Comet had long ago exhausted the last whit of its golden tail when I visited there, but the remnants of the town were still standing under fierce Montana sun like bored man waiting to be executed.
Barren wastelands of the western United States are blooming with abandoned buildings, most of them collapsed to the ground. Comet, Montana, was the first – but not the last – proper ghost town I visited in America, and it was in suprisingly good shape regarding that it was founded at 1883. Comet was real boomtown then: it was built to house the workers of the nearby mine, and when the ore ran out, people deserted the town like rats leaving a sinking ship.
Mining was continued in Comet after few years, but the houses remained mostly empty. Finally, at 1941, the whole place was left to rot, company buildings and all. Despite the raw winds of mountainous Montana (Comet is situated almost two kilometers high), most of the twenty or so buildings were still standing like time had forgotten the whole place and also the once so prosperous Montana Consolidated Copper Company which owned the town.
In spite of attractive condition of the Comet real estate, rummaging inside the buildings didn’t seem such a good idea. Nevertheless, on the other side of the road (called aptly High Ore Road) there were few empty homes that didn’t look like collapsing right away. There were no doors to knock, so I just entered like a late guest years after the party had ended.
It must have been hell of a party. The sleeping facilities of Comet Inn were also somewhat ruined after the restless ghosts of mine workers had spend their nights there for half a century.
On top of that, much sitting had been done in the last survining armchair of Comet, Montana.
In addition to the one armchair, there actually was one resident in Comet. Biggest of the decayed houses had been repaired like a cripple with a new haircut, and a snappy trailer home was standing in the yard. I tried to evade this ghost town native – company of the dead miners was preferable to hanging out with somebody who is living in a abandoned town.
One interesting sight in Comet (as in many other ghost towns) were the wrecks of old machinery and especially cars (I should really say “automobiles”) that were probably manufactured more than 50 years ago. The history has been preserved in the rust like pickled cucumbers, changing slightly in taste and colour, but still more authentic than in museum.
Along with houses and cars, even vegetation and trees had been uncannily decayed like the soil has been somehow sucked empty and infertile, and nothing would ever grow there.
From unexpected chinks the light poured into darkness like water to this shipwrecked town. The western sun was ruthless and merciful, exposing the decayed entrails of the wretched warehouse but endowing some new vigour to it, as if the old tools were alive again.
I spent few hours wandering the town of decayed dreams and forgotten fortunes (it is said that Comet produced over 20 million dollars in ore) and fancied myself sitting in the porch like an old man reminiscing the past hidden behind the wrinkles of face and wrinkles of planks.
As I left via the High Ore Road, I saw the last standing chute of the mine company. Mined ore – with zinc, copper, even gold – was rolled through this rickety structure to carts and trucks, and carried away. To my eyes the thing resembled some prehistoric relic, like a skeleton of a dinosaur, which had lived through the boomtown times of Comet more than 100 years ago.
Wasteland 
[…] was essentially a boomtown, just like nearby Comet, featured earlier in this blog. One Swiss guy was lucky enough to find silver from the Jefferson […]
LikeLike