Utah's Ghost Towns: Fall in Sevier County

(First published Oct 4, 2011)

Went out to Clarion, just West of Centerfield. It may have been a ghost town once. I am not sure. But today it hardly fits... though you could take the right photos and pretend it was once. But I found it, camped out, built the tarp as a big lightning and rain storm provided a welcome upon my return, at long last, to The Great Basin...

Camped out off this road. Picture here about 6:50 am.

Got the picture of the old house:

Old house on a ranch

But Clarion is not a ghost town. Clarion may have once been this isolated ruin worth considering for Ghost Town status. But the agriculture and ranches of the Sevier River Valley have spread East and West. And from where the above picture was taken you could hear the cows mooing from the large ranch behind the structure. It's not really ghostly. The irrigated alfalfa field providing the scenic backdrop is a realization of the prosperity and potential that, in its own time, eluded the settlement.

But the pictures were worth taking, and will probably be use in the introduction for an example of the controversies surround what to include, and what not to include, as a ghost town. And I'll say, there are so many scattered, abandoned ranch buildings out here besides this one, one could easily spend a week between Centerfield and Salina just taking all their pictures... in those 2.5 hours of sunlight a day that are appropriate for picture taking.

On to Kimberly, Mt. Belknap, the high plateaus... Tonight it will be chilly at 10,000 feet! Trying to get the high places all in before the snows come.

And before that it was the La Sals... Miners' Basin. We wandered around all day looking for the cabins, found an old Gold Mine. Then found out they were a lot closer to the road than we thought. The next day got the pictures. Even then a storm was threatening. Intermittent rain. That whole area may be covered with snow in a week.