Shadows of the Gold Rush

I travelled through emptiness, where once a crowd flowed. In my pocket, I had only a film, dust, and the notion that the silence of old towns would be louder than any guidebook. And I was right.

Bodie, California – wooden facades are here in 'arrested decay': allowed to deteriorate so slowly that everything remains in place, as if the locals darted out just for a dose of dynamite and never returned. In the middle of the street, the creaking of boards greets me; every squeak sounds like a late telegram from 1880, when over ten thousand people lived here and two legendary saloons were built in just one month.

In the mountain pass above Death Valley lies Cerro Gordo. Silver flew from here by stagecoaches directly onto the construction scaffolding of Los Angeles; today, in the undulating metal of the remaining smelters, the wind stirs, smelling of gypsum and rusty chains. When the evening clears, you can see all the way to the Pacific – as far as the dreams of the locals once reached, that 'every ton of ore is a lottery ticket.'

Bakerville and Cache Creek in the British Columbian wilderness are different: here, silence is absorbed by moss and smells of pine. In Bakerville, I hear wooden troughs for panning still rustling in the dirt; it is said that Billy Barker pulled out nuggets from a hole that would today fill museum display cases in Ottawa. In Cache Creek, the bones of bison stand hidden in the sediments of a warm desert that once lined the Cariboo Wagon Road – the most daring column of the north.

And then Randsburg – a 'living ghost town.' A few residents still open a bar here, so we have someone to tell that ghosts are real. From the collapsed terraces, I look at the dead bergs and listen to the clatter more from my own imagination than from engines; the traffic on State Route 395 quiets down as the sun barely slips behind the Sierra Nevada.

Columbia and Coloma are two sisters: the first dressed in a period reservation, the second covered with low grass by Sutter's Mill, where in 1848 the first nugget sparked the whole frenzy. Out of season, I remain alone with the murmuring of the American River – and I have the feeling that metal is still clinking in its current.

In the dense shadow of sequoias lies Dutch Flat. Once, the Chinese built the transcontinental railway here; today, there is so much fir resin everywhere that it drowns out even the faint ozone of the old telegraph wires. I spotted graffiti on the station ramp in symbols that remind me of the claims of long-forgotten workers.

And finally Nipton, a desert stop with a few palm trees that modern visionaries briefly rented for solar and hemp dreams. When I arrive here, the sun scorches the asphalt of highway number 164 so strongly that the air shimmers. Yet there is something refreshing here: as if the spirit of the pioneers still convinces further generations that the desert is not an end, but a beginning.

I have visited many other forgotten as well as still famous places from San Diego to Alaska during my travels, and I keep returning to these spots. Here you have just a small taste from my archive of hundreds of photographs from the 'wild west'…