Some tragedies, famine, disease, fire.

They're so immense that families, sometimes whole communities,

they leave, hoping to make a better start somewhere else.

Into the untrained eye, it can look as if they've just vanished without a trace.

But almost every time they leave something very important behind.

You're listening to Spoot. Stay tuned. Here, and glittering Los Angeles and booming Silicon Valley in the hectic San Francisco Bay.

If you just stay on California's four-lane highways, our eight-lane expressways,

it is very easy to forget that all of this, it's built on something.

And something is not that far away. If you pull off the

highway, turn away from the road signs, pointing toward the latest tourist attraction, instead go over that hill. You don't even have to go that far. See, we think of this place as crowded, as bustling, but so much of our landscape is barren, silent.

Even today, you can follow dirt roads to abandon towns where every single person has fled

or been consumed.

From Snap Judgment's underground layer,

my name is Glenn Washington.

Know this.

All ground is hallowed ground.

Spook starts now. Travelers came to California in search of their fortune.

Very few of them found it.

And out in the foothills of California's gold country,

some miners have discovered the old-timers.

They never really left.

Here's producer Adiza Egan.

...