Man, I could have sworn I wrote down a description of Antique Rot before.
When a undiversified town loses it’s economic base, it also loses it’s youth to new opportunities elsewhere. The town and it’s population are now aging and dying. One of the ways to hang on for a little bit longer, maybe squeeze another generation out of it, is to sell the patrimony the place. This is done with antique stores, slowly selling off all the things left behind, even the fixtures from abandoned buildings. People love old fixtures. So, what you’ve got left is a gas station, a post office, and a market (possibly all three in one) and a dozen antique stores. This is unsustainable. There’s only so many antiques is a place.
From here, there’s a couple paths left:
- End Stage Antique Rot – Population drops to 0, nothing left to sell and no one to sell it. You’re a proper ghost town now and nature will slowly reclaim it.
- Kitsch Revitalization – Selling the ghost town/old timey experience. A popular option along the old Route 66.
- Antique Vampire – Get more antiques from other towns to keep your town going.
I’m sure someone with a better head for urban development and demographics can explain this much more exactly than me. If an economist and/or anthropologist hasn’t already tackled Town Death, I’d be shocked. At the very least, Terry Pratchett did in Reaper Man. But one gold prospecting trip to the are around Randsberg, CA crystallized it in my head, in addition to creating the term “funranium” as described in this post.
This part of the Mojave was home to on and off gold exploration from the 1890s until 2006 after it had been converted to a strip mine and then was officially played out. All that’s left are cyanide leaching spoil piles. While there are FASCINATING new minerals forming in them, I really don’t recommend playing in them. Yes Jackson, I’m looking at you specifically as I type this.