The Ghost City is a 1923 American silent Western film serial directed by Jay Marchant. It is considered to be a lost film.

Plot

As described in a film magazine, in Sunshine Valley, California, there is trouble aplenty brewing. Laughing Larry Laughton (Morrison) and his pal, Sagebrush Hilton (Rice), are informed that unless the ranch owners place ten thousand dollars in a designated spot on a certain day, the reservoir supplying the valley with water will be drained. To show that they are in earnest, they have taken two feet of water already. At the same time, Austin Sinclair (Allen), wealthy California ranch owner, having purchased Ghost City Ranch in Sunshine Valley, receives word in his home in New Orleans that a conspiracy is in progress to take the ranch away from him. Unable to go to California himself on account of a disabled foot, his daughter Alice (Morris) offers to go for him and gets her cousin Raymond Moreton (Wilson), a daring young aviator, to take her in his plane. Agents of Jasper Harwell (Osborne), who is trying by unfair means to get the ranch from Sinclair, have been installed in the New Orleans home and, learning of Alice's plans, try to prevent them from getting away. They take the automobile, but Alice and Raymond get horses and manage to reach the plane just before them by taking several short cuts. Once in the plane they have an uneventful journey until they are within a few miles of their destination. Here the engine develops trouble and they are forced to land. Alice sees a couple of men and decides to ask them if she can borrow some horses. On the way she gets right in the path of a stampeding herd of cattle. Laughing Larry happens to be one of the men she was heading for and he sees her predicament. Riding his horse down a steep grade he reaches her side just in time. As they race ahead of the herd, Larry's horse falls and they are thrown right under the rushing hoofs.