Brent Underwood

A long-abandoned silver mine for sale sounded like an adventure too great to pass up, but it turned into much more—a calling, a community of millions, and hard-earned lessons about chasing impractical dreams. “Inspiring and meditative—the story of man vs nature and man vs himself.”—Ryan Holiday, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Obstacle is the Way The siren song of Cerro Gordo, a desolate ghost town perched high above Death Valley, has seduced thousands since the 1800s, but few fell harder for it than Brent Underwood, who moved there in March of 2020, only to be immediately snowed in and trapped for weeks. It had once been the largest silver mine in California. Over $500 million worth of ore was pulled from the miles of tunnels below the town. Butch Cassidy, Mark Twain, and other infamous characters of the American West were rumored to have stayed there. Newspapers reported a murder a week. But that was over 150 years ago. Underwood bet his life savings—and his life—on this majestic, hardscrabble town that had broken its fair share of ambitious men and women. What followed were fires, floods, earthquakes, and perhaps strangest, fame. Ghost Town Living tells the story of a man against the elements, a forgotten historic place against the modern world, and a dream against all odds—one that has captured millions of followers around the world. He came looking for a challenge different from the traditional 9-5 job but discovered something much more fulfilling—an undertaking that would call on all of himself and push him beyond what he knew he was capable of. In fact, to bring this abandoned town back to life, Brent had to learn a wealth of new self-sufficiency and problem-solving skills from many generous mentors. Ghost Town Living is a thrilling read, but it’s also a call to action—to question our too-practical lives and instead seek adventure, build something original, redefine work, and embrace the unknown. It shows what it means to dedicate your life to something, to take a mighty swing at a crazy idea and, like the cardsharps who once haunted Cerro Gordo, go all in.

Mining for Purpose and Chasing Dreams at the Edge of Death Valley

Ghost Town Living

Manu

Certo Gordo was in a league of its own. The kind of impossible place that could break a man’s heart, his will, and his bank account.

That’s what big, crazy dreams do. They get you excited to the point where you only have tunnel vision. 

Our past is our past. We cannot change that. But we can and do form our futures, and it's well worth asking whether by exploring the road not taken, by examining all the might-have-beens, we can chart a better course to what still might be.

Sometimes in big projects there are not finish lines but processes. You can get angry, you can let it drive you nuts. Or you can learn to love it. See it all as a mandala—a work of art.

Everyone who has ever come to Cerro Gordo was looking for something. Silver. Freedom. Fortune. Peace. Anonymity. Themselves. The question is never whether you'll find something there, it's whether you’ll find what you're looking for or something else entirely. Whether you'll die before you get it.

There are far too many people who, when faced with the silent solitude of deserted places, fearfully fill that silence with their own very loud delusions.

Ghost Town Living quotes

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