Then, the Great Recession hit.
In January 2011, USG closed down the mine due to reduced demand for sheetrock, CNBC reported. The company installed a chain-link fence around the perimeter of the town, and its roughly 300 residents were told to pack up and leave.
Over the next five years, Empire became a ghost town.
Weeds grew rampant, and two llamas were brought in to keep the grass in check, according to the Reno-Gazette Journal.
The town s fate changed when another mining company purchased it
When mining executive David Hornsby first visited Empire in 2015 to scope out the possibility of revitalizing it, he was taken aback by the state of the buildings.
The true story of Empire, Nevada, the tiny desert town from Nomadland that shut down in 2011, forcing all of its residents out
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The true story of Empire, Nevada, the tiny desert town from Nomadland that shut down in 2011, forcing all of its residents out
msn.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from msn.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
NOMADLAND: 4 ½ STARS A blend of fiction and non-fiction, “Nomadland,” the melancholy new Frances McDormand drama, is a timely story of a woman who learns to adapt and survive after losing everything she held dear. Just as Fern (McDormand) cuts herself off from the norms of regular society, “Nomadland” is not tied to traditional storytelling structures. Its unhurried 107-minute running time is leisurely, not plot driven, but utterly compelling. Director Chloé Zhao follows the widowed Fern as she leaves Empire, Nev., a small company town now bleeding residents after the closure of the U.S. Gypsum Corporation factory. So many people have fled to greener pastures that the post office discontinued the local zip code.
Film Review: ‘Nomadland’: Destitute Elders in Vans in America’s Badlands Fern (Frances McDormand) is a “houseless” nomad, in “Nomadland.” (Searchlight Pictures/Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures)
It’s got most critics out of their minds with happiness, but I had a hard time with it. It may be the most depressing thing I’ve seen in the last five years. What else should one feel about the subject matter? You’ve got elderly Americans forced out of secure lives by fate and into cruel states of Steinbeckian migrant survival, working the most menial jobs imaginable.
You’ve got your truck-stop toilet cleaning, sugar beet harvesting, and monotonous assembly-line-type Amazon factory jobs (the employers knowingly prey on the elderly), with no relief in sight. They live in vans that can easily break down in desolate stretches of nowhere, using five-gallon plastic containers as toilets. There needs to be a follow-up movie that depicts those for whom nomad life is, prim