One of the more colorful eras of our country's past is the old Wild West. We can visualize cowboys chasing stagecoaches over rough, barren terrain, and sheriffs swaggering down dusty main streets. Towns sprang up virtually overnight around regions rich in natural resources such as lumber, borax, silver, and especially gold, the glitter that inflamed a continent.

These thriving little communities "out west" revolved around a general store, blacksmith shop, livery stable, prospectors' office, saloon, jail, sawmill, and a doctor's office. There was even the occasional white clapboard church, complete with adjoining cemetery. Sometimes these small settlements on the open range vanished as quickly as they had burst upon the scene, leaving a ghost town full of abandoned buildings where once the…