As we wait impatiently for our next trip, we tend to reminisce about past trips. We’ve been on many car road trips, seen a lot of beautiful places, natural wonders, and much-praised tourist attractions, but the places that left an impression on us were the obscure, less traveled ones. There’s a place that keeps coming back to haunt us. One that grimly paints the passage of time, the power of change, and our vulnerability in the face of both.
We did not plan on going to Cisco. In fact, we never heard of it. We were heading back from Moab, Utah, when we decided to take the back road to Route 70. We took 128 instead of 191 and drove along the Colorado River to find ourselves in an unexpected place – Sisco, a bone fide ghost town.
Sisco is not your typical western ghost town from the 1800; there are no romantic wooden mining relics towering over a gold-bearing river, just a flat, barren, landscape of an abandoned town. Cisco started in the 1880 as a saloon and water-filling station for the railway and remained occupied to some extent well into the 20th century. The decline of the railway was not good for Cisco, but the construction of Route 70, bypassing it, sealed its fate.
A gas station in town was operated by a couple that stayed put after everyone else had left, and the price of gas froze on the pump at 659 X 2 cents per gallon. According to Google, it was around 1982 that gas was this price, so it was possibly sometimes around then that the gas station shut down for ever.
Johnny Cash memorialized Cisco and it’s gas station. Take a listen!
This song really pulls on my heart strings. I think of those staying put as time flies over their heads to land elsewhere, while they stay and wait for it to come back.
It sure was creepy to drive up and down the deserted streets. Some of the houses looked like they may have had some activity around them, but not necessarily the good kind, so we didn’t venture too far from the safety of the car. I later read that there are some people living there and will shoot you if you give them a reason to.
Movie buffs visit every now and then to see the shooting location of Thelma and Louise, and Vanishing Point.
These days, a woman runs an Airbnb in the old post office. This has got to be one of the more unique Airbnb that I’ve heard of! There were also some RVs around so you may be able to boondock there if you dared to do so.
We later googled “ghost town near Route 70” and found out the sad story of this town and it’s people. This is an extreme case of abandonment, but later, as we drove through some of the other towns in the west, we couldn’t help but think that some of them may be ‘Siscos in the making’ – down and out, forgotten people trying to make it while hanging on to the one place they know.
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