Historic and contemporary photos illustrate a fascinating collection of Old West legends in this program by author-filmmaker Ethan Knightchilde, who has visited hundreds of ghost towns across the western states over the last two decades.

Following in the footsteps of his Best Documentary Award-winning film “Ghosts of the West: The End of the Bonanza Trail,” Ethan debuted this entry of his decades-long ghost town documentary project to a standing room-only crowd of over two hundred at the Niwot Historical Society in 2018. The show sold out the following year at the prestigious Colorado Chautauqua.

Unlike books and movies that simply repeat embellished folklore, the multimedia lecture “Ghost Towns of the American West” will walk you through a landscape of legends and dramatic nonfiction stories from across the West while keeping one foot planted firmly in the real world. Ethan will share historical and contemporary images to illustrate stories of discoveries, boomtowns, bust times, and the ultimate fates of the ghost towns of the Old West, including some “inconvenient facts” of history.

Ethan has traveled tens of thousands of miles to film hundreds of sites throughout Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, California, Nevada, Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, Oregon, Washington, and Idaho. He has researched little known tales and fascinating legends, and is eager to share some of the very best during this special event at Colorado Free University.