The Ghost Town of Bullfrog technically was really a sister city of Rhyolite or Suburb. It sits on the edge of Death Valley and now I can actually say I been to death valley for my first time. Anybody who knows anything about death valley knows its an area full of mystery and strangeness. But also most know that at night the temperatures drop very low and during the day its tragically very hot. Nothing grows in death valley its all tumble weeds and cracked ground. 

The ghost town of Bullfrog was discovered in 1904 and was created after the entire tent town of Armagosa City packed up and relocated near the Bullfrog mining site. Shorty Harris a famous prospector discovered gold in the area and of course back in the day people went wherever the money was at. By 1905 a small town started to develop around the same time Rhyolite began to form so they were always in competition. 

A two story hotel was built in 1905 along with the jailhouse. There was also a general store, bank, icehouse, a lodging house, and a three story hotel. But it was also an area plagued by gun fights nothing like the good ole west. Due to all the crime and gunfights many of the locals decided to pack up and move to the nearby Rhyolite which was a much larger community.

By 1907 the town became almost empty and the last business had relocated in Rhyolite. The hotel even burned in 1906 why really was a symbol of Bullfrog perhaps that is what really did the town in. Hotels many years ago were a way to keep the town booming cause travelers were come through stay at them and eventually relocate here. 

The post office within the town stayed up till about 1909 but the rest of the town remained abandoned till barely nothing was left. All that remains today is many 1920s junked cars, the chimney from the hotel, the Bullfrog-Rhyolite Cemetery, part of the old ice house and jail. The area is extremely dark and sits in a rattle snake breeding ground so trust me when I say this it was a very difficult investigation. My first visit here I did not see the icehouse or jail  however I did find the cemetery and the hotel chimney nearby. Its ashamed to see a large town be decimated in just a matter of a century when at one time 1,000 people resided here.

The cemetery is a reminder of what this town was with many wrought iron railings around the tombstones. Some crosses are made of wood while other graves are illegible. One of the burials that took p lace here is that of Mary Elizabeth Madison often called Panamint Annie who has been talked about in the LA Times, Playboy and even National Geographic. 

She lived in Beatty which of course is a very old historic type of town we passed through on the way to Rhyolite. Her famous saying was "Listen and the mountains will talk to you. They'll tell you where the gold is if you listen. There's places in this world no man has ever been, and I'm going to find it" Anotherwards she perhaps gave women in the world some faith that not all miners or explorers had to be men with burros or grizzled like the movies. 

You are not going to see alot of ghost photos from our visit but when I visited out here I wanted to make sure I at least had gotten a chance to walk around this ghost town. Its a pretty eerie place at night there are tumble weeds, dead shrubs engulfing graves, and well being my spotlights all ran out of juice we were almost in pitch black working with the paranormal. But all in all its amazing that at one time such towns use to thrive out in the desert like this one.

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Rick-AngelOfThyNight

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