Why are there ghost towns in the U.S. West? Because there was mining, says the Sunset book of ghost towns.

People who attended a gold rush or silver bonanza expected to get rich overnight, and some did. They then wanted to go to the nearest town and spend the money in enjoyable ways. They wanted a high level of service and luxury in a usually isolated location. They got it as long as the mining lasted.

When the metal ran out, there was usually no reason for a town to be there at all, much less a town that big and elaborate. Everybody left, and there is a ghost town.

Huey Johnson, environmentalist and head of the Resource Renewal Institute, points out that metal isn't the only thing we mine now.

Renewable resources are only renewable is we the humans let them renew themselves. Forests naturaly self-seed and go on being forests if we leave them alone or harvest wood in a way that leaves enough for the natural self-seeding to go on.

If we cut down the whole forest or enough of it that it can't renew itself, we have mined it.

The way we're living now is heading toward every city on earth becoming a ghost town--big and elaborate until the people who liived there mined everything out.

Remember. when you touch her, you're touching her heart.