Ghost town

Aghost town,deserted city,extinct town, orabandoned cityis an abandoned settlement, usually one that contains substantial visible remaining buildings and infrastructure such as roads. A town often becomes a ghost town because the economic activity that supported it (usually industrial or agricultural) has failed or ended for any reason (e.g. a host ore deposit exhausted bymining). The town may have also declined because of natural or human-caused disasters such asfloods, prolonged droughts, extreme heat or extreme cold, government actions, uncontrolled lawlessness, war, pollution, ornuclear and radiation-related accidents and incidents. The term can sometimes refer to cities, towns, and neighborhoods that, though still populated, are significantly less so than in past years; 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. Some examples areBannack, MontanaandOatman, Arizonain the United States;Barkerville, British Columbiain Canada;CracoandPompeiiin Italy;Aghdamin Azerbaijan;Kolmanskopin Namibia;PripyatandChernobylin Ukraine;Dhanushkodiin India;Fordlândiain Brazil andVilla Epecuénin Argentina.
T. Lindsey Baker, author ofGhost Towns of Texas, defines a ghost town as "a town for which the reason for being no longer exists."Some writers discount settlements that were abandoned as a result of a natural or human-made disaster or other causes; they restrict the term to settlements that were deserted because they were no longer economically viable.  Some believe that any settlement with visible tangible remains should not be called a ghost town;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. American author Lambert Florin defined a ghost town as "a shadowy semblance of a former self."
Factors leading to the 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, the shifting of politics or fall of empires, and volcanic eruptions.A town can also be abandoned when it is part of anexclusion zonedue tonaturalorhuman-made causes.
Ghost towns may result when the single activity or resource that created aboomtown(e.g., nearby mine, mill or resort) is depleted or the resource economy undergoes a "bust" (e.g., catastrophic resource price collapse).   Agold rushoften brought intensive but short-lived economic activity to a remote village, only to leave a ghost town once the resource was depleted.
Boomtowns can often decrease in size as quickly as they grew.  Sometimes, all, or nearly all, of the 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 temporarycompany townto service a mine site, building all the accommodations, shops and services required, and then remove them once the resource has been extracted. Modular buildings can be used to facilitate the process.
In some cases, multiple factors may remove the economic basis for a community; some formermining townsonU.S. Route 66suffered both mine closures when the resources were depleted and loss of highway traffic as US 66 was diverted from places likeOatman, Arizona, onto a more direct path.  Mine andpulp millclosures have led to many ghost towns in British Columbia, Canada, including several relatively recent ones:Ocean Falls, which closed in 1973 after the pulp mill was decommissioned;Kitsault, whose molybdenum mine shut down after only 18 months in 1982; andCassiar, whoseasbestosmine operated from 1952 to 1992.
In other cases, the reason for abandonment can arise from a town's intended economic function shifting to another, nearby place. This happened toCollingwood, Queensland, inOutbackAustralia when nearbyWintonoutperformed Collingwood as a regional centre for the livestock-raising industry. The railway reached Winton in 1899, linking it with the rest ofQueensland, and Collingwood was a ghost town by the following year.  More broadly across Australia, there has been a shift towardsfly-in fly-outarrangements over building acompany town, in order to avoid the development of ghost towns once a mining resource has been fully extracted.
The Middle East has many ghost towns and ruins that were created when the shifting of politics or the fall of empires caused capital cities to be socially or economically unviable, such asCtesiphon.
The rise of real-estate speculation and the resulting possibility ofreal-estate bubbles(sometimes due to outright overbuilding by land developers) may also trigger the appearance of certain elements of a ghost town, as real-estate prices initially rise (whereupon affordable housing becomes less available) and then later fall for a variety of reasons that are often tied to economic cycles and/or marketing hubris.  This has been observed to occur in various countries, including Spain, China, the United States, and Canada, where housing is often used as an investment rather than for habitation.
Railroads and roads bypassing or no longer reaching a town can also create a ghost town. This was the case in many of the ghost towns along Ontario's historicOpeongo Line, and alongU.S. Route 66after motorists bypassed the latter on the faster moving highwaysI-44andI-40. Some ghost towns were founded along railways wheresteam trainswould stop at periodic intervals for repairs or to take on water, butdieselizationorelectrificationnegated the need for the trains to stop.Amboy, California, was part of one such series of villages along theAtlantic and Pacific Railroadacross theMojave Desert. In other cases, railroads replaced rivers orcanalsas the primary means of overland transport, causing the decline of towns that depended on river or canal traffic; one such town wasGranville, Indiana, located on theWabash and Erie Canal.
River re-routing is another factor, one example being the towns along theAral Sea.
Ghost towns may be created when land isexpropriatedby a government, and residents are required to relocate. One example is the village ofTynehamin Dorset, England, acquired during World War II to build an artillery range.
A similar situation occurred in the U.S. whenNASAacquired land to construct theJohn C. Stennis Space Center(SSC), a rocket testing facility inHancock County, Mississippi(on the Mississippi side of thePearl River, which is theMississippi–Louisianastate line). This required NASA to acquire a large (approximately 34-square-mile or 88-square-kilometre)buffer zonebecause 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 (Pearlington), along with 700 families in residence, had to be completely relocated away from 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 schoolhouse. Another example of infrastructure remaining is the former town ofWeston, Illinois, that voted itself out of existence and turned the land over for construction of theFermi National Accelerator Laboratory. 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 barricades to prevent unsupervised access.
Construction of dams has produced ghost towns that have been left underwater. Examples include:
Some towns become deserted when their populations weremassacred, deported, or expelled. Examples include Kayaköy, an ancient Greek city abandoned in 1923 as result ofpopulation exchange between Greece and Turkeyand the original French village atOradour-sur-Glanewhich was destroyed on10 June 1944when 642 of its 663 inhabitants were killed by a GermanWaffen-SScompany. A new village was built after the war on a nearby site, and the ruins of the original have been maintained as a memorial.
Another example isAghdam, a city inAzerbaijan. Armenian forces occupiedAghdamin July 1993 during theFirst Nagorno-Karabakh War. The heavy fighting forced the entire population to flee. Upon seizing the city, Armenian forces destroyed much of the town to discourage Azerbaijanis from returning. More damage occurred in the following decades when locals looted the abandoned town for building materials. It is currently almost entirely ruined and uninhabited.
Natural and human-made disasters can create ghost towns. For example, after being flooded more than 30 times since their town was founded in 1845, residents ofPattonsburg, Missouri, decided to relocate after two floods in 1993. With government help, the whole town was rebuilt 3 miles or 5 km away.
Craco, a medieval village in the Italian region ofBasilicata, was evacuated after a landslide in 1963. Nowadays it is a filming location for many movies, includingThe Passion of The ChristbyMel Gibson,Christ Stopped at EbolibyFrancesco Rosi,The Nativity StorybyCatherine HardwickeandQuantum of SolacebyMarc Forster.
In 1984,Centralia, Pennsylvania, was abandoned due to an uncontainablemine fire, which began in 1962 and still rages to this day; eventually the fire reached an abandoned mine underneath the nearby town ofByrnesville, which caused that mine to catch on fire too and forced the evacuation of that town as well.
Ghost towns may also occasionally come into being due to ananticipatednatural disaster – for example, the Canadian town ofLemieux, Ontario, was abandoned in 1991 after soil testing revealed that the community was built on an unstable bed ofLeda clay. Two years after the last building in Lemieux was demolished, a landslide swept part of the former town-site into theSouth Nation River. Two decades earlier, the Canadian town ofSaint-Jean-Vianney, 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 theChernobyl disasterof 1986, dangerously high levels of nuclear contamination escaped into the surrounding area, and nearly 200 towns and villages in Ukraine and neighbouringBelaruswere evacuated, including the cities ofPripyatandChernobyl. The area was so contaminated that many of the evacuees were never permitted to return to their homes. Pripyat is the most famous of these abandoned towns; it was built for the workers of theChernobyl Nuclear Power Plantand had a population of almost 50,000 at the time of the disaster.
Significant fatality rates from epidemics have produced ghost towns. Some places in easternArkansaswere abandoned after more than 7,000 Arkansans died during theSpanish fluepidemic of 1918 and 1919.Several communities in Ireland, particularly in the west of the country, were wiped out due to theGreat Faminein 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 areTimes Beach, Missouri, whose residents were exposed to a high level ofdioxins, andWittenoom, Western Australia, which was once Australia's largest source ofblue asbestos, but was shut down in 1966 due to health concerns.TreeceandPicher, twin communities straddling theKansas–Oklahomaborder, were once one of the United States' largest sources ofzincandlead, but over a century of unregulated disposal ofmine tailingsled to groundwater contamination andlead poisoningin the town's children, eventually resulting in a mandatoryEnvironmental Protection Agencybuyout and evacuation. Contamination due toammunitioncaused by military use may also lead to the development of ghost towns.Tyneham, inDorset, was requisitioned for military exercises during theSecond World War, and remains unpopulated, being littered with unexploded munitions from regular shelling.
A few ghost towns have managed to get a second life, and this happens through a variety of reasons.
One of these reasons isheritage tourismgenerating a new economy able to support residents.
For example,Walhalla, Victoria, 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.Another town,Sungai Lembing, Malaysia, was almost deserted due to closure of a tin mine in 1986 was revived in 2001 and has become a tourist destination since then.
Foncebadón, a village inLeón, 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 toSantiago de Compostela.
Some ghost towns (e.g.Riace,Muñotello) are being repopulated by respectivelyrefugeesandhomeless people. In Riace, this was accomplished by a scheme funded by the Italian government which offers the housing to refugees and in Muñotello it was accomplished through an NGO (Madrina Foundation).
In Algeria, many cities became hamlets after the end ofLate Antiquity. They were revived with shifts in population during and afterFrench colonization of Algeria.Oran, currently the nation's second-largest city with 1 million people, was a village of only a few thousand people before colonization.
Alexandria, 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 19th century; from a population of 5,000 in 1806, it grew into a city of more than 200,000 inhabitants by 1882,and is now home to more than four million people.
Wars and rebellions in some African countries have left many towns and villages deserted. Since 2003, when PresidentFrançois Bozizécame to power, thousands of citizens of theCentral African Republichave 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 nearPaoua, are ransacked by government soldiers. 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 ofLukangolwas burnt to the ground duringtribal clashes in South Sudan. Before its destruction, the town had a population of 20,000.TheLibyantown ofTawerghahad a population of around 25,000 before it was abandoned during the2011 civil war, and it has remained empty since.
Many of the ghost towns in mineral-rich Africa are former mining towns. Shortly after the start of the 1908diamond rushinGerman South-West Africa, now known asNamibia, the German Imperial government claimed sole mining rights by creating theSperrgebiet("forbidden zone"),effectively criminalizing new settlement. The small mining towns of this area, among themPomona,Elizabeth BayandKolmanskop, were exempt from this ban, but the denial of new land claims soon rendered all of them ghost towns.
The town ofDhanushkodi, India is a ghost town. It was destroyed during the1964 Rameswaram cycloneand remains uninhabited in the aftermath.
Many abandoned towns and settlements in the formerSoviet Unionwere established nearGulaglabour 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 calledButugychag(also called Lower Butugychag). Other towns were deserted due to deindustrialisation and the economic crises of the early 1990s attributed topost-Soviet conflicts– one example beingTkvarcheliin Georgia, acoal miningtown that suffered a drastic population decline as a result of theWar in Abkhaziain the early 1990s andAghdam, made ruined and uninhabited after theFirst Nagorno-Karabakh War.
Although in 2010s Chineseghost citiesbecame a frequent feature of discourse regardingChina's economyandurbanization, underoccupied cities filled up.Writing in 2023, academic and former UK diplomatKerry Browndescribed the idea of Chinese ghost cities as a popular bandwagon which was shown to be a myth.
The town ofNamie, along with several other towns inFukushima Prefecture, Japan, was temporarily evacuated as a result of theFukushima Daiichi nuclear disasterfollowing the2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. Following ongoing decontamination works, several portions of Namie have been fully reopened to residents, allowing reconstruction and renovation of the town's buildings to be undertaken and resettlement of the area to take place.
Urbanization– 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 towns for this reason; 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" wasGyűrűfű[hu]in the late 1970s, but later it was repopulated as aneco-village. Some other depopulated villages were successfully saved as small rural resorts, such asKán,Tornakápolna,Szanticska,Gorica, andRévfalu.
In Spain, large zones of the mountainousIberian Systemand thePyreneeshave undergone heavy depopulation since the early 20th century, leaving a string of ghost towns in areas such as theSolana Valley. 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.
Examples for ghost towns in Italy include the medieval village ofFabbriche di CaregginenearLago di Vagli, inprovince of Lucca, inTuscany,the deserted mountain villageCracolocated inBasilicata, which has served as a filming location,and the ghost village Roveraia, in themunicipality of Loro Ciuffenna, inprovince of Arezzo, situated nearPratovalle. DuringWorld War IIit was an important partisan baseand it was definitively abandoned in the 1980s, when the last family who lived here, left the village.. Two projects have been proposed for the recovery of the village: in 2011 the proposal of Movimento Libero Perseo "Roveraia eco - lab", based on sustainability,and in 2019 there was a proposal aiming to recover the village with a mix of functions called "Ecomuseum of Pratomagno".
In the United Kingdom, thousands of villages were abandoned during the Middle Ages, as a result ofBlack Death, revolts, andenclosure, 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 considered ghost towns; instead, they are referred to in archaeological circles asdeserted medieval villages.
Sometimes, wars and genocide end a town's life. In 1944, occupying GermanWaffen-SStroops murdered almost the entire population of the French villageOradour-sur-Glane. A new settlement was built nearby after the war, but the old town was left depopulated on the orders of PresidentCharles de Gaulle, as a permanent memorial. In Germany, numerous smaller towns and villages in theformer eastern territorieswere completely destroyed in the last two years of the war. These territories later became part of Poland and theSoviet Union, and many of the smaller settlements were never rebuilt or repopulated, for exampleKłomino(Westfalenhof),Pstrąże(Pstransse), andJanowa Góra(Johannesberg). Some villages in England were also abandoned during the war, but for different reasons.Imber, onSalisbury Plain, and several villages in theStanford Battle Area, were commandeered by theWar Officefor 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. Three miles or 5 km southeast of Imber isCopehill Down, a deserted village purpose-built for training inurban warfare.
Disasters & natural disasters have played a part in the abandonment of settlements within Europe. Two examples arePripyatandChernobyl. After theChernobyl disasterof 1986, both cities were evacuated due to dangerous radiation levels within the area. As of today, Pripyat remains completely abandoned, and Chernobyl has around 500 remaining inhabitants. Another example isTodoquein the Canary Islands, Spain. During the2021 Cumbre Vieja volcanic eruption, the locality was severely affected. Hundreds of buildings were destroyed, including the parish Church of Saint Pius X, the health center, the headquarters of the neighborhood association, the School of Early Childhood Education, and Los Campitos Elementary School and the Todoque Elementary and the Infant Education School, and by October 10, new lava flows destroyed the remaining buildings that were still standing, leaving the town practically erased from the map.
An example in the UK of a ghost village which was abandoned before it was ever occupied is atPolphail,Argyll and Bute. The planned development of an oil rig construction facility nearby never materialised, and a village built to house the workers and their families became deserted the moment the building contractors finished their work.
War activities, displacements and complete destruction of cities as result of intense fighting were the reason for their complete abandonment. Examples areMarinkaandSoledarinDonbasinUkraine.
Canadahas several ghost towns in parts ofBritish Columbia,Alberta,Ontario,Saskatchewan,Newfoundland and Labrador, andQuebec. Some were logging towns or dual mining and logging sites, oftendeveloped at the behest of the company. 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 more than 1,500 abandoned or semi-abandoned towns and localities.Among the most notable areAnyox,Kitsault, andOcean Falls.
Some ghost towns have revived their economies and populations due to historical and eco-tourism, such asBarkerville; once the largest town north ofKamloops, it is now a year-round provincial museum. In Quebec,Val-Jalbertis a well-known tourist ghost town; founded in 1901 around a mechanicalpulp millthat became obsolete whenpaper millsbegan to break downwood fibreby chemical means, it was abandoned when the mill closed in 1927 and re-opened as a park in 1960.
A former mining town in Mexico,Real de Catorce, has been used as a backdrop for Hollywood movies such asThe Treasure of the Sierra Madre(1948),The Mexican(2001), andBandidas(2006).
Many ghost towns or abandonedcommunitiesexist in the AmericanGreat Plains, the rural areas of which have lost a third of their population since 1920. Thousands of communities in the northern plains states ofMontana,Nebraska,North Dakota, andSouth Dakotabecame railroad ghost towns when a rail line failed to materialize. Hundreds of towns were abandoned as theInterstate highway systemreplaced the railroads as the favored means of transportation. Ghost towns are common in mining ormill townsin all the western states, and many eastern and southern states as well. Residents are compelled to leave in search of more productive areas when the resources that had created an employment boom in these towns were eventually exhausted.
Sometimes a ghost town consists of many abandoned buildings as inBodie, California, or standing ruins as inRhyolite, Nevada, while elsewhere only the foundations of former buildings remain as inGraysonia, Arkansas. Old mining camps that have lost most of their population at some stage of their history such asAspen,Deadwood,Oatman,TombstoneandVirginia Cityare sometimes referred to as ghost towns although they are presently active towns and cities.Many U.S. ghost towns, such asSouth Pass City in Wyomingare listed on theNational Register of Historic Places.
Starting in 2002, an attempt to declare an official ghost town in California stalled when the adherents of the town ofBodieand those ofCalico, inSouthern California, could not agree on the most deserving settlement for the recognition. A compromise was eventually reached—Bodie became the official stategold rushghost town, while Calico was named the official statesilver rushghost town.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a wave of European immigrants arrived in Brazil 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.
InColombia, avolcano eruptedin 1985, where the city of Armero was engulfed by lahars, which killed approximately 23,000 people in total.Armero was never rebuilt (its inhabitants being diverted to nearby cities, and thus becoming a ghost town), but still stands today as "holy land", as dictated byPope John Paul II.
A number of ghost towns throughout South America were once mining camps or lumber mills, such as the manysaltpetermining camps that prospered in Chile from the end of theSaltpeter Waruntil the invention of synthetic saltpeter during World War I. Some of these towns, such as theHumberstone and Santa Laura Saltpeter Worksin theAtacama Desert, have been declaredUNESCO World Heritage Sites.
The boom and bust of gold rushes and the mining of other ores has led to a number of ghost towns in both Australia and New Zealand. Other towns have become abandoned whether due to natural disasters, the weather, or the drowning of valleys to increase the size of lakes.
In Australia, theVictoria gold rushled to numerous ghost towns (such asCassilisandMoliagul), as did the hunt for gold inWestern Australia(for example, the towns ofOra BandaandKanowna). The mining of iron and other ores has also led to towns thriving briefly before dwindling. The town ofWittenoomwas abandoned and demolished due to the health hazards posed byasbestosmining in the area.
In New Zealand, theOtago gold rushsimilarly led to several ghost towns (such asMacetown). New Zealand's ghost towns also include numerous coal mining areas in the South Island'sWest Coast Region, includingDennistonandStockton. Natural disasters have also led to the loss of some towns, notablyTe Wairoa, "The Buried Village", destroyed in the1886 eruption of Mount Tarawera, and the Otago town ofKelso, abandoned after it was flooded repeatedly after heavy rainstorms. Early settlements on the rugged southwest coast of the South Island atMartins BayandPort Craigwere also abandoned, mainly due to the inhospitable terrain.
The oldest ghost town inAntarcticais onDeception Island, 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, theGobernador Bories. Other whaling operations followed suit, and by 1914 there were thirteen factory ships based there. The station ceased to be profitable during theGreat Depression, 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 theAntarctic Peninsula.
The Antarctic island ofSouth Georgiaused 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 includedGrytviken(operating 1904–64),Leith Harbour(1909–65),Ocean Harbour(1909–20),Husvik(1910–60),Stromness(1912–61) andPrince Olav Harbour(1917–34). The abandoned settlements have become increasingly dilapidated, and remain uninhabited nowadays except for the Museum curator's family atGrytviken. The jetty, the church, dwellings and industrial buildings atGrytvikenhave 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.