Frisco Ghost Town

Frisco, Utah was an old mining town in the late 1800s. At its peak, the town’s population was about 6,000 people, mostly miners and their families, and an 1879 directory lists 33 businesses with services, which included eight saloons. Today almost nothing remains but some foundations and a cemetery, but it’s the reputation of this place that led me to seek it out.

You see, Frisco was one of those old west towns like you see in the movies. The streets running though the town had more than twenty saloons, brothels, and gambling houses. It also had the reputation of being a very dangerous place to be. All kinds of crime ranging from muggings to murders happened on a daily basis. So much so, that the town hired a marshal from Nevada and told him to “clean up the town.” Legend has it that they offered to build him a new jail, but he declined saying “don’t need no new jail.” Legend also has it that he then proceeded to kill six men that same night as a warning to all the outlaws that indeed shit would not be taken. Just like in the movies.

In 1885 a cave-in of the main condemned the town. Once the collapse sealed in the biggest and most profitable mine in the area, the town began to dwindle. By the turn of the century, only a handful of businesses still remained, and by the 1920s, Frisco was a ghost town.