Plans to revive a ghost town from the Wild West have gone up in smoke. Literally.
Brent Underwood, a hospitality entrepreneur, and his businesses partners paid $1.4m for Cerro Gordo, some 200 miles north of Los Angeles, in 2018.
The posse planned to lure tourists to the refurbished, and supposedly haunted, old hotel for fine food and sipping whiskey. Unfortunately, other forces had different plans.
Underwood told the Los Angeles Times that a “shadowy apparition” had been spotted in the kitchen on 14 June. By 3am the next day, Cerro Gordo was in flames.
With no running water there was nothing he could do to save the town.
