Two Towns Emptied Overnight as Gold Fever Hits the Methow
Ruby and Conconully stand nearly deserted while a brand-new townsite at the mouth of the Methow fills faster than carpenters can raise walls.
The towns of Ruby and Conconully are deserted, almost depopulated. A correspondent in the Spokane Review says: "The postmaster is all that is left in Ruby and the county officials are all the ones left at Conconully. All have gone to Slate creek, on the Methow. A town has been laid out at the mouth of the Methow, where many are camped along that stream. Houses cannot be built fast enough to shelter the eager crowd. There is not much room among them. As usual, some are destined to ride into wealth on a boom."
“Houses cannot be built fast enough to shelter the eager crowd.”
A century before Seattle's tech boom reshaped whole neighborhoods, Okanogan County lived the same story at horse-and-pickaxe speed: one strike and entire towns emptied overnight while speculators raced to plat the next one. The abandoned postmasters of Ruby and Conconully are ancestors of every ghost town that promised instant riches, and the new settlement at the mouth of the Methow rose and faded in a single season.
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