I found this book by chance on kindle (it was free at the time). It tells the story of an expedition to a ghost town in Colorado that was completely forsaken in 1893 (but not because of the silver crash, mind you). But it also tells the story of why the town was left by all inhabitants, and it does so by switching back and forth in time at shorter and shorter intervals. I do not want to give too much away, but it would make an exciting film.
At the beginning I feared that the book was drifting into esoterics, but it is not - keep on reading!