Burro Schmidt, Cerro Gordo, and the philosophy of the impossible task

Executive overview

Most people measure the value of a project by its output. Burro Schmidt spent 38 years digging a tunnel through solid granite — and no ore ever passed through it. Brent Underwood bought a collapsing ghost town with no running water, no residents, and no clear plan.

Both men chose the work anyway. Camus argued we must imagine Sisyphus happy; Underwood argues the same logic applies to anyone who throws themselves fully into an apparently futile undertaking.

The struggle itself is the point — purpose extracted from rock, not from results.

Burro Schmidt's tunnel

• Schmidt began digging through the El Paso Mountains in 1900 to avoid hauling ore around a peak.
• Progress: a foot on a good day, an inch on a bad one.
• In 1920, a road was built over the mountain — making the tunnel obsolete. He kept digging for 18 more years.
• After 38 years, he broke through — into the side of a cliff with no practical exit point.
• No ore was ever transported through it. He packed his mules and left without fanfare.
• The tunnel is a half-mile of hand-chipped granite: proof of what sustained human will can produce.

Camus, Sisyphus, and the 19th-century folly

• Sisyphus rolls a boulder uphill forever; Camus says we must imagine him happy.
• 19th-century "follies" were ambitious projects remarkable for ingenuity and dedication but with no tangible commercial value.
• The word "folly" was coined by people who measure life in dollars and data points.
• Underwood frames Schmidt — and himself — as happy Sisyphuses: finding joy in the task, not the outcome.

Underwood's path to Cerro Gordo

• Raised in suburban Florida, expected to become a doctor, lawyer, or banker.
• Quit investment banking after a due diligence trip — helping foreclose on a family farm to build a Walmart.
• Spent years writing $5 articles online, grading tests, running hostels in Brooklyn and Austin.
• At 2 a.m., a friend sent a link: "Buy your own town for under a million dollars."
• At 30, had a successful life but needed something that would demand everything he had.

Cerro Gordo: the purchase

• 300+ acres in the Inyo Mountains, between Sierra Nevada and Death Valley — listed at $925,000.
• Once produced ~$500 million (today's value) in silver; known as "the mines that built Los Angeles."
• No running water, no residents, most buildings uninhabitable, stores hours away.
• Underwood pooled savings with investor friends — "a dream and a handshake."
• Took ownership on Friday the 13th, June 2018.

What the project has cost — and returned

• Lost nearly 30 pounds, a relationship, business partners, and most of his savings.
• Battled fire, flood, and injury; multiple hospital visits.
• Gained the ability to build with his hands, operate heavy machinery, survive in the wilderness, and rappel 900 feet underground.
• Has not regretted a single decision.