Ogilby, California: A ghost town with only a cemetery left in the desert

@ElentirENG ES 8·28·2024 · 21:38 0

Ghost towns are usually places where we can see abandoned and ruined buildings, in better or worse condition.

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Kitsault, a perturbing town abandoned since 1983 but that seems recently evacuated

There are ghost towns where only the streets and a few paved roads remain, such as the famous Centralia in Pennsylvania, United States. However, there are even more extreme cases: those of ghost towns that have been practically erased from the face of the Earth, as if they had never existed. One of these towns is (or was) in Imperial County, a desert area in the southeastern corner of California. Ogilby was founded in 1877 to house workers (mostly Chinese) for the Southern Pacific railroad.

Nevada Expeditions notes that the town boomed in the 1880s due to the gold rush in nearby Hedges. By the end of the century, Ogilby had grown to have its own post office and other services. In 1916, the town benefited from the construction of a new road to replace the old Plank Road, the first logging road to cross the desert in 1912.

From then on, Ogilby slowly fell into decline. Its train station burned down in 1932 and was not replaced, as only a few dozen people lived there by then. The post office closed in 1942, and trains stopped stopping there in 1946. By the early 1960s, Ogilby was abandoned and became one of the many ghost towns in the United States.

The most curious thing is that the buildings at Ogilby are no longer there: it is as if they had simply disappeared. According to Nevada Expeditions, by 1962 there were no buildings there. They were probably demolished. Today only a few remains of what was once the station and the base of what was perhaps the local school remain. The only thing intact is its austere cemetery, created in 1878 and of which the graves are still visible, as well as some small monuments placed more recently.

If anyone happens to be passing through the area, the only trace of the ghost town's existence is a small green sign with the name Ogilby at the start of a dirt track that leads nowhere, and which begins at a lake off a paved road, called Ogilby Road (since the area is still known as Ogilby Hills). The sign refers to that road.

A few days ago, the channel Sidetrack Adventures posted a video visiting what little remains of this ghost town and telling its story:

You can see two stills from this video here. Here we see what may be the remains of the local school. The first school in the town was built in an old freight car. This second school would have been built in the 1930s. According to Nevada Expeditions, the school was moved to the town of Felicity in 1959, shortly before the town was abandoned.

Here we can see the Ogilby cemetery, with its austere tombs, all decorated with crosses. In the video you can see more details of this cemetery.

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Main image: Sidetrack Adventures.