Cisco, population 1: An artist's master plan to restore a Utah ghost town
CISCO, Utah (KUTV) — In a Utah town forgotten by time, all you can hear is whistle of the wind as it carries the secrets of a life left behind.
Wisconsin native and Chicago transplant Eileen Muza doesn’t mind the quiet. She is the only resident of the ghost town.
Cisco, Utah sits about 30 miles west of the Colorado border.
“I kind of had the feeling that this place wasn’t necessarily wanted by the person who owned it,” Muza said.
In 2015, she bought the abandoned town and left her life in Chicago to move there. She first visited the old railroad town on vacation and was quickly fascinated by its history.
Cisco was established in the 1880s as a fill-station for the Rio Grande Western Railroad. But when Interstate 70 was built, the town died off.
“This is basically what’s left behind of a town that was abandoned in the 90s,” she said.
Muza is visual artist, and she’s rebuilding the town as a part of her latest art installment.
“I know, what in tarnation?” she said with a laugh.
She’s adjusting to life without running water.
“To me, it’s as good a place as any to live, if not better,” she said.
Muza is refurbishing old buildings to house other artists for a residency project called Home of the Brave.
“For her I think it makes sense,” said Lauren Calhoun, Muza’s oldest friend.
She came to visit and help with the rebuild.
“We’ve been best friends for about 20 years,” she said.
When Calhoun first heard her friend was leaving her life in the city to move to the middle-of-nowhere Utah, she had to laugh.
“She’s had this really romantic idea of these objects that have this history, and she’s just surrounded by that here,” she said.
The life Muza is building in Cisco has a bigger purpose. Her goal is to preserve the town’s history while offering artists a unique place to work.
“It’s a separate space away from your life that you can sort of change the way you think and be in a different environment,” she said.
Time stopped for Cisco, but Muza is keeping its history alive.
“There were people who lived out here and had their whole lives out here and just left,” Calhoun said.
“The arts are one of the few things that redeem us as human beings,” Muza said.
She will welcome her first artist in October and has opened up applications for more artists to join her in the spring.
