The ghost town of Lucin, Utah and the legend of Ivo Zdarsky

Lucin, Utah has your typical story of most ghost towns, in that it was really a product of the railroad boom, coming into being as a water/service stop for the steam locomotives that grew into a small town. Despite making a low-effort search, I couldn't find a founding date for the town other than it being in the late 19th century, but I can assume it would have not been long before the completion of the Lucin Cutoff in 1903 (also known as the Great Salt Lake Causeway today).  

A picture of a train going across the Lucin cutoff. All pics sourced from the Atlas Obscura page. 

The 1930s were not kind to a lot of things and the town had officially been abandoned by 1936, due to the change to diesel locomotives and the great depression likely not helping that. Sometime afterwards some retired railroad workers and their children lived there for a while, but was completely abandoned by about 1990 or so. There aren't really any structures left in the town anymore other than a couple of fruit cellars and a concrete phone booth, and some scattered personal effects.

Strangely, the history of this place actually gets far more interesting after it's abandonment, largely due to it's new inhabitant, Ivo Zdarsky. Ivo bought the entire town boundaries after they were put up for sale in 1997, moved in around 2007 and is now the city's only current resident. 

Ivo Zdarsky is a fascinating man who has an equally fascinating tale of defection during the Cold War. Zdarsky is a former engineering student who lived in Czechoslovakia and studied in the city of Prague. He made headlines worldwide in 1984 when he defected to Austria at the age of 24. What's even more amazing is the fact that he managed to do so by flying an ultralight trike that he designed and hand carved a propeller for himself. 

Ivo in front of his DIY escape aircraft in 1984. 

Without even telling his family, he flew his vehicle over the heavily guarded Czechoslovak-Austrian border during the night at low altitude to avoid detection by radar and being spotted visually. He managed to remain completely undetected even at the point of landing at the Vienna International Airport. Afterwards, he sold his homemade ultralight so that it is now preserved and displayed in the Berlin Checkpoint Charlie Museum in Germany. 

Once in the Western world, he re-settled to Long Beach, California, and used his engineering know how and experience to create the company IVOPROP Corp, which manufactures composite propellers for homebuilt and ultralight aircraft, as well as airboats, and has sold well over 20,000 units since it's founding.

A picture of Ivo in 2020 in front of his Cessna with the killer paint job and his hangar/home behind it.

Zdarsky currently lives in his aircraft hangar, the only real structure in the town other than the runway accompanying it. He bides his time tinkering on projects like keeping his building self-sustaining and energy independent, flying his woodland camo painted Cessna Skyhawk (which you can even see on google maps), shooting his gun collection, watching TV, or perfecting one of his experimental aircraft designs, like the one pictured below.  

He took the location for it's obvious remoteness, as Lucin offers a very practical test-ground with no collateral risks, as well as the fact that he is a survivalist of sorts and likes the idea of being completely self-sufficient. You can read much more on him and his living conditions in the excellent article about him on Atlas Obscura. 

But that's not the end of this man's legendary story, as he had also made the local news in 2019 because he helped find a woman that was reported missing for nearly a week while flying one of his aircraft in the area. Read all about it on the KSL site here. I have to say, he is certainly by far the most interesting man in the state!