“Our goal is to maintain the historical nature of the property and respect the piece of history,” Brent in an interview with NBC. “We want to continue this piece of American history.”

Now, Brent did receive some help from friends, but for the most part, he has been doing everything alone in a town whose location is not easy to access: “Out here, you learn to depend on yourself. If you forget something, too bad. Figure it out. If you don’t have the right screw, figure out some other way.”

Besides the scraps and junk he found stored in many of the buildings, there were also some treasures for the museum. These include an old rusted pistol, denim mining clothes (jeans and jacket), various tools and hats, pots, pans, utensils, even leftover dynamite in the mines.