#50: Whisperer's Gulch Historic Town

Age: 250 years

Hidden or Lost?: No

History: ‘Come on down to Whisperer’s Gulch Historic Town and experience life as it was in the Old West!’ reads the billboard leading up to this kitschy tourist trap. Many visitors roll their eyes at the cartoonish attractions in the remote ghost town, but most will never know how real the experience actually is.

Whisperer’s Gulch was a small mining town established around 1700. It took its name from the strange voices that the early founders heard coming from the mine in the hill. Voices that soon became undeniable. Livestock began to go missing, and then local children, some of whom would return, suddenly cruel and speaking an odd, tittering language. Within a year of the settlement’s creation, it became apparent to even the skeptics that their mining activity in the ore-rich hills had awakened beings from below.

Something had to be done, and the desperate townspeople enlisted the help of explorers, soldiers, and scholars to investigate. Many descended into the mine, never to return, and soon Whisperer’s Gulch was actively forgotten by the outside world. But the townsfolk didn’t give up.

When conventional means failed, the town leaders began turning to gurus and oracles from across the continents for answers. Different observers claimed it was spirits or prehistoric creatures or hypnotic gas. But it took a folklorist from Scotland to correctly identify the bizarre powers they were dealing with. According to the folklorist, the town was plagued by a species of malignant faerie folk who, worse still, had tamed a species of giant worm. The miners having created a doorway, the fae were looking to spread their nascent empire to the surface. And their day of emergence was nigh.

During a fantastic battle between the King of the Mesa Fairies and the assembled townsfolk, the emerging fae were driven back underground. It was a victory, but the people of Whisperer’s Gulch knew they would be back. Having experienced the skepticism of outsiders, they knew it would be up to them to protect the world whenever the faery army returned. Thus the entire town agreed to an arcane rite that gave them a kind of immortal life as living ghosts, forever tethered to Whisperer’s Gulch.

As progress rolled on, and civilization encroached ever closer to the town, they rebranded as an old west attraction as a way of hiding in plain sight and maintaining control of the entrance to the Mesa Faeries’ domain.

Today, roadtrippers still stop by the dusty old desert town to see the blacksmith toiling away at the forge, not realizing that it’s the same one that worked there hundreds of years previous or the kindly schoolmarm who lived the history she now recounts on tours. And behind the Old West façade, the ghostly townsfolk prepare for their next battle, studying magic and warfare, hoping the next encounter with the fae folk will be the last, and they can finally be free. $12 per person entry fee, $6 for AARP members.

1. Whisperer’s Gulch Gate

2. Rootin Reb’s General Store

3. Stuckthumb’s Olde Time Tailor

4. Library of Forbidden Texts

5. Alchemical Workshop

6. Mining Museum

7. Pretty Jane’s Saloon

8. Old Jailhouse

9. Faery Prison

10. Whisperer’s Gulch Bank & Loan

11. Mystery Mansion

12. Bill Groat: Blacksmith

13. Runeforge

14. Marm Penny’s Schoolhouse

15. Deadeye Shooting Gallery

16. Secret Mine Entrance

17. The Ghost House

18. Old Cart Storage

19. The Ritual Banishing Field

20. Portal to the Mesa Faery Domain