Gas prices and ghost towns

It’s hard to believe that in the late 1880s, Bannock, Mont., not far from present-day Dillon, was one of the fastest-growing, most wildly energetic communities in the West. The mining town was even proposed as the territorial capital. Today, it is a ramshackle collection of abandoned buildings surrounded by mine tailings, and open only as a quiet tourist attraction. It takes a powerful imagination to conjure up the place once considered the metropolitan hub of Montana Territory.

Throughout the West, from Alaska to west Texas, mining camps and once-vibrant towns have decayed into relics, their fates sealed by the whimsy of economics, changes in transportation, or the boom and bust of resource extraction. We drive past, wondering what they once were like, or wondering who lives there now, or, perhaps not noticing them at all.
Which of today’s thriving towns will become the next century’s ghost towns? What places will have become forlorn, decrepit and abandoned? This might be wild speculation, but could the answer be the West’s sprawling subdivisions that depend on the automobile and cheap fuel, those far-flung developments miles from Main Street, work, schools and soccer fields, that Americans love for their views, relative quiet and sense of privacy?

What if, over the next generation or two, we wean ourselves from the automobile? What if gas goes to $10 a gallon, or more? What if we decide that fighting traffic and spending 15 percent of our adult lives sitting in the driver’s seat isn’t such a spiffy trade-off for a bigger lot and better view? What if we decide that being married to our car isn’t such a terrific deal? Then what?

A century from now, the idea of living 10 or 20 miles from town and from most everything we need to do in a day, might become an alien and unpopular concept. Instead, Americans might start tightening their embrace of communities, packing in closer, living where everything from the public library to the office is in easy reach.

Denver Post