Ghost of a ghost town

Hi all,

Recently I was looking at some old landowner maps of my county when I came across a map of Oakland City. I had a general idea of the lay of the land, and knew how to get ahold of the farmer who owned the property in its entirety. He was very nice, thanked me for asking first, and promptly gave me my run of his farm.

Oakland City was laid out in a perfect gridwork of streets and avenues, and I was actually able to superimpose the 1873 map onto a current sattelite image perfectly. Main Street was still visible on the sat image! I had just cornered my very own ghost town!! A little more research into the inhabitants and I was all set!

But it is not to be. You see, Oakland City was a paper town. It was included in the 1873 Atlas as an ambitious plan by a land speculator named McKinley, the publisher must have been quite confident in his skill to have included the city layout in the Atlas. McKinley lost a fortune on the failure of the venture. Oakland City never existed.

I walked Main Street this morning and found nothing but a handfull of shell casings from deer hunters. Main Street was actually an access road for a quarry operation from years back. The research was not a total loss, I could have spent half the summer swinging that farm, now its onto something else. There is no worthless research.

HH,
HJ

Interesting research. I think finding out history like this is about as fun as the actual detecting. Too bad it didn't pan out for you, maybe next time