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Add The California Post on Google Brent Underwood has found a certain kind of gold in a ghost town.
Eight years ago, the Austin-based entrepreneur used $1.4 million from his life’s savings to buy Cerro Gordo , an abandoned silver-mining town near Lone Pine, California in 2018.
“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.
I bought an abandoned mining town from the 1800s and these are my favorite spots 👻 ⛏️
“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 mining,” he shared.
“This is a really fun place to get away from the world,” added Underwood.
From dynamite to iniquity, the next stop on the tour is a former brothel known as Lola’s Palace of Pleasure, owned by the eponymous Lola Travis.
Underwood assures that the brothel will one day be a museum and a testament to the inspiring grit of the women who worked there.
“Lola had a remarkable story; she ran a successful business in a mining camp full of drunk and armed men and made it work. The women are the part of the history of these camps that gets lost; I want to make sure it survives.”
Next door to the storied house of ill repute is the original assay offices where fortunes were measured by officials who determined the worth of a miner’s hard-won ore.
“Here is where you learned whether you’re rich or not,” explained Underwood, who is also the author of the New York Times bestseller, Ghost Town Living: Mining for Purpose and Chasing Dreams at the Edge of Death Valley .
“They would come in here, bring their sample, the guy behind the counter would crush it up, melt it down, and tell you how much silver was in your clai…