He Bought A Ghost Town And Became A YouTube Star - EP 91 Brent Underwood

This week’s guest is Brent Underwood, the proud owner of Cerro Gordo Mines.

That’s right. In 2018, Underwood bought the ghost town of Cerro Gordo, located near Death Valley in California, and its old mining operations for $1.4 million. This was a legit crazy thing to do. But, here we are eight years later, and Underwood has turned his sidequest into his mainquest, and he now has a booming YouTube channel in which he documents life at Cerro Gordo. This includes exploration of the mines and Underwood’s attempt to restore the ghost town into a habitable site that people can visit.

You will notice (if you’re viewing instead of just listening) that the set for this podcast is awesome. That’s because we went to visit Underwood a couple of months back for this podcast and for a video that will be coming out on our own booming YouTube channel.

We spent a couple of nights at Cerro Gordo, living in an old miner’s house, and we explored the grounds with Underwood.

As you’ll hear in this episode, Cerro Gordo was a long-running silver mine and, at its peak, had 4,000 people living in the mountains and working the many miles of mines. It’s quite well preserved. You can see the old brothel, theater, and store. And Underwood has been rebuilding the American Hotel that once served as the centerpiece of the town.

Underwood does crazy things at Cerro Gordo. He’ll lower himself down the main mine shaft and then spend days underground. He’s used his exploring to help build out the history of Cerro Gordo and wrote an amazing book about Cerro Gordo and his adventures. You should probably buy it and read it.

We obviously get into all of the above with Underwood, who is a wonderful storyteller and a good dude.

SPONSOR

Some of you will be wondering, “Is this episode sponsored?”. Yeah, it is. By the wonderful people at Brex.

I’ve worked at large companies like The New York Times and Bloomberg, and their expense systems were terrible. Brex’s expense management systems, by contrast, are fantastic. AI agents run around taking care of tons of stuff for you and give you back your time.

Your company should switch to Brex to make life better for everyone. Find out more here.

Timestamps

0:00 Intro
4:53 How to Buy a Town
11:29 The American Hotel Burns
17:36 History Meets the YouTube Algorithm
22:46 Five Days Below Ground
28:29 The West Was Brutal
33:33 Who Actually Got Rich?
40:37 Where the Water Went
44:31 California Versus the Hotel
49:14 Can a Ghost Town Live?