- Brent Underwood moved from Austin to the abandoned mining town of Cerro Gordo, California, in 2020.
- He spent three years living there alone working to bring a relic of the past back to life.
- Some challenges haven't become any easier, he writes in his new book "Ghost Town Living."
In 2018, Brent Underwood pooled together $1.4 million and bought an abandoned silver mine in the mountains above Death Valley.
Once a thriving 19th-century mining hub, it was a desolate ghost town when he moved there two years later.
In his new book "Ghost Town Living," Underwood describes his journey to restore Cerro Gordo and explains what it's like to redefine your life in pursuit of purpose.
But leaving city life in Austin behind for the solitude of the Inyo Mountains was never going to be simple.
"There's been more than a few hospital visits. I've lost nearly 30 pounds since moving to the hill. I've lost a relationship. I've lost business partners. I've lost most of my life savings. Many think I've lost my mind," he writes in the book.
Here are five challenges he's faced:
1. Isolation
Cerro Gordo is made up of about a dozen scattered buildings, eight miles down a dirt road, and an hour from the nearest town.
Living that far away from others comes with logistical challenges that Underwood says he hadn't fully processed before moving there.
"In a practical sense, there just aren't people around in the way there are in the city. So for instance, if your toilet breaks, there's no way somebody's coming to fix it for you. You have to figure out how to fix it yourself," he told Business Insider.
Dashing to the hardware store isn't an option, so he's to become more prepared.
That's all before factoring in trying to rebuild a hotel in the middle of nowhere, such as getting thousands of pounds of concrete up a mountain.
2. Loneliness
Underwood first arrived in Cerro Gordo during the pandemic, and was able to pass off the loneliness by reasoning that many others were social distancing too.
At the time it was a blessing just not to be cooped up in an apartment, he told BI. But as the world reopened, the solitude of his new home became clearer.
While volunteers and tourists pass through, Underwood says the loneliness can still be a challenge. "Right now I'm sitting 900 feet underground in a town that's already many miles from my closest friends," he told BI.
Finding a community has been vital to restoring the town.
"Everyone who endeavors to tackle a huge, life-defining project, who intends to make a spectacle, needs a group of people in their life," Underwood writes.
3. Extreme weather
Coping with life-threatening conditions comes with the territory when you live next to Death Valley.
Since moving to the town in 2020, Underwood has been through blizzards, floods, droughts, and earthquakes.
"It's always been that way in this desert — cycles of drought followed by savage floods," he writes.
One day in August 2022, nine months' worth of rain fell in three hours across much of Death Valley, wiping out the road to Cerro Gordo which Underwood then had to rebuild.
When he first moved to Cerro Gordo there was no running water. The solution was restoring an old water pump 700 feet below ground down a mine shaft.
"I've felt the weakness, the confusion that comes when you're dangerously dehydrated. I've gagged on my own tongue when I couldn't even raise enough spit to swallow," he writes.
Even with better infrastructure, if the pipes freeze Underwood is left without running water.
4. Tragedy
Underwood woke at 3 a.m. one day to the smell of smoke, he writes in "Ghost Town Living."
The American Hotel — the centerpiece of his vision for Cerro Gordo — was engulfed in flames after a propane gas tank exploded.
It took two hours for the first fire truck to arrive. By that time, the building had burnt down in what he calls the worst day of his life.
"My hopes, my dreams, and my life savings literally went up in flames in front of me," Underwood says.
He started over on the hotel and will open its seven rooms to visitors later this year.
5. Burnout
Other challenges Underwood has faced are more universal and "of the 21st-century variety," as he describes them in his book.
During the winter of 2022 his strength started failing, he was constantly anxious, and his unwavering vision for the town faltered.
"I was having a harder and harder time understanding why I was spending my time on a town that had a reputation only for grinding people and mountains to dust," Underwood writes.
Eventually, friends pushed him to get medical help and he realized that unless he took a step back the entire project would collapse. He went to stay with his parents for a month, leaving Cerro Gordo in the hands of a few friends.
"It's so easy to get lost inside a big dream. The obsession and focus required to bring something massive into existence can be so complete at times, you don't just lose your way, you can also lose yourself."
Brent Underwood's "Ghost Town Living" is published by Harmony.