Ghost town owner Brent Underwood shares highs and lows of life in abandoned Cerro Gordo

A man who spent more than $2 million buying a “ghost town” which he has lived in for four years has documented the sometimes “terrifying” but also “beautiful” experience.

Brent Underwood, whose You Tube channel Ghost Town Living has 1.69 million subscribers, spent his “life savings” acquiring the abandoned mountain mining town of Cerro Gordo in California, in the US, at the “edge of Death Valley”.

He made the irregular move in a bid to breathe new life into the desolate town, which comprises several vacant houses, shacks and cabins in various condition.

Cerro Gordo was once the largest silver mine in California. A murder a week was reported there during its busiest period in the 1800’s, the blurb from Underwood’s new book reveals.

Underwood has released the book to accompany his popular You Tube channel, which documents the ups and downs of his life in dormant Cerro Gordo.

Ghost Town Living: Mining for Purpose and Chasing Dreams at the Edge of Death Valley is published Penguin and will be out in Australia on April 23.

“I have been living up in this town for the past four yeas straight, trying to just bring it to life,” Underwood says in a You Tube video announcing the book to his fans.

“I captured a lot of that in videos like this, I showed the good times, the heartbreak, the history I have uncovered, the people I have met, the projects we have have done, the adventures I have gone on, and hopefully a little bit about how all of that has changed me.”

Underwood’s most popular video, I Spent My Life Savings On An Abandoned Ghost Town, explains how the purchase transpired, set to haunting footage of the town, which is about three hours from Los Angeles.

He explains that he and a friend named Jon “sunk” their savings – reportedly $US1.4 million ($AU$2,129,000) – into Cerro Gordo during the COVID-19 outbreak in 2019, and he shifted there from his former base in Austin, Texas. They did so to revive the area, which has a rich history but, until Underwood made his move and built a following, was largely forgotten.

“Sometimes it’s beautiful and amazing, sometimes it’s terrifying and the scariest thing I’ve ever done. I grew up in the flatlands of Florida, so this is all new territory for me,” the caption to the video says.

Underwood films a tour of one of the cabins he has been living in, with odds and ends left behind from previous occupants, generations ago, a wood-burning fire where he dries his socks, and vast bookcases filled with relics.

Some of the caves in the hills became houses for the many mining workers, and they bolted doors to the stone to keep out the unforgiving elements.

The video has been watched more than 8.7 million times.

Projects Underwood has embarked on include renovating a deck, updating the eerie bunk house – where Underwood says he encountered his one and only “ghost story” – and turning a shack into writers’ retreat or studio.

“Admittedly, prior to buying Cerro Gordo, I was a firm non-believer in ghosts,” he says in a video tour of the town, revealing how in the bunk house, he saw a curtain opening and closing and a “little face looked out”, while a light was on in the kitchen.

Some contractors had been staying in the house, so he thought nothing of it, but when he spoke to the caretaker Robert the next morning, Robert told Underwood the contractors left a fortnight prior.

Underwood put a padlock on the bunk house front door and when he returned later, the light was back on in the kitchen, although the door was still locked.

‘So, ghosts? I don’t know,” he says.

The blurb for his book, which is already a New York Times bestseller, sheds light on the landmark the town once was, long before this new burst of fame.

“Over $500 million worth of ore was pulled from the miles of tunnels below the town. Butch Cassidy, Mark Twain, and other infamous characters of the American West were rumored to have stayed there. Newspapers reported a murder a week. But that was over 150 years ago.”