This part guidebook, part history book is an up-to-date collection of photos and true stories about the most famous ghost towns of Montana—packaged with more than 100 historical images.

Photographs-landscapes, townsites, homes, stores, mining structures.

Distributed by the University of Nebraska Press for Caxton Press Travel through the ghost-town country of the Pacific Northwest, guided by the camera and pen of Norman D. Weis. Both well-known and obscure towns, with intriguing names such as Comeback Mine Camp, Electric, Ruby, Greenback, Disautel, and Old Todora entice you to explore their secrets.

Tombstone, Bodie, St. Elmo, Silver City: these are some of the most famous of the Old West ghost towns and mining camps that dot America's landscape and provide hints to the country's history. But literally thousands more are scattered throughout the West, with some states boasting hundreds of abandoned boomtowns. Attracting thousands of visitors every year, many of these are protected by public and private parties alike, and visits are carefully regulated in order to preserve these valuable historical relics. Clint Thomsen describes various types of ghost town, explains their histories, and outlines ongoing research and archaeological study into decaying towns and mining camps.

For fans of Gillian Flynn, Caroline Cooney, and R.L. Stine comes Ghost Town: Seven Ghostly Stories from four-time Edgar Allen Poe Young Adult Mystery Award winner Joan Lowery Nixon. In the old towns of the Wild West, there’s more to hear than the paint peeling from the deserted storefronts, more than the tumbleweeds somersaulting down the empty streets. If you listen hard, you can hear voices whispering stories. Stories like the one about the lost mine in Maiden, Montana, or how Wyatt Earp won the shoot-out at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Arizona. And don’t forget about the Bad Man from Bodie, California—he’s still searching for his lost finger! Can you hear them? “An entertaining collection.” –School Library Journal “Combining history and mystery…[Ghost Town: Seven Ghostly Stories] recalls classic campfire tales.” –Booklist “A well conceived (and titled) collection…[of] chilling short stories.” –Kirkus Reviews

The story of the American mining frontier can be traced through the ghost towns that dot the western landscape to this day, from the camps of California’s forty-niners to the twentieth-century ruins in the Nevada desert. These abandoned towns mark an epoch of high adventure, of quick wealth and quicker poverty, of gambling and gunslinging and hell-raising. Those who have seen the Old West movies sometimes think that the legends of the Wild West were invented by screenwriters. The ghost towns remain, and their battered ruins testify that the legends are true. Behind the tall tales is a history where a fortune could be made in a week and lost over the course of an evening. With a historian’s attention to fact and a novelist’s gift for dramatic storytelling, celebrated science fiction author Robert Silverberg brings these adventures back to life in the rowdy splendor of their heyday in Ghost Towns of the American West. History and travelers’ tales are woven together with clarity and wit to create a lively account of a fascinating era in our history. Lorence Bjorklund’s illustrations, rich in detail, portray the ghost towns in their glory and in their dusty decline.

Thanks to Charlotte's travel-writer dad, the Beacon Street Girls are headed to a luxe resort in Montana. But when their dream vacation turns into a snowy nightmare, the BFFs are split up. While Katani and Isabel enjoy room service and hanging out with country music superstar twins Nik and Sam, Charlotte, Maeve, and Avery are stranded with Mr. Ramsey in a haunted old ghost town. Whether snowboarding and chilling with celebrities or solving an old-fashioned mystery with ghosts, wolves, and romance, the BSG find fun and adventure in the Wild West.

Ghosts Towns of the West is filled with photographs, maps, history, and detailed directions to find the best ghost towns to linger in the wake of the Old West. Ghost Towns of the West blazes a trail through the dusty crossroads and mossy cemeteries of the American West, including one-time boomtowns in Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming. The book reveals the little-known stories of long-dead soldiers, indigenous peoples, settlers, farmers, and miners. Perfect for planning a road trip, each section covers a geographic area and town entries are arranged by location to make this the most user-friendly book on ghost towns west of the Mississippi. Most ghost towns are within a short drive of major cities out West, and they make excellent day trip excursions. If you happen to be in or near Los Angeles, Phoenix, Las Vegas, or El Paso, for example, you ought to veer towards the nearest ghost town. Western ghost towns can also easily be visited during jaunts to national parks, including Grand Canyon, Yosemite, Crater Lake, Mount Rainier, Glacier, Yellowstone, and many others throughout the West. Ghost Towns of the West is a comprehensive guide to former boomtowns of the American West, covering ghost towns in eleven states from Washington to New Mexico, and from California to Montana. This book has everything you need to learn about, visit, and explore a modern remnant of how life used to be on the western range.

Ghost Towns of the Pacific Northwest is a guidebook to the best boomtowns of Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia. Once thriving centers for mining, fishing, logging, and national defense, these abandoned camps and pioneer villages still ring with history. Ghost town expert Philip Varney equips you with everything you need to know to explore these remnants of the past. Featuring color maps, driving and walking directions, town histories, touring recommendations, and stunning color photography, Ghost Towns of the Pacific Northwest details famous sites such as Port Gamble (Washington), Fort Steele (British Columbia), and Jacksonville (Oregon) — in addition to out-of-the-way gems like Holden (Washington), Sandon (British Columbia), and Flora (Oregon). See the region as you have never seen it before with this essential guidebook to the glory days of the Pacific Northwest!

Does the past really matter? Fleeing a failed marriage and a failed profession, a woman on the dangerous side of forty decides a Montana ghost town holds the key to the mystery of her birth. Hard-living AJ Armstrong is obsessed by history, especially her own. Abandoning her academic career, she arrives in the run-down mountain town of Misfire, Montana, armed only with her willingness to take on the world with a double-shot of irony chased down with a dose of pessimism. Roped into a temporary job at the town's weekly newspaper, AJ finds a friend in worldly-wise Rheta, a former prostitute turned editor. Rheta not only knows where all the bodies are buried in Misfire, she has a pretty good idea where AJ should seek the scandals still haunting nearby Bannack, infamous for its violent history. AJ's plan is to figure out how her roots are entangled with that ghost town's past—and then to hit the highway. Before she can escape, AJ is warned to “leave the past alone,” advice amplified by a devastating fire and a death that may or may not be accidental. But stubbornly digging through history is what AJ does best. As lives intersect and specters are raised, Bannack finally gives up its ghosts, and AJ's life is forever altered. Winner of the prestigious Utah Original Writing Competition, this novel conveys a sense of small-town Montana life as lived in the shadow of the mountains and reveals its story with sharp humor, distinctive characters, and a satisfying ending. The author is a Big Sky Country native who spent her early career as a newspaper reporter for Southwest Montana newspapers before settling down to teaching and to directing the Writing Center at Southern Utah University.