When I first came out here, my biggest worry was,
"Am I going to die?"
I mean, I've lived in a city my whole life,
and the thing about it is out here in the country,
if something happens, it's gonna happen to you.
And there's nobody out here to help you.
The day after I bought this place --
really, the next day --
someone had broken into the trailer, my little Airstream.
They totally trashed it.
And then I really did wonder, you know, "What have I done?"
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Well, we're in Cisco, Utah, which is a ghost town.
It's high desert, which means it's a really harsh environment.
In the summer, it's like over 100,
and in the winter, it's below freezing.
I would say it was about three years ago that I flew out here.
I was going to Horseshoe Canyon,
which is about three hours away from here.
And when I first came, I thought, "Oof.
I'm not sure that this is abandoned."
But after I established that it was,
then I had all kinds of other ideas.
I liked the idea, since this was a town at one point,
to do an artists' residency out here.
The desert draws a lot of artists
because it's a really good creative space.
You're not distracted by anything, actually.
It's just -- This is all there is.
This is the house that I live in.
It's a 1950 Spartan Mansion.
The person that I bought this from, he was an older guy.
When I called him on the phone, I said,
"Well, I don't have that much money, but here's what I have."
And then he agreed to it immediately,
which made me nervous.
It wasn't that much money, but it was all that I had.
Luckily for me, I come from a family of --
no, I don't want to say hustlers or anything,
but I feel like we were a pretty scrappy bunch.
And we were very much, like, raised to make use of the things
that you have and what's around.
Obviously, everything needs to be done here
because when I got here, everything was falling apart.
So I'm rebuilding this entire place,
which takes a lot of time.
This post office shut down in like the early '90s,
and it was replaced by these PO boxes.
As you can see, there's a lot of room for people to move in.
This town was made to service the steam-engine railroad,
which is funny 'cause there's no actual water here.
Technically, it was abandoned during the '90s,
but, I mean, people started leaving in like the late '60s.
As a whole, just a pile of garbage.
That's all it is.
Yeah, I built this porch.
All of this wood here is from the kitchen
that I tore down behind my log cabin.
I made all these windows myself.
It's really hard to make a window.
Oof!
A lot of people are scared of the outhouse, which makes sense.
I mean, you're hovering over a giant hole full of shit, so...
People don't really consider what it takes just to exist,
as far as, like, what happens to your sewage,
where do you get your water, and all that stuff,
which is something I didn't really think
about either when I came here -- kind of, but not to the extent
of, like, the actual reality of,
"What do you use every day? The bathroom."
So, yeah, this is the Winnebago.
This is hopefully gonna be the live/work space
for the residency program.
Obviously, it needs some work --
the roof, the electric, the windows.
I'm just happy that the door is still here.
You know what I mean?
People assume that because
I'm living in a ghost town that I have nothing to do.
I have rehabbed trailers and houses.
I've built decks. This is what I'm here to do.
Since I have to rebuild the roof anyway
and I'm gonna be tearing all this apart,
I want to actually extend it and make a sleeping area up here.
I have a lot of time to do that
because in the desert, it's so sparse,
and there are very little rules.
You know, it makes it more likely
that a creative person would be able to do what they want there.
And it's also, like, a good test of an artist,
to see whether or not they will do their artwork
if left alone to it.
Come on, Mikey.
This is a very conservative state.
And it's a very religious state.
And...
I would like to say to people that it's safe here
for gay people, but I can't.
I can't say that.
Yeah, the flag's inside for now,
which I feel a little bit ashamed of.
99 percent of the people out here
have been very welcoming to me,
and guys that you wouldn't assume
that would be, you know, that way.
My neighbor just brought me a whole bunch of ammunition.
And people do look out for each other out here.
And I have had to say, in certain circumstances,
"Oh, my husband will be right back."
So...
Yeah.
Hey, Joe.
-I got your water. -Thanks.
-This one's leaking again. -Whoo!
Here she comes.
That's all right. It can leak.
Joe was one of the first people I met out here.
There's a lot of people that kind of snoop around and stuff,
and so I watched him.
He was over there for a long time.
I was like, "What is that guy doing?"
He was, like, digging in the dirt.
And I was like, "Okay, it's starting to get dark.
I have to go over there and tell him to go."
And he stands up, and show them what you carry.
-And I have my little-bitty gun.
-But that's a serious gun. Mine looks like a toy.
When you stood up and I saw your gun, I was like,
"Oh, that's right."
-This is Utah. -This is Utah.
-Everybody has guns. -Everyone has a gun.
And Joe has, since then, taught me how to shoot,
and actually, this handgun here,
he gifted to me after we had a certain incident happen,
where he was like, "You need a real gun."
-Yeah. -And so...
-[ Sighs ]
That'll have to -- No. -You -- Well --
-No? -Mnh-mnh. No.
-All right. -Maybe another time.
I've had some problems with people at night,
and it gets really dangerous.
There was a truck down the street, and I pulled up,
and there's a big Confederate flag on the back,
and there's flashlights.
And a guy comes out of an abandoned building,
and he's holding a gun,
which is a different thing than keeping it in the holster.
And the whole time I'm trying to explain to them
that they need to leave, that they're on private property,
he's holding a gun, which puts me at a disadvantage.
Eventually, I got them to leave.
But the last thing you want
is somebody to come into your house at night
because they think it's abandoned, and they're drunk.
And I didn't sleep for, I don't know, a week.
-Out here by yourself, male, female, you need protection.
This is still the Wild West here, literally.
It's lawless.
It's beautiful in the ways that it'll kill you.
-The cowboy culture that we have as Americans
is just sort of like a nostalgia thing.
I carry a gun to defend myself.
I'm not trying to make any kind of statement about freedom.
Those guys that open carry,
I'm sure they're not often in survival situations
where they are actually gonna need the gun,
but I have to deal with things where I might possibly
have to defend myself every day.
It's this place which draws people.
I put a lot of time and work into this, more so than,
I mean, maybe that I expected, even.
-Eileen and I are both, like, fiercely independent.
Vastly different backgrounds, and now I've just got to see
how the story of the girl from the city unfolds,
who moved out here to the ghost town in the desert by herself.
And I want to see how that ends or doesn't end.
But it's amazing story, and I love stories,
so I want to see hers.
-I've had so many people say to me,
"Oh, you're like a modern pioneer,"
which is funny but kind of true.
There are a lot of things that need to be done,
but it's not impossible,
and now that I've been doing this,
I don't want to do anything else.
That's for sure.
♪♪