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, a ghost town in , USA
A ghost town is an abandoned ,
or , usually one which contains substantial visible remains. A town often becomes a ghost town because the economic activity that supported it has failed, or due to natural or human-caused disasters such as floods, government actions, uncontrolled lawlessness, war, or nuclear disasters. The term can sometimes refer to cities, towns, and neighborhoods which are still populated, but significantly less s for example those affected by high levels of unemployment and dereliction.
Some ghost towns, especially those that preserve period-specific architecture, have become tourist attractions. S ; ; and
in the United S
in Ukraine. Visiting, writing about, and photographing ghost towns is a minor industry. A recent modern-day example is , which was abandoned due to the
There is a ghost town that is an incumbent
The exact definition of a ghost town varies between individuals, and between cultures. Some writers discount settlements that were abandoned as a result of a natural or human-made disaster, using the term only to describe settlements which were deserted because they were no longer T. Lindsey Baker, author of Ghost Towns of Texas, defines a ghost town as "a town for which the reason for being no longer exists". Some believe that any settlement with visible tangible remains should not be others say, conversely, that a ghost town should contain the tangible remains of buildings. Whether or not the settlement must be completely deserted, or may contain a small population, is also a matter for debate. Generally, though, the term is used in a looser sense, encompassing any and all of these definitions. The American author Lambert Florin's preferred definition of a ghost town was simply "a shadowy semblance of a former self".
Factors leading to abandonment of towns include depleted natural resources, economic activity shifting elsewhere, railroads and roads bypassing or no longer accessing the town, human intervention, disasters, massacres, wars, and the shifting of politics or fall of empires. A town can also be abandoned when it is part of an
( donkeys) roam the former boomtown of
Ghost towns may result when the single activity or resource that created a
(e.g., nearby mine, mill or resort) is depleted or the resource economy undergoes a "bust" (e.g., catastrophic resource price collapse). Boomtowns can often decrease in size as fast as they initially grew. Sometimes, all or nearly the entire population can desert the town, resulting in a ghost town.
The dismantling of a boomtown can often occur on a planned basis. Mining companies nowadays will create a temporary community to service a mine site, building all the accommodation shops and services, and then remove it as the resource is worked out. A
would often bring intensive but short-lived economic activity to a remote village, only to leave a ghost town once the resource was depleted.
In some cases, multiple factors may remove the economic b some former
suffered both mine closures when the resources were depleted and loss of highway traffic as US 66 was diverted away from places like
onto a more direct path.
The Middle East has many ghost towns that were created when the shifting of politics or the fall of empires caused capital cities to be socially or economically non-viable, such as .
Railroads and roads bypassing or no longer accessing a town can create a ghost town. This was the case in many of the ghost towns along Ontario's historic , and along
after motorists bypassed the latter on the faster moving highways
and . Some current ghost towns were originally founded along railways where
formerly stopped at periodic intervals to take on water.
was part of one such series of villages along the
across the .
River re-routing is another factor, one example being the towns along the .
Ghost towns may be created when land is
by a government and residents are required to relocate. One example is the village of
in , England, acquired during World War II to build an artillery range.
A similar situation occurred in the U.S. when
acquired land to construct the
(SSC), a rocket testing facility in
(on the Mississippi side of the , which is the - state line). This required NASA to acquire a large (approximately 34 square miles (88 km2))
because of the loud noise and potential dangers associated with testing such rockets. Five thinly populated rural Mississippi communities (Gainesville, Logtown, Napoleon, Santa Rosa, and Westonia), plus the northern portion of a sixth (), along with 700 families in residence, had to be completely relocated off the facility.
Sometimes the town might cease to officially exist, but the physical infrastructure remains. For example, the five Mississippi communities that had to be abandoned to build SSC still have remnants of those communities within the facility itself. These include city streets (now overgrown with forest flora and fauna) and a one-room school house. Another example of infrastructure remaining is the former town of , which voted itself out of existence and turned the land over for construction of the . Many houses and even a few barns remain, used for housing visiting scientists and storing maintenance equipment, while roads that used to cross through the site have been blocked off at the edges of the property, with gatehouses or simply barricades to prevent unsupervised access.
Construction of dams has produced ghost towns that have been left underwater. Examples include the settlement of , U.S., inundated by the creation of . The town was reorganised and reconstructed on nearby higher ground. Other examples are
flooded by
construction in 1958, the hamlets of
in , England, which were flooded to create , and the villages of
and , England, flooded during the construction of the .
in Russia was flooded by the creation of . Many ancient villages had to be abandoned during construction of the
in China, leading to displacement of many rural people. In the Costa Rican province of Guanacaste, the town of
was rebuilt to make room for the man-made . The old town now lies submerged below the lake.
was flooded by a dam of the .
Some towns become deserted when their populations are . The original French village at
was destroyed on 10 June 1944 when 642 of its 663 inhabitants, including women and children, were killed by a German
company. A new village was built after the war on a nearby site, and the ruins of the original have been maintained as a memorial. No ghost towns exist however at the massacred Czech villages of
(where its 173 male occupants were executed on 10 June 1942) and
(where all of its 33 adults were shot on 24 June 1942); there, both villages were systematically levelled to the ground to leave no trace of their existence.
, Italy, was abandoned due to a landslide in 1963. Now it is a popular film set.
Natural and man-made disasters can create ghost towns. For example, after being flooded more than 30 times since their town was founded in 1845, residents of , decided to relocate after two floods in 1993. With government help, the whole town was rebuilt 3 miles (4.8 km) away.
, a medieval village in the Italian region of , was evacuated after a landslide in 1963. Nowadays it is a famous filming location for many movies, to name a few
was abandoned due to an uncontainable , which began in 1962 and sti eventually the fire reached an abandoned mine underneath the nearby town of , which caused that mine to catch on fire too and forced the evacuation of that town as well.
, Ukraine, was abandoned after the .
Ghost towns may also occasionally come into being due to an anticipated natural disaster – for example, the Canadian town of
was abandoned in 1991 after soil testing revealed that the community was built on an unstable bed of . Two years after the last building in Lemieux was demolished, a landslide swept part of the former town-site into the . Two decades earlier, the Canadian town of , Québec, also constructed on a Leda clay base, had been abandoned after a landslide on 4 May 1971, which swept away 41 homes, killing 31 people.
Following the
of 1986, dangerously high levels of nuclear radiation escaped into the surrounding area, and nearly 200 towns and villages in
and neighbouring
were evacuated, including the cities of
and . The area was, and still is, so contaminated with nuclear radiation that many of the evacuees were never permitted to return to their homes. Pripyat is the most famous of t it was built for the workers of the
and had a population of almost 50,000 at the time of the disaster. A similarly large-scale evacuation followed the 2011
in Japan, and some towns within the exclusion zone, such as , remain abandoned.
Ghost town -West in , Germany. Abandoned by the
after 1992, and turned into a restricted area due to ammunition contamination.
Significant fatality rates from epidemics have produced ghost towns. Some places in eastern
were abandoned after over 7,000 Arkansans died during the
epidemic of 1918 and 1919. Several communities in Ireland, particularly in the west of the country, were wiped out due to the
in the latter half of the 19th century, and the years of economic decline that followed.
Catastrophic environmental damage caused by long-term contamination can also create a ghost town. Some notable examples are , whose residents were exposed to a high level of , and , , which was once Australia's largest source of , but was shut down in 1966 due to health concerns.
and , twin communities straddling the - border, were once one of the United States' largest sources of
and , but over a century of unregulated disposal of
led to groundwater contamination and lead poisoning in the town's children, eventually resulting in a mandatory
buyout and evacuation. Also contaminations due to
caused by military use may lead to the development of ghost towns.
Walhalla township in 1910.
Part of Walhalla in 2004, showing a mix of original and reconstructed buildings.
was almost abandoned after being mined for gold, but is now becoming repopulated.
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A few ghost towns get a second life, often due to
generating a new economy able to support residents. For example , Australia, became almost deserted after its gold mine ceased operation in 1914, but owing to its accessibility and proximity to other attractive locations it has had a recent economic and holiday population surge.
, the second largest city of Egypt, was a flourishing city in the Ancient era, but declined during the Middle Ages. It underwent a dramatic revival during the 19 from a population of 5,000 in 1806, it grew into a city of over 200,000 inhabitants by 1882, and is now home to over four million people.
In Algeria, many cities became hamlets after the end of . They were revived with shifts in population during and after . , currently the nation's second largest city with 1 million people, was a village of only a few thousand people before colonization.
, a village in , Spain that was mostly abandoned and only inhabited by a mother and son, is slowly being revived owing to the ever-increasing stream of pilgrims on the road to .
Wars and rebellions in some African countries have left many towns and villages deserted. Since 2003, when President
came to power, thousands of citizens of the
have been forced to flee their homes as a result of the escalating conflict between armed rebels and government troops. Villages accused of supporting the rebels, such as Beogombo Deux near , are ransacked by those who are not killed have no choice but to escape to refugee camps. The instability in the region also leaves organized and well-equipped bandits free to terrorize the populace, often leaving villages abandoned in their wake. Elsewhere in Africa, the town of
was burnt to the ground during . Before its destruction, the town had a population of 20,000.
Many of the ghost towns in mineral-rich Africa are former mining towns. Shortly after the start of the 1908
in , now known as , the German Imperial government claimed sole mining rights by creating the
(forbidden zone), effectively criminalizing new settlement. The small mining towns of this area, among them ,
and , were exempt from this ban, but the denial of new land claims soon rendered all of them ghost towns.
In most countries, ghost towns are towns which were occupied and then abandoned. In China, there are ghost cities that have never been occupied. In India,
are among the popular examples.
Many abandoned towns and settlements in the former
were established near
concentration camps to supply necessary services. Since most of these camps were abandoned in the 1950s, the towns were abandoned as well. One such town is located near the former Gulag camp called
(also called Lower Butugychag). Other towns were deserted due to deindustrialisation and the economic crises of the early 1990s attributed to .
A recent example of a ghost town is
after the .
The derelict British base in Whalers Bay, , destroyed by a volcanic eruption
The oldest ghost town in
is on , where in 1906, a Norwegian-Chilean company set up a whaling station at Whalers Bay, which they used as a base for their factory ship, the Gobernador Bories. Other whaling operations followed suit, and by 1914 there were thirteen factory ships based there. The station ceased to be profitable during the , and was abandoned in 1931. In 1969, the station was partially destroyed by a volcanic eruption. There are also many abandoned scientific and military bases in Antarctica, especially in the .
The Antarctic island of
used to have several thriving whaling settlements during the first half of the 20th century, with a combined population exceeding 2,000 in some years. These included
(operating 1904-64),
(1909–65),
(1909–20),
(1910–60),
(1912–61) and
(1917–34). The abandoned settlements have become increasingly dilapidated, and remain uninhabited nowadays except for the Museum curator's family at Grytviken. The jetty, the church, and dwelling and industrial buildings at Grytviken have recently been renovated by the South Georgian Government, becoming a popular tourist destination. Some historical buildings in the other settlements are being restored as well.
Main street of , France, unchanged since the German massacre.
– the migration of a country's rural population into the cities – has left many European towns and villages deserted. An increasing number of settlements in Bulgaria are becoming ghost t at the time of the 2011 census, the country had 181 uninhabited settlements. In Hungary, dozens of villages are also threatened with abandonment. The first village officially declared as "dead" was
in the late 1970s, but later it was repopulated as an eco-village. Some other depopulated villages were successfully saved as small rural resorts, such as , , , , and .
In Spain, large zones of the mountainous
have undergone heavy depopulation since the early 20th century, leaving a string of ghost towns in areas such as the . Traditional agricultural practices such as sheep and goat rearing, on which the mountain village economy was based, were not taken over by the local youth, especially after the lifestyle changes that swept over rural Spain during the second half of the 20th century.
In the United Kingdom, thousands of villages were abandoned during the Middle Ages, as a result of , climate change, revolts, and , the process by which vast amounts of farmland became privately owned. Since there are rarely any visible remains of these settlements, they are not generally co instead, they are referred to in archaeological circles as .
Sometimes, wars and genocide end a town's life. In 1944, occupying German Waffen-SS troops murdered the population of the French village . A new settlement was built nearby after the war, but the old town was left depopulated on the orders of President , as a permanent memorial. In Germany, numerous smaller towns and villages in the
were completely destroyed in the last two years of the war. These territories later became part of
and the , and many of the smaller settlements were never rebuilt or repopulated. Some villages in England were also abandoned during the war, but for different reasons.
and , along with several villages in the , were commandeered by the
for use as training grounds for British and US troops. Although this was intended to be a temporary measure, the residents were never allowed to return, and the villages have been used for military training ever since.
Disasters have played a part in the abandonment of settlements within Europe. After the
of 1986, the cities of
were evacuated due to dangerous radiation levels within the area. As of today, Pripyat remains completely abandoned, and Chernobyl has around 500 remaining inhabitants.
, one of many abandoned buildings in
There are ghost towns in parts of , , , , , and . Some were logging towns or dual mining and logging sites, often . In Alberta and Saskatchewan, most ghost towns were once farming communities that have since died off due to the removal of the railway through the town or the bypass of a highway. The ghost towns in British Columbia were predominantly mining towns and prospecting camps as well as canneries and, in one or two cases, large smelter and pulp mill towns. British Columbia has more ghost towns than any other jurisdiction on the North American continent, with one estimate at the number of abandoned and semi-abandoned towns and localities upwards of 1500. Among the most notable are , , and .
Some ghost towns have revived their economies and populations due to historical and eco-tourism, such as . Barkerville, once the largest town north of , is now a year-round Provincial Museum. In Québec,
is a well-know founded in 1901 around a mechanical
which became obsolete when
began to break down
by chemical means, it was abandoned when the mill closed in 1927 and re-opened as a park in 1960.
, USA, a well-preserved ghost town that is now a .
1881 Assay building in what was once Vulture City, a mining town in
There are many ghost towns, or semi-ghost towns (some of them ), in the American , the rural areas of which have lost a third of their population since 1920. Thousands of communities in the northern plains states (such as , , , and ) became railroad ghost towns when a rail line failed to materialize. Hundreds more were abandoned when the
replaced the railroads as the United States' favorite mode of travel. Ghost towns are common in mining or old
areas: , , , , , , , , and
in the western United States and
in the eastern USA. Some unincorporated towns become ghost towns due to flooding for man made lakes, such as . They can be observed as far south as , , , , and . When the resources that had created an employment boom in these towns were consumed, the businesses ceased to exist,[] and the people moved to more productive areas. Sometimes a ghost town consists of many old abandoned buildings (as in ); elsewhere, there remain only foundations of former buildings (e.g., ). Old mining camps that have lost most of their population at some stage of their history, such as , , , , , , , , , , and , are sometimes included in the category, although they are active towns and cities today.[]
Some of the earliest settlements in the US, though they no longer exist in any tangible sense, once had the characteristics of a ghost town. , the first permanent English settlement in the Americas, was abandoned in 1699 when
became the new c the
became a ghost town in 1632, when every one of the colonists were massacred by I and in 1590, mapmaker
arrived at the
in North Carolina to find it deserted, its inhabitants having vanished without a trace.
Starting in 2002, an attempt to declare an "official ghost town" in California stalled when the adherents of the town of , in , and those of , in , could not come to an agreement as to which of their favorites was more deserving. A compromise was eventually reached – Bodie became the "official state gold rush ghost town", while Calico was named the "official state silver rush ghost town".
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a wave of European immigrants arrived in Argentina and settled in the cities, which offered jobs, education, and other opportunities that enabled newcomers to enter the middle class. Many also settled in the growing small towns along the expanding railway system. Since the 1930s, many rural workers have moved to the big cities. Other ghost towns were created in the aftermath of dinosaur fossil rushes.
A number of ghost towns throughout Latin America were once mining camps or lumber mills, such as the many
mining camps that prospered in Chile from the end of the
until the invention of synthetic saltpeter during World War I. Some of these towns, such as the
in the , have been declared . Another former mining town,
in Mexico, has been used as a backdrop for Hollywood movies such as , , and .
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Hall, Shawn (2010). . Charleston, SC: Arcadia Pub. p. 7.  .
Graves, P Weiler, S Tynon, Emily (25 January 2010). . Social Science Research Network 2011.
Mould, R. F. (2000). "Evacuation and Resettlement". . Bristol: Institute of Physics Publishing. pp. 103–117.  .
Brundage, John F.; Shanks, G. Dennis (August 2008). . Emerging Infectious Diseases (U.S. ) 14 (8) 2010.
Annual report of the Surgeon General of the Public Health Service of the United States - 1920. Washington, DC: .
. www.walhalla.org.au. Walhalla Heritage and Development League Inc.
?goston, Gá Masters, Bruce (2009). . Infobase Publishing. p. 33.  .
. Central Intelligence Agency. Retrieved 13 September 2012.
Thompson, Mike (15 December 2008). . BBC News 2008.
Thompson, Mike (18 December 2008). . BBC News 2008.
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Santcross, N Ballard, S Baker, Gordon (2001). Namibia Handbook: The Travel Guide. .  .
"The City of the Dead: The ghostly Chinese town filled with luxury properties that nobody lives in"|
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(in Spanish). Diario de Teruel. 12 March .
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Baker, T. Lindsay (1991).
(2nd ed.). Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.  .
McIntyre, T Politis, Paul (September–October 2005). . Canadian Geographic.
Wolle, Muriel Sibell (1991). Stampede to Timberline: The Ghost Towns and Mining Camps of Colorado (2nd ed.). Athens, OH: Swallow Press/Ohio University Press.  .
Wolle, Muriel Sibell (1977). Timberline Tailings: Tales of Colorado's Ghost Towns and Mining Camps (1st ed.). Athens, Ohio: Swallow Press/Ohio University Press.  .
Steinhilber, Berthold (2003). Ghost Towns of the American West. New York: Harry N. Abrams.  .
Daniel R. Curtis,
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(with about 200 ghost towns throughout the American west)
(an extensive collection of prairie ghost towns)
(ghost towns in Canada)
on , 18 July 2013.
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