Custer Ghost Town

There was a neat old ghost town pretty close to where we were staying for the reunion, so we took a little drive out to it. The drive there was very interesting. We ended up on this gravel road, driving through a dredge site. Apparently, gold had been discovered in the area and we ended up driving through some active claims. It was amazing to see what had been done to the river as people had been looking for gold. I should have taken some pictures, because I don't even know how to describe it! The whole landscape looked like it had been ripped up and dumped over. There were just piles and piles of rocks. There was even a big dredging machine that we drove past. It was pretty amazing, and a little sad. They had really ruined the beautiful countryside with what they were doing.

Once we got thru the dredge site, we reached Custer - which was an old mining town. They had restored several of the old buildings, and had a bunch of the old tools they used to mine for gold. It was really quite interesting. My aunt had made up a scavenger hunt for the kids, which was fun. It gave them something to look for while we went through the buildings.

Our first stop was an old schoolhouse. Here Adam is sitting at an old desk to circle the things he had found. That's his cousin Asher taking a peek at Adam's paper!!

This is an old dentist chair. That thing to the right of Adam is the drill that the dentist used. Can I just say I'm glad I was born when I was!!

Here's Adam sitting on the steps of the schoolhouse with his Great Grandma.

Great Grandma and the Conrad cousins (minus baby Asher).

Here are the Conrad cousins standing in one end of one of the many tools they used to mine for gold.

There were also some restored homes that we looked at. It must have been a hard life back in the day for these people! It was a very interesting trip out to the ghost town.