SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA’S BEST GHOST TOWNS<i> by Philip Varney (University of Oklahoma Press:$24.95; 152 pp.) </i>

Ghost towns are enormously appealing; they provide perversely comforting proof that progress is not a smooth road forward into a glorious future. Our young nation’s equivalent of an archeological site, ghost towns bear witness to the fitful starts and stops of forgotten passages in our short history--communities built on one person’s dream that dried up when the idea failed; way stations on a road that never materialized; boom towns that sank roots in a wrongheaded industry.

Philip Varney defines a ghost town not as a completely deserted place but as a community with a population drastically decreased from its peak and whose initial reason for attracting residents no longer exists. “When financier Darius O. Mills traveled his Carson and Colorado Railroad on July 12, 1883, for the end-of-track inspection (in Keeler, a town whose purpose was evaporating even as rail was laid),” Varney writes, “he surveyed the scene with a somber silence and intoned: ‘Gentlemen, we either built it three hundred miles too long or three hundred years too soon.’ ”

Following up similar guides to the ghost towns of New Mexico and Arizona, “Southern California’s Best Ghost Towns” provides history, photographs and directions to more than 60 sites. Wonderful anecdotes occur throughout; an entire chapter is devoted to “The Graves of Jimmy Dayton and Shorty Harris,” legends of Death Valley.

Varney’s guide covers ground as far north as Inyo and Kern counties (risking the ire of people who don’t want to be lumped with Southern California, Varney notes) because the historical lines of commerce tied these towns to the young cities in the south. (A forthcoming volume will cover Northern California and focus on the Gold Rush towns.) Appendices add an exceedingly colorful bibliography, practical advice for travelers venturing off the beaten track, and a special discussion of ghost towns that lend themselves well to exploration by the modern replacement for the trusty horse: the mountain bike.