Exclusive | Man goes viral for buying an abandoned California mining town, urges people to visit
Brent Underwood has found a certain kind of gold in a ghost town.Eight years ago, the Austin-based entrepreneur used his life’s savings to buy Cerro Gordo, an abandoned silver-mining town near Lone Pine, California.
“I’ve always had a love of history and hospitality,” Underwood told The Post, recalling a childhood spent watching Gunsmoke with his grandfather.“There’s a romanticism to the West that’s pulled millions of people out here, and it had a hold on me early.”That same romanticism has driven Underwood to breathe life into Cerro Gordo, restoring the town’s buildings, preserving its history and beckoning visitors back to its dusty streets.
Spanish for “fat mountain,” Cerro Gordo was founded in 1865, when silver, lead, and zinc were discovered in the high climes of the Inyo Range.At its peak, over 4,000 miners lived and worked in Cerro Gordo, their toil helping to make it California’s most prosperous silver mine.In a recent TikTok, Underwood, who moved to Cerro Gordo full time in 2020, treated viewers to a tour of the expansive 360-acre property, which was largely deserted by the 1940s.
“It came with over a dozen buildings, 30 miles of mineshafts, and all sorts of cool things,” he said.He notes that nearly a billion dollars worth of minerals were once pulled from the mine, a glut of wealth that helped shape the West.
“Cerro Gordo silver went down the mountain on mule teams and into Los Angeles when Los Angeles was still a small dusty town,” he said, noting that while Los Angeles is now known around the world, the role of Cerro Gordo has been largely lost to history.“I feel like part of my job is to fix that, and that story doesn’t survive if the place doesn’t survive.”Underwood’s video, which has more than half a million views, documents the former dynamite storehouse that has been reimagined as a hidden library.
“All this wood I brought in from the mine and put in these shelves, and all the books related to mini...