About two weeks ago, Editor Don Chaddock and I got a rare opportunity to see the remains of the town of Clarksville, just outside of El Dorado Hills, which is scheduled to be cleared and developed in the next couple of years. The property is privately held, and the owner has said that he will turn where the Wells Fargo building was into a museum to honor Clarksville’s history.

The town holds local historical significance because it was once a thriving community where mining occurred, and it was a Pony Express remounting station.

Clarksville was expected to boom when the railroad was planned to go through it from Sacramento, but then the route changed and moved to the south of Clarksville, and then the town started a slow decline.

Clarksville did experience a small rejuvenation when the Lincoln Highway, which was the nation’s first transcontinental highway, passed through it in the early 1900s, but in the 1960s, Highway 50 was rerouted to bypass Clarksville, and then the town faded away.

The town is in ruins now with some of the walls of buildings still standing, old homes in decay and the old school building. The school building was moved, and is still in use as a barn. There are also remnants of the old Wells Fargo Banks, an empty open space where a shcoolhouse once sat, and a few homes. The old homes that are falling apart and looking kind of like shanties that a person can picture in the Deep South.

I was privileged to get to shoot and document the remains of the town because it isn’t open to public, and I will probably be one of the last professional photographers to get in there and document it.

I was really proud to do the kind of work I did in that I got to help preserve something for the historical record that will probably not be there much longer.

To see more images from my private collection, click here.

To read the story, "Ghost Town’s Final Days" by Don Chaddock, click here.