Product Description

If it is abandoned by all or most of its inhabitants, a settlement becomes a ghost town. The buildings and dirt streets may remain, but the character and soul of the place change entirely. And so it was with mining camps, lumber camps, and cowboy towns scattered across America, particularly in the West: places with names like Gregory"s Diggings, Deadwood, Bodie, Calico, Goldfield, and Tombstone, some of the over 30,000 deserted towns in the United States. Why did people come to these isolated places? Why did they leave? As Raymond Bial"s narrative explores the history of our ghost towns, his well-composed photo-graphs silently tell their stories: of bustling, muddy streets, of large mercantile stores, and, ultimately, of short-lived dreams of gold, fertile land, or simply a good place to call home.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #239239 in Books
• Published on: 2001-02-26
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 48 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Bial's latest photo-essay delves into the mystery of abandoned Western towns and offers insight into the region's boom-and-bust legacy but ultimately disappoints. The volume begins by posing the questions "What sad and joyous events happened within the tumbledown walls and wind-blown streets?" and "Why did people settle in these lonesome places?" Unfortunately, the real draw of the ghost towns was the larger-than-life characters who came through them, and the sense of immediacy and the human cast that made Bial's The Underground Railroad so successful goes missing here. The author's solid research incorporates some primary source quotes and touches on some of the Wild West's best-known incidents (the shoot-out at the OK Corral; Wild Bill Hickock getting shot in the back during a poker game), but never fully captures the flavor of these colorful legends. (Fans of these dark heroes would do better with Andrew Glass's recent Bad Guys.) The best of Bial's photographs zoom in on telling details: a metal sculpture of a prospector, aged to a gray that blends with a cloudy sky; a saloon's windowsill filled with liquor bottles, overtaken by cobwebs and dust, filtering sunlight through plum and moss glass. But a few photos feature the same subjects, and several captions repeat nearly identical wording. Still, for aficionados of the Gold Rush or westward expansion, the photos here are worth a look. Ages 8-12.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal

Gr 4-8-At the heart of Bial's new book are the photographs, most of which are his: sharply focused, brightly colored daytime shots of remaining or restored buildings and the tools and necessities of their former inhabitants, or moody twilit skies against which the silhouettes of old buildings rear up. There is also a scattering of vintage photographs that stand out distinctly from Bial's more vivid approach. The text, in which the author moves from a general discussion of how locales come to be abandoned to a more specific look at the ghost towns of the 19th-century American West and the people who created and vacated them, can be described as an extended essay. Period quotations, especially several from Mark Twain, provide pointed insights into the viewpoints of the people who lived in these communities. Bial also surveys some of the most famous residents of various towns, including the Earp brothers and their involvement in the shoot-out at the O.K. Corral. The lack of an index or a division of the text into thematic or chronological chapters will limit the book's use for reports or research, as might the occasionally romanticized comments. However, this is a topic that has not been recently treated for younger readers, and fans of photography and the Old West will be charmed by the author's details and the clarity of his shots. An extensive bibliography will also guide readers who want to know more to the appropriate books.-Coop Renner, Moreno Elementary School, El Paso, TX

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Gr. 3-5. Similar in design to Bial's earlier books, this photo-essay offers views of America's ghost towns and discusses their place in history. Several period photographs from the 1800s show these communities while they flourished, but the book's most effective illustrations are the evocative color photos of ghost towns today. These pictures are notable for their use of light to create moods and to define and reveal characteristics of the abandoned towns. Although the book has no index, it does provide information that students will find useful in understanding the history of these towns and the forces that shaped the West, and reveals the beauty, dignity, and loneliness of the towns as they are today. Bibliography appended. Carolyn Phelan
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

a beautiful intro to the ghost town
"Ghost Towns of the American West" is an introduction to the ghost town experience. Raymond Bial effectively communicates the history and mystique of these testaments to American tenacity. He explains how many of these towns are remnants of the boom and bust economics of the early West. Like Wild Bill Hickock and Calamity Jane, some of the famous Western characters are discussed. The violence of such towns is well documented. Without being melodramatic, the eerie quality of the ghost town is described. As would be expected from a book for young readers, brothels are omitted. It is the illustrations that make this book stand out. The poetic photographs are eye candy. A couple of historical images are shown, but most of the photos portray modern day ghost towns through a nostalgic filter. The verso indicates that most of the shots are from Arizona's Goldfield, Apacheland and Old Tuscon ghost towns. The text is good for readers of at least a fourth grade reading level. While "Ghost Towns" has fifty pages, the text is relatively brief given the large and lush use of photographs. With humor, drama and historical authenticity, Raymond Bail effectively captured the essence of the American ghost town.

Ghost Towns of the American West (Written by Raymond Bial)
Raymond Bial attempts a monumental task- tracing the history of ghost towns in a children's book. He does not succeed.

The book is populated with some lovely color photography of a couple of ghost towns in the American west. The text is easy to read, better for children eight and up. Quoting Mark Twain is always a surefire way to endear an author to this reader, and Bial does this on a couple of occasions. According to the book, Twain once wrote of Virginia City, Nevada: "If a man wanted a fight on his hands without any annoying delay, all he had to do was to appear in public in a white shirt or stove-pipe hat, and he would be accomodated."

The book fails in its one main objective- a history of ghost towns. Bial uses so many generalities, but few examples, that some kids might feel like they are being talked down to, especially considering the book's bold title. Bial also glosses over the violence of the west, sugar coating Billy the Kid, and the gunfight at the OK Corral. Instead, Bial writes of phantoms roaming the abandoned sites, as if everyone should take the term "ghost town" literally, and murder and mayhem is swept under the rug. No, I do not think your kids need to see crime scene photos, but ignoring the violent past would give children a false sense of what many people went through back then.

We do learn life was rough, and death comes quickly, but I found the book to be just as dry and empty as the towns Bial attempts to describe. The photographs are nice, until further reading in the credits indicate that only a couple of places were photographed, ghost towns that are now tourist destinations.

The book is under fifty pages, maybe Bial should have concentrated his subject to in-depth profiles of a couple of ghost towns, instead of jumping from the Gold Rush of 1849 to George Custer to Wild Bill Hickok, without any chance to put these historical events and figures in context. Women and children are mentioned, but kids may have been able to associate more with the book if children's lives in these towns one hundred years ago had been explored. Bial claims there are tens of thousands of ghost towns spread across all fifty states, yet he only mentions a few in passing.

"Ghost Towns of the American West" is a very average children's book. Kids interested in history or cowboys might be better off finding another source. Raymond Bial tries to put too much in, not realizing he never comes up with enough.

Great Informatiion
I enjoyed this book. Made me want to go visit these places. I have always been a fan of the old West and these places sound really neat.