Original subtitles

[narrator] Abandoned structures hold the secrets of America's past.

A two-mile high ghost town which fostered generations of heroes.

[Nina Gabianelli] When I first discovered this beautiful area,

I was inspired by the fortitude of the people that had to live out here.

[narrator] A place of entertainment

which saw a deadly massacre.

It's a secret that they keep locked up in the box,

and they don't expose it.

[narrator] And a network of tunnels

which served the schemes of Los Angeles.

[Hadley Meares] LA has always been a sunny place for shady people

because people here were very resourceful, they were very clever,

they liked to have a good time.

[narrator] Scattered across the United States are abandoned structures.

Forgotten ruins of the past.

Monuments to a bygone era.

Each shines a light on the story of this land and its people.

These are the secrets of hidden America.

In a town 70 miles north of Charleston,

lies a building which saw a defining moment

in the fight for racial equality.

[Cleveland Sellers] It's very hard to do anything

when you're feeling like a second-class citizen.

Or you're feeling like you're not wanted after 70-some-odd years.

I have been through all of that.

[Dr. Sascha Auerbach] We're in a small town in South Carolina.

This is a pretty deprived area,

and it remains among the 10% of poorest areas in the whole country.

[Dr. Michele Mitchell] This is a Deep South, majority African-American town.

But racial tension has long simmered under the surface.

[narrator] Inside one store front,

there's reminders of a troubled past.

[Sascha] Inside, it's devastated.

Part of the roof has come down,

and it makes you wonder, "For how many decades has this place been derelict?"

[Michele] There are still personal items in the lockers.

Why didn't their owners collect them?

[Sascha] Look at all those bowling shoes,

look at those long, wooden lanes.

This was obviously a bowling alley,

but what happened here that was so terrible

that it was left in this state?

[narrator] What occurred here over half a century ago

would foreshadow terrible events across the nation.

[Prof. Sarah Churchwell] America's terrible history of racial violence

left us with far too many familiar stories,

but there are still a handful of really important ones

that have been lost to sight altogether.

[narrator] This bowling alley,

a place of leisure, became a place of pain.

A pain that Cleveland Sellers knows only too well.

[Cleveland] It occurred because

it was Black students,

and Black students' lives don't matter.

And you see that slogan,

but that's real for a lot of people.

[Sascha] South Carolina,

along with Deep South states like Mississippi,

were really centers of racial tension in the 1960s.

These were very, very segregated communities.

[Sarah] At the beginning of 1968,

America hadn't really settled down

after the "long, hot summer" of 1967.

There had been great racial unrest

and riots across cities

including Atlanta, Newark, Detroit, really across the country.

[narrator] What transpired here

would shock this small town, yet would barely register on a national scale.

This is the All Star Bowling Lanes in Orangeburg, South Carolina.

[Cleveland] Orangeburg was very special to Black students

who were interested in higher education.

If you ever got an opportunity to go, that's where you would go.

[narrator] Orangeburg was home to two historically Black universities,

but power in this town was still exclusively in white hands.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 had said

that every American space needed to be desegregated,

but of course not every American public space followed that law.

[Sascha] By 1968, almost all the public buildings in Orangeburg

were officially desegregated

with the exception of hospitals,

doctor's offices, and Harry Floyd's bowling alley.

[narrator] The segregation of this place was significant

because during the 1960s, bowling was at the height of its popularity.

[Michele] Bowling was popular no matter what color you were.

In fact, during the 1960s, there was an African-American women's national champion,

the trailblazing Louise Fulton.

[narrator] One invention would usher in bowling's golden age.

[Sascha] And what made the difference here was the automatic pin setter.

Back in the old days,

you had to have a person run out between every bowl and reset the pins.

[Michele] This led to the number of bowling alleys in the United States

peaking at 12,000 during the 1960s, which is really a staggering number.

[Sascha] This was America's game for a while,

and the sport was so popular

that President Nixon even had a bowling alley installed in the White House.

[narrator] But in 1968, Orangeburg's African-American population

was still not allowed to go bowling.

[Cleveland] Harry Floyd did something.

The Civil Rights Act said all public facilities had to be desegregated.

So what he was able to do was he was able to put a sign

in the glass doorway saying "members only."

[narrator] Students from South Carolina State University

led a protest against the segregation of this bowling alley

in February 1968, changing this small town forever.

[Sascha] The events at Orangeburg took place over several nights,

but the first couple of nights,

the bowling alley was really the focus.

[Michele] On the first night,

around 40 students enter the bowling alley,

but they leave peacefully.

[narrator] A group of African-American students return the next night,

but this time the authorities knew they were coming.

[Cleveland] But there were a whole host of highway patrol in there,

and they pushed back against the door,

and the pushing back and forth caused the glass in the door just to fall out.

What happened next was that the police went outside,

and they opened up the trunks of the cars,

and they got this little baton, and they just waded in.

[Sascha] The police responded immediately with violence.

This bowling alley,

which is supposed to be a place of enjoyment and have fun,

had become a site of violent conflict.

[narrator] Around a dozen students were hospitalized,

but the beatings at the bowling alley

would not be the end of the violence.

It was only the beginning.

[Michele] After the beatings, the students submit a list of demands.

They call for integration

and the ending of discrimination within the community.

The governor of South Carolina at the time,

Robert McNair, responded by calling the National Guard.

[Cleveland] There was a tank parked in front of my house,

and the muzzle was just pointed in that general direction.

[narrator] With the National Guard in town,

and hundreds of protesting students,

the city of Orangeburg was a tinderbox.

[narrator] On February 6, 1968,

many students were brutally beaten by police

for protesting the racial segregation of this bowling alley.

Two nights later,

on the campus of South Carolina State,

another group of students found themselves facing off

against armed highway patrolmen.

A wooden bannister was thrown towards the police,

and there were rumors of a sniper.

Some officer from the highway patrolmen

got hit by a piece of wood,

and some of the police said that he was shot.

They decided to use lethal force against these students.

Unarmed students, they were in a open field.

It was almost like shooting fish in a barrel.

[Sascha] It was a massacre.

Almost 30 people were wounded in the shooting.

Most of them were shot in the back

as they were running away from gunfire.

[narrator] Three African-American teenagers were killed.

High school student, Delano Middleton,

and South Carolina State undergraduates

Samuel Hammond Jr., and Henry Smith.

[Cleveland] The gunfire went off,

and it was timed at about eight to ten seconds,

but it sounded like it was forever.

I got hit on the left side as I was going down.

I just did a spread eagle, and just hit the ground.

[narrator] After a trial,

all of the highway patrolmen who opened fire were acquitted.

The only person convicted of any crime was Cleveland Sellers,

who spent seven months in prison for incitement to riot.

He has since been granted a pardon.

[Cleveland] The Orangeburg Massacre is, in fact, the litmus test

for race relations in the state of South Carolina.

Everything else is related to that in some way.

That police were allowed to just go in and kill people, and nothing has been done.

[narrator] Orangeburg was the nation's first campus massacre,

but it would not be the last.

Two years later, students were gunned down

by law enforcement and National Guardsmen

at both Kent State and Jackson State universities.

[Cleveland] We didn't learn our lesson.

We could have avoided all of that.

You don't put police with loaded guns on a campus.

You just don't do that.

[Michele] It's incredible to think that this happened

two years before the shootings at Kent State.

And you have to ask yourself,

"Why is that one famous, and this one is not?"

And if you think deeply and carefully,

you can't help but wonder whether or not race plays a factor.

[narrator] Two weeks after the massacre,

a local court decided the 1964 Civil Rights Act applied to the bowling alley.

Harry Floyd complied, opened his doors to all,

and ten years later, one-third of his customers were African American.

The bowling alley kept much of its 1960s decor,

but closed soon after the turn of the century.

Today, one organization led by Ellen Zisholtz

has stepped in to preserve the memory of what happened here.

[Ellen Zisholtz] This building of remembrance, we're going to restore it.

It'll be preserved for history,

it will be preserved in commemoration

of the students that were killed and wounded,

but it will also be

something positive for the future.

If you don't preserve your history, you lose your civilization.

[Cleveland] Bringing communities together

is what we have to be concerned about.

But we have to tell the truth about our past.

[narrator] In the Mountain States,

a town that sparked a sporting revolution

became a crucial cog in America's war machine.

[Dr. Kenya Davis-Hayes] We're in the Colorado Rockies,

a place that is known for its adventure, and its wildlife.

[narrator] Among the snow drifts and pine trees,

the remains of abandoned structures stand out.

It looks like an old Wild West film set,

but this site is almost 10,000 feet up. It's freezing, it's isolated.

Why anyone would build anything here is a mystery to me.

[Sascha] Most of the buildings we see are simple wooden shacks.

A door, a few windows, a roof.

[narrator] These buildings

are the remnants of an American hero's dream.

[Nina] This iconic, young gentleman,

he planted the seed here that really revolutionized the Rocky Mountains.

[narrator] Despite facing tragedy when the world fell into war,

this town stepped up.

Soldiers learned skills here that were instrumental in defeating Hitler.

Skills that could only be learned in places like this.

[narrator] This town sits almost two miles high in the Rockies.

Nina Gabianelli first discovered these buildings

over four decades ago,

and has been hooked ever since.

When I first came out to this valley

and found these cluster of cabins,

I was overwhelmed by the idea that people lived out here

in the middle of what, to me, looks like wilderness.

[narrator] With temperatures dropping to below -30 degrees Fahrenheit,

these peaks and valleys

were once part of the untrodden Wild West.

But in 1877, this changed dramatically.

[Trevor Washko] In search of silver,

the US Geological Survey mapped out the region,

and proclaimed that it could be

the treasure vault of America.

[Nina] There was silver, proven in these mountains,

and land was available, free, for the taking.

So hundreds of men began to come into this area to prospect.

[narrator] A settlement was formed across the valley.

By 1883, its population had swelled to 2,000.

This is Ashcroft.

[Nina] Ashcroft was complete with courthouse, dance hall, 20 saloons.

They did kind of forget the churches,

but living out here was not as conducive to family life.

Let's put it that way.

[narrator] Yet, as quickly as Ashcroft boomed, it went bust.

The silver deposits were found to be rather shallow,

and Ashcroft went into decline rather quickly.

[narrator] By the turn of the 20th century,

it appeared Ashcroft was destined for the history books.

But in 1936,

everything changed when a sporting icon came to town.

[Kenya] Billy Fiske was a driver for the US bobsled team.

He won two gold medals in the Winter Olympics.

The first in 1928, the second in 1932.

[Sascha] Billy Fiske was a huge celebrity,

and he probably would have won a third Olympic gold,

but he refused to go to the '36 Olympics

'cause they were held in Nazi Germany.

[narrator] While missing out on the '36 Olympics,

Fiske turned his attention

to bringing the latest sporting trend to America.

In the 1930s, downhill skiing started in the Alps of Central Europe,

and was this new and exciting sport.

It was associated with European royalty. The glitz, the glamor.

But then you add to it, this thrill-seeking, the adrenaline,

the speed of downhill skiing.

It was a true luxury sport.

[narrator] On the hunt for a spot to build a resort for downhill skiing,

Fiske visited the dwindling town of Ashcroft.

When he came to this area,

he fell in love with this beautiful valley.

And his team purchases an immense amount of land,

and they concoct a ski plan with a lift system devised all along this mountain range.

[narrator] But the full resort would never be completed.

In 1939, World War II broke out in Europe,

over two years before America entered the conflict.

[Sascha] This is an important moment for Billy Fiske

'cause he has deep connections to Britain.

He has married an English countess,

and he feels morally obliged to go and fight on the side of the Allies.

[narrator] With America neutral,

Fiske had to find a novel way to fight the Nazis.

Billy Fiske actually joined the Royal Air Force

by lying and saying that he was a Canadian citizen.

[narrator] On July 12, 1940,

Fiske gets called into action...

in the Battle of Britain.

-[guns firing] -[aircraft exploding]

The Battle of Britain is one of the epic battles of the Second World War.

And Billy Fiske fought in one of the most famous planes at the time,

the Hurricane.

It's just going to be nonstop.

You can imagine the dogfights that you would see

in World War II movies.

These would have been fierce battles.

[distant explosion]

[narrator] Three months and three weeks after the battle began,

the Royal Air Force and its allies

defeated the Luftwaffe.

Hitler had to rip up his plan to invade Britain.

But Billy Fiske had paid the ultimate price.

In August of 1940, Fiske's plane was shot down.

He succumbed to his injuries the next day.

[narrator] Billy Fiske was one of the first American casualties

of World War II.

And as the rest of America's military might followed Fiske into war,

his dream of bringing downhill skiing to the Rockies died with him.

[Trevor] With America's entry into World War II,

the steel that was meant to build ski lifts up here at Ashcroft, and tramways,

went to build tanks instead.

[narrator] In an ironic twist of fate,

the very war that had taken Ashcroft's champion,

offered the town a lifeline.

[narrator] After the death of its advocate in World War II,

the dream of Ashcroft becoming a downhill ski destination...

was over.

[Trevor] One of the main stakeholders

for the Ashcroft ski operation

gave his land to the US government

for the duration of the war for $1 a year.

[narrator] With the land now federal,

in 1942, the Army came to Ashcroft

to begin training a new regiment

to fight the Axis Powers in Europe's most difficult battlefield.

They became known as the 10th Mountain Division.

The 10th Mountain Division

had to have a very special type of training

to fight in the mountains.

They actually wore white to blend in with the snow.

The idea was these soldiers

were going to be able to move through the mountains

without tanks, without trucks,

so they had to learn how to use mule teams,

how to ski, how to use dogsleds.

[narrator] These skills proved decisive in the Italian Alps

as the 10th Mountain Division broke through the entrenched German defensive line,

a crucial act in the Allies defeating the Nazis in Europe.

But once the war ended, many soldiers didn't want to stop skiing.

The 10th Mountain veterans

wanted a taste of this new activity back in America.

[narrator] The veterans succeed where Billy Fiske had failed,

and set up ski schools in the Rocky Mountains.

Yet they turned their backs on Ashcroft.

The prospect of actually creating a downhill ski at Ashcroft

was gonna require building everything from the ground up.

Whereas Aspen, just down the way,

had the infrastructure of a townsite.

[narrator] Fast forward nearly 80 years,

and Aspen is America's home of skiing,

welcoming well over a million visitors a year.

While just ten miles away,

Ashcroft has become a ghost town.

Today, Ashcroft's story is kept alive

by a nonprofit organization.

[Nina] We at the Aspen Historical Society

feel a great responsibility for stewarding this valley,

and we're so lucky not to have the development

so that you can take a moment and be within just nature.

[narrator] It's thanks to this unspoiled wildlife

that the ghost town has become famous

for the revival of an activity

that's ingrained in the history of these buildings.

Ashcroft has really become

one of the premier cross-country ski touring areas in this valley.

So, although the town side is a ghost town,

it does still have lots of life here.

[narrator] In the center of Los Angeles,

clues to the city's sordid secret history are waiting to be found,

if you only know where to look.

[Hadley] What's so amazing

is that so many people walking the streets of Los Angeles above

have no idea of all the history going on down below.

When I'm down here, I kind of hear the jazz music and the clinking of glasses,

and all the ghosts of these mobsters, and gangsters, moles,

but I also feel a eerie, creepy feeling down here.

[Sarah] We are just a few blocks from the heart of Downtown LA

in an area still known as Skid Row.

[Kenya] On the corner, is this really strange storefront.

There are no windows,

and everything is painted black.

[Linda Rodriguez-McRobbie] This looks like your average LA dive bar,

but it also looks pretty abandoned.

I mean, there's still liquor in some of these bottles,

and there might even be cash in the register.

[narrator] Downstairs, a basement holds a number of secrets.

[Rob Bell] If this basement was just used for storage,

then why would you bother decorating it

with these pictures on the walls?

[narrator] Connected to this basement

is a sprawling network of tunnels

which give a glimpse into the dark history of the LA underworld.

Beneath this abandoned bar in LA's Skid Row,

lies something from the distant past.

Hadley Meares is a journalist

who relishes uncovering the stories of this city's underbelly.

[Hadley] This was a mecca for folks looking for an illegal drink,

and it's one of my favorite places in Los Angeles.

You can see there's this beautiful, giant icebox right here

with another little, maybe, serving door.

And then if you come back here,

you're gonna see something really cool.

And that is this bricked up tunnel.

And some people claim that this tunnel led

to different spots n Downtown Los Angeles.

[narrator] This basement

was once a secret drinking hole known as the King Eddy Saloon.

And the network of smuggling tunnels that fed it

could be almost as old as Los Angeles itself.

[Rob] At the beginning of the 20th century,

Los Angeles was actually quite a small city

with only around 100,000 people living here.

But the city was growing fast.

[Hadley] Downtown Lost Angeles was where it was all happening in the early 20th century.

There were bars, there were elaborate hotels,

and it was a vibrant place filled with a lot of people

who had made money really fast, and wanted to have a good time.

[narrator] But this vibrant place was about to change forever.

[Rob] Since the early 1800s,

some evangelical groups had been calling for a ban on alcohol,

believing that booze eroded the sanctity of the family.

By the early 20th century, this temperance movement was building steam nationally.

[narrator] On January 17, 1920,

the Volstead Act came into effect,

enacting the Eighteenth Amendment,

and completely banning alcohol across the US.

Prohibition had begun.

[Linda] After Prohibition hit,

it wasn't like people were suddenly gonna stop drinking.

They just had to get a lot more creative

about how they did it.

[narrator] To get around the law,

bar owners started to operate clandestine bars,

giving birth to the speakeasy.

[Hadley] So, during Prohibition,

the King Eddy supposedly turned their original bar

into a fake furniture shop, but that was just a front.

There were lots of these fronts during Prohibition.

[narrator] Speakeasies, such as the King Eddy,

needed to come up with a way

to keep the illegal booze flowing.

Booze would come into LA by land from Mexico,

or on boats from Canada.

It would then be smuggled through the tunnels, and into the bars.

[Hadley] There were probably almost 11 miles of service tunnels

downtown in Los Angeles, you know,

in between hotels,

in between different buildings,

so you could use those if you could get access.

[narrator] Four blocks north of the King Eddy,

lies a network of tunnels beneath City Hall.

So there's a lot of things that are wildly believed about these tunnels.

One is that maybe during Prohibition,

alcohol was ferried through here.

Legend has it that the King Eddy's tunnels ran all the way to City Hall.

[narrator] All of this bootlegging

was controlled by organized crime syndicates.

Some of which were based in these very buildings.

The man who really controlled bootlegging

and all of the criminal activities in Los Angeles

was a gangster named Charlie Crawford.

And Charlie was really tight with a lot of folks at City Hall.

Before 1920, Crawford ran a whole bunch of saloons across LA,

but Prohibition pushed his business underground.

[narrator] Crawford City Hall Gang

would run booze rackets across town

with the assistance of the LAPD.

[Sarah] Part of the reason why

the police were so unsympathetic to Prohibition

was because they were mostly Irish.

And they knew

that it was targeted at the Irish community,

and they liked drinking.

[Linda] It was said that King Eddy's

was the favorite drinking spot of the LAPD

when they weren't pretending to bust bootleggers.

[narrator] But the age of speakeasies and rumrunners was about to end.

Prohibition was repealed on December 5, 1933.

[Kenya] When Prohibition came to an end,

the rackets fell apart.

Charles Crawford, one of the top mob bosses in Los Angeles,

had been assassinated in 1931 by rivals.

[Hadley] So, in the aftermath of Prohibition,

King Eddy opens up top where the music shop was,

and it becomes this beloved shady, gritty Skid Row bar

that everybody in LA had a real soft spot for.

[narrator] As the bars of Downtown Los Angeles went back above ground,

the tunnels that supplied them

fell into disuse and were forgotten.

Today, almost a century after Prohibition was repealed,

the same tunnels that were used to shuttle booze around LA,

have been repurposed.

Most of the tunnels are now either bricked up or owned by private companies

where they're rented out as event spaces or even take-out kitchens.

[narrator] Yet the King Eddy

has reached the end of the line.

[Linda] The King Eddy Saloon was open until 2021,

but after more than 100 years of serving booze,

both legally and illegally, it finally closed.

[narrator] But the miles upon miles of tunnels

are still there underneath the city,

waiting to be rediscovered.

[Hadley] Nobody seems to know

where the tunnels go throughout LA,

we don't seem to even have a map of where the tunnels go in Downtown Los Angeles.

[narrator] In the middle of the desert,

lie the ruins of a place that has both entertained and terrorized travelers

for centuries.

[Adam Thew] I love history, and there's so much history here.

It wasn't too far in the past that this was a lively place.

It's just always captured my imagination.

[narrator] An off-ramp leads travelers down a road to a different time.

[Kenya] It looks like, at some point,

this was a service station.

And you can just imagine people hopping off to stop and fill up their cars.

[narrator] But there is more to this site than first meets the eye.

[Katherine Alcock] As you head deeper into the compound,

you start to see these strange, crumbling structures.

[Jim Meigs] Something odd was going on here,

it's a little hard to say just what.

[Katherine] It suddenly becomes apparent

that there's a gaping chasm below you, and an entrance to a cave.

These buildings give a hint of something much more interesting

than your usual rest stop.

[Adam] Undoubtedly, if the story is true,

this was a horrible tragedy that happened here.

However, it would not be the last.

[narrator] On the edge of this Arizona canyon,

lies a strange collection of buildings.

Local resident, Adam Thew,

has a deep love for the Copper State and its hidden history.

So, many people would argue

that this is where the story began.

Here, at this cave.

If you look above, you can see that building right there,

that is the ticket office where they would sell permits to enter the cave.

[narrator] This cave is well known to locals,

and in 1878, something terrible happened that would make it infamous.

[Kenya] This area has been populated by indigenous Americans

for over 1,000 years.

A battle had broken out

between the Navajo and the Apache tribes.

And the Apache hid in the caves at the Two Guns site.

[narrator] The Navajo tribe discovered the Apaches' location.

To trap their enemy,

the Navajo lit a fire at the cave's entrance, suffocating them.

[Adam] After the crying stopped, and the smoke died,

the Navajo went into the cave,

retrieved all their stolen valuables, looted the bodies,

and left behind 42 suffocated Apache bodies.

[narrator] This place became known as the Apache Death Cave.

And legend has it that ever since,

this cave has been cursed.

But that didn't stop the flow of newcomers.

[Adam] In the early 1880s,

as settlers were making their way through the area,

they ran into the daunting gorge known as Canyon Diablo.

[Katherine] Canyon Diablo runs like a scar across North Arizona,

connecting with the Grand Canyon.

It runs for over 80 miles to the north,

and a further 20 miles to the south.

[narrator] For generations, this treacherous canyon could only be crossed here,

by the Apache Death Cave.

Even today, there are only a few roads and one train track

that cross the 100-mile stretch.

[train horn blows]

[Jim] In 1907,

the National Old Trails Highway was built through this area.

And a few years later,

an improved auto bridge was built across the canyon.

[Katherine] Soon, local entrepreneurs saw the opportunities

that the area would provide,

and established a restaurant and a gas station.

[narrator] But a simple filling station wouldn't be enough

to attract the average American traveler. They wanted entertainment.

The roadside attraction is an American institution.

Who doesn't want to see Carhenge

or the world's biggest ball of twine?

[narrator] And one local character

would turn this place of ambush into a tourist trap.

[Adam] Harry Miller was an eccentric man,

known locally to be pretty hostile.

He claimed to be of full-blooded Apache heritage,

and he went by the name "Chief Crazy Thunder."

He tried to sell this image with long, braided hair for tourism.

[narrator] Harry Miller's favorite actor

was the Wild West star, William Hart.

He named this town after his hero's nickname, Two Guns.

[Adam] The prized jewel of that attraction was the roadside zoo

which was replete with mountain lions,

Gila monsters, bobcats, and other desert creatures.

[narrator] But Miller built this whole site around its star attraction.

[Adam] So Miller, never wasting the opportunity to make a buck,

he installed lighting and vending machines

throughout this cave, and indulged the massacre.

He would take tourists down through the cave,

and he'd allegedly sell the skeletal remains

of the 42 Apache that died here.

[narrator] Rumor has it that soon after taking tourists

into the Apache Death Cave, things started to go wrong for Miller.

His landlord, a man named Earl Cundiff,

took matters into his own hands.

[Katherine] Eventually, Earl got fed up

with his very eccentric tenant,

and he decided to head over to Miller's house with is gun, and lie in wait for him.

Unfortunately for him, Miller saw him lying in wait,

quickly drew his own gun, and shot and killed Earl on the spot.

[narrator] Miller was acquitted

on the grounds of self-defense,

and returned to the town, living as a hermit.

But that would not be the end of his misfortunes.

[Katherine] His own animals at the zoo turned on him,

and he was attacked by his lynx and his mountain lions.

Eventually, in 1930, he disappeared without a trace.

[narrator] Two Guns would be transformed a decade later,

with the arrival of an American icon.

[Kenya] A new road running from Chicago to Los Angeles,

dubbed Route 66, was commissioned in 1926.

In 1938, the road had made its way to Two Guns.

Two Guns was perfectly situated by one of the highway exits.

New buildings were built, a new gas station.

[narrator] But it was as if the town was still cursed.

[Adam] In 1971,

the new Texaco service station, there was a giant explosion.

It took the entire town with it in an incredible inferno,

the smoke of which could be seen nearly 60 miles away.

It would be this monumental explosion

that created the ghost town that we see today.

[narrator] The future of Two Guns is currently unknown,

but there is a hope that the strange history of this town

could be kept alive.

[Adam] There are rumors circulating about turning this into some kind of resort.

It has been vacant since '71,

and, you know, honestly, I like it that way.

There's some allure of mystery to some abandoned things.

Honestly, I prefer that it never was repopulated.