings up there, so I finally

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give them their space. They give
you mind. Ghost Town Living Brent Underwood

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is the author Mining for Purpose and
Chasing Dreams at the Edge of Death Valley.

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I'd love to ask you more about
what you've learned living up there and

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what you've learned about yourself and about
the world, but you'll just have to

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read about it in Ghost Town Living. Brent Underwood, thanks for joining us,

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of course, thanks for having me. Thanks for listening to Later with

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Lee Matthews, the Lee Matthews Podcast, and remember to listen to The Drive

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Live weekday afternoons from five to seven
and Ihearts Media Presentation