 Once you were off work, housing conditions were less than ideal, thanks to those low wages and life in a boom town. This place was packed. It's one square mile, and it had 15,000 residents. That's about the population density of modern-day Chicago. To compare, Jerome today has about 500 residents. The residents were stacked like cordwood on top of each other. Many miners' rooms were double-bunked, where one miner would be working, the other would be sleeping.