Ghost Towns

Smithsonian photographer Berthold Steinhilber captures the eerie desolation of Bodie, Masonic and other old mining towns: "Ghost towns are palpable history, places where you can reach out and touch the past, where it’s so close it seems just around the corner. I know, because as a boy in the Southwest, I couldn’t leave the house without being warned (in vain) to stay out of the old mines that riddled the surrounding southern Arizona mountains."

Thanks to Chris Steins