Ghost Town

Abandoned ghost house.

A ghost town is a town that has been abandoned, usually because the economic activity that supported it has failed or because of natural or human-caused disasters.

There are many ghost towns in the American Great Plains, whose rural areas have lost a third of their population since 1920. There are more than 6,000 abandoned sites of settlement in the state of Kansas alone, according to Kansas historian Daniel Fitzgerald. Ghost towns are almost stereotypically common in mining areas: Colorado, Arizona, Nevada, Montana, and California in the western United States and West Virginia in the eastern USA. They can be observed as far south as Louisiana, Georgia and Florida. They are also seen in Northern Ontario, British Columbia and Newfoundland and Labrador (see outport) in Canada, as well as in parts of Australia. Old mining camps that have lost most of their population at some stage of their history, such as Central City, Colorado, Aspen, Colorado, Virginia City, Montana, Tombstone, Arizona, Park City, Utah, or Cripple Creek, Colorado are sometimes included in the category, although they are active towns and cities today.

Other factors leading to abandonment of towns include natural resources such as water no longer being available, railroads and highways bypassing or no longer accessing the town, shifting economic activity elsewhere, human intervention such as highway and river rerouting (see Aral Sea), and nuclear disasters (see Chernobyl). Chance significant fatality from epidemics has also produced ghost towns; for example, some places in eastern Arkansas were abandoned after near-total morbidity during the Spanish Flu pandemic.

In Europe many villages were abandoned over the ages, for many different reasons. Sometimes, wars and genocide have ended a town's life, and it is never resettled. This happened to the Swedish town Sjöstad, in Närke, in 1260, when the town's 700 merchants had crossed the ice of lake Vättern and been cut down by the Danes. The Danes then proceeded to the town and ravaged it and burnt it down. The town was never resettled. A farm named Skyrstad, Ruins and a silver treasure which yielded 4000 coins are all that testify to its existence.

This process continues to this day, with the village of Etzweiler in northwestern Germany being abandoned in the 1990s to make way for a coal mine.

The city of Prypyat and dozens of smaller settlements in northern Ukraine have been abandoned after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster and turned into closed alienation zone. It has been to a significant extent untouched area since then, and as such is a large time capsule of the late Soviet era.

Following the 1974 turkish invasion in Cyprus, the southern part of Famagusta, also known with the name Varosha was abandoned by its original inhabitants without being settled. While the problem is not resolved, Varosha is a ghost town.

Jonestown in Guyana became a ghost town following the mass suicide of the People's Temple community that lived there.

Ghost towns may also be created when land is expropriated by a government and everyone living there is told to leave, such as when NASA needed a rocket propulsion testing center and built the John C. Stennis Space Center in Mississippi, which required a very large (approx. 500 square kilometers) surrounding buffer zone because of the loud noise and potential dangers associated with testing huge rockets. This created abandoned communities and roads overgrown in the middle of the forest. There are also underwater ghost towns brought about by the building of dams.

Some ghost towns are tourist attractions, especially those that preserve interesting architecture. Visiting, writing about, and photographing them is a minor industry. Other ghost towns may be overgrown, difficult to access, or illegal to visit.

A few ghost towns even manage a second life, often due to the tourism surrounding ghost towns of historic note propogating an economy able to support residents. Walhalla, Australia, for example, was a town deserted after its gold mine ceased operation. Owing in part to its relative accessability and partly to proximity to other attractive locations, Walhalla has had a recent surge in economy and population.

A recent attempt to declare an "Official Ghost Town" in California collapsed when the adherents of the town of Calico, in Southern California, and those of Bodie, in Northern California, could not come to an agreement as to which of their favorites was more deserving.

Web Resources about Ghost Town

GhostTownGallery.com!
Pictures of ghost towns and historic places in Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Idaho, Montana, Utah. Picture gallery, driving directions, historic information, maps.

Ghosttowns.com
The ultimate ghost towns and American Old West History site with ghost towns indexed by state including ghost town pictures, locations, and history of each of the ghost towns.

WesternGhostTowns.com
Pictures And Information About KD Radio, Abandoned Ghost Towns, Mining Camps, Mines And Graveyards, Camping Tips.

Monument Ghost Towns Gallery
A Gallery with many pictures from Ghosttowns and famous places of the Wild West. Also a gallery with surrealistic paintings.

Ghost Towns, Mining Camps & Haunted Sites of The "Old West"
Some towns disappeared off the map into the praries, deserts and mountains. But they have left little clues and remnants of their past just waiting for us to find, if we know where to look.

Ghost Town Seekers
Dedicated to exploring western ghost towns, mining camps, mines, railroads, railroad stations, stage stations and any other historical sites, including old cemeteries.

The Montana Ghost Town Preservation Society
We have a map of general locations of most of the ghost towns in Montana.

Going Great Ghosts (California Ghost Towns)
California Ghost Towns, Ecological 4-Wheeling Adventures.

Resources:

New Mexico's Ghost Towns - Complete history of New Mexico's ghost towns featuring exclusive photographs of over 80 New Mexico ghost towns.

Ghost Towns & Back Woods Trails of Chaffee County, Colorado - Chaffee County offers some of the richest history in early western development. We're going to take a trip back in time to some of Colorado's famous and not so famous ghost towns. Access to these towns is sometimes made by passenger vehicle. Others will require 4-wheel drive.

Historic Ghost Towns on Colorado Activities & Recreation - There are a number of ghost town areas in the "Fourteener" region of Colorado. Some are accessible by passenger vehicle, while many are accessible only by four-wheel drive. When exploring ghost town areas, be sure to take only...

Nevada Ghost Towns Directory & Guide - Over 600 Sites in Nevada, Alone. Current pictures of the Ghost Towns & Sites in California-Nevada.

Mike's Ontario Ghost Towns - Ghost towns in Ontario: History and stories of old towns.

Historic Silver City Idaho Ghost Town - One of the greatest remaining Ghost Towns.

Ghost Towns - There are hundreds of Ghost Towns that blanket this area. When you View the maps in these sections, Ghost Towns will be marked with a yellow dot. As time progresses more photos and more details will be given about the Ghost Towns in this publication.

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