The desert often seems to be a vast wasteland, with little pockets of people separated by miles and miles of desert scrub. Sometimes the little pockets of people have disappeared, leaving ghost towns in their wake, making the desert feel even more desolate.
I love visiting ghost towns and imagining what happened there. What did the people do? What were they dreaming when they arrived? How did they feel when they left?
I also like to try to picture day-to-day life. Many of these ghost towns were the result of mining, and minerals were not always close to water. How did they get their drinking water? Where did they get food? How many bars and other entertainment activities were available? Did the town get big enough to attract families, and if so, did the kids go to school?
Enough questions, let's get to one of these ghost towns, Gold Hill, Utah, located about three hours west of Salt Lake City. Gold Hill has had three big mining booms, giving it a longer history than most ghost towns.
The town of Gold Hill was established in 1892 and a creative miner named it for a gold-bearing hill just east of the town. As it turned out, gold wasn't the only ore mined. Miners also found silver, lead, arsenic, copper, and tungsten. The mining boom only lasted a few years, producing several hundred thousand dollars worth of ore. Then the miners took down their tents and headed to the next new town to get rich quick.
The town wasn't done, though. During World War I the need for more minerals arose, especially for tungsten, used as a strengthening agent in steel and in electric filaments, and for arsenic, used to control insects on the fields in the South. Arsenic had previously been imported from Europe, but this wasn't possible during the war.
Some of the ore was shipped out via the U.S. Post Office in parcel post--in fact tons of tungsten were sent this way. Stagecoaches and wagons were also used, but in 1917, a 50-mile long spur off the Western Pacific Railroad line, called the Deep Creek railroad, allowed Gold Hill to be connected to the rest of the world.
About 3,000 people lived in Gold Hill during this time, and a town was planned with a school, dance hall, and other public amenities. Stores popped up, like the Goodwin Mercantile Co. Nevertheless, many residents lived in simple shacks or tent shelters. Outhouses were located over old mining shafts to avoid digging, but sometimes these old mining shafts happened to be in the middle of the street.
Today I'd like to introduce you to a Robber Fly, also known as an Assassin Fly or a Bee Killer. It belongs to the order Diptera (flies) and the Asilidae family, a huge family with 1,000 species in North America. This family is fierce, killing other insects, hence the violent common names. It's sort of like what a falcon is to other birds--out there watching and ready to dive in for the kill. The Robber Fly isn't fussy, it will eat just about any flying insect out there, including bees, wasps, dragonflies, grasshoppers, and other flies. Using its big eyes, it spots its prey, swoops down on it, and captures it mid-flight. It takes the prey to a perch and injects enzymes into the insect that immobilize it and start digesting it. Then the Robber Fly slurps up the liquid meal. Yum.
This is a male Robber Fly, probably in the genus Efferia, with 100 species in North America. Males have white bulbous claspers on the tip of the abdomen. Females have a swordlike ovipositor that extends from the abdomen and allows them to deposit eggs in dead flower heads, cracks in the soil, and other tiny spots.
The Robber Fly family can be distinguished by the "bearded" face, with lots of hair on it, and the concave top of the head between the eyes. That concave feature makes its large compound eyes seem really "buggy." The legs are strong and bristly, the better to hold onto its prey.
Do you see that sharp proboscis? Within it is a lancet, an even sharper pointy object. It allows the Robber Fly to stab its prey and inject fluids. It's reportedly sharp enough to pierce human skin, but fortunately Robber Flies haven't developed a taste for human flesh. Yet. (Insert cackling laugh here.)
Larvae overwinter in soil and emerge in the spring. It is thought that more species of Robber Flies still need to be described. Robber Flies are particularly common in sunny and arid areas and are most active during the warmer parts of the day, but I have to admit that I only noticed it for the first time this summer. It is so amazing how many different insects live so close to us and yet we know so little about them!
