97 Fun Facts About Ghost Towns

Which California ghost town is preserved in a state of 'arrested decay'?

Bodie boomed after a gold strike in 1876 and had about 8,000 residents by 1879; today interiors are left exactly as they were, dust and all.

What 1986 event left the Ukrainian city of Pripyat abandoned?

The Chernobyl explosion at reactor No. 4 on 26 April 1986 forced Pripyat's residents out the next day; they were told the evacuation would last three days.

Which Namibian diamond town near Lüderitz now has houses knee-deep in sand?

Kolmanskop grew up after a railway worker found a diamond there in 1908; once the mines moved south it was abandoned in 1956, and Namib sand has drifted through its houses ever since.

Why was the Italian hilltop village of Craco largely abandoned in the 20th century?

Landslides and quakes emptied Craco: evacuation began in 1963 after a series of landslides, a 1972 flood worsened the damage, and the 1980 Irpinia earthquake finished the job.

The French village of Oradour-sur-Glane was destroyed in a massacre during which conflict?

World War II's Waffen-SS killed the villagers on June 10, 1944; the ruins were left standing as a permanent memorial.

What is the nickname of Hashima, Japan's abandoned coal-mining island?

Hashima Island, once a bustling undersea coal mining facility, is widely known as Gunkanjima, or 'Battleship Island,' because of its resemblance to a warship when viewed from a distance.

Which Pennsylvania town became a ghost town because of an underground coal fire burning for decades?

Centralia's underground coal fire has burned for decades beneath the borough; Pennsylvania condemned the buildings and the population fell from about 1,000 in 1980 to a handful of holdouts.

What natural disaster buried Plymouth, the former capital of Montserrat, turning it into a ghost town?

A volcanic eruption of the Soufrière Hills, dormant for centuries, sent pyroclastic flows over Plymouth and the town was permanently abandoned in 1997; the island's government moved north to Brades.

Rhyolite, a 1905 gold-rush town near the eastern edge of Death Valley, is in which US state?

Rhyolite is in Nevada, in Nye County about 120 miles north-west of Las Vegas; founded in 1905, it was nearly deserted by 1916 after the Panic of 1907 dried up investment.

Pyramiden, a Soviet coal-mining ghost town shut in 1998, sits on which Norwegian archipelago?

Svalbard's Pyramiden was founded by Sweden in 1910 and sold to the Soviet Union in 1927; the nearest settlement today is Longyearbyen, 50 kilometres to the south.

The deserted Humberstone and Santa Laura works in the Atacama Desert, UNESCO-listed in 2005, refined what?

Humberstone and Santa Laura refined saltpeter, sodium nitrate leached from caliche ore; the best known of the Atacama nitrate towns near Iquique, Humberstone shut in 1960 after synthetic nitrates killed demand.

The abandoned Alaskan camp of Kennecott grew up around mines producing which metal?

Prospectors spotted what looked like a green meadow high on a hillside; it turned out to be malachite, alongside the ore known as copper glance.

Which war's 1937 battle left the old village of Belchite in ruins, kept as a memorial?

The Spanish Civil War's Battle of Belchite in August-September 1937 wrecked the old village; Franco ordered the ruins left standing and a new Belchite was built alongside them after 1939.

Which remote Scottish island was evacuated at its residents' own request in 1930?

St Kilda's last 36 residents left Hirta on 29 August 1930 after petitioning the government; the islands passed to the National Trust for Scotland in 1957 and are a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Roughly what was the population of the Chernobyl workers' city when it was evacuated in April 1986?

Pripyat had about 49,000 residents when buses emptied it on 27 April 1986; its new Ferris wheel had been due to open officially on May Day, five days after the disaster.

Firefighters lit what in May 1962, starting a Pennsylvania mine fire that emptied a town?

The dump sat in an abandoned strip-mine pit beside a cemetery, and the flames found their way into the coal seams beneath.

In what year did the US Postal Service discontinue the ZIP code of the burning Pennsylvania town?

All the borough's real estate had been claimed under eminent domain in 1992; the last seven residents were allowed to stay for life in 2013.

Railway worker Zacharias Lewala started the 1908 Namibian diamond rush by showing his find to whom?

August Stauch, a German rail inspector supervising Lewala's track gang, recognised the stone; within months the German Empire declared the coastal strip a Sperrgebiet, or prohibited diamond area.

Which company bought Japan's Hashima Island in 1890 and mined coal from beneath the sea there until 1974?

Mitsubishi's seawalls and land reclamation tripled the island's size to house its burgeoning ranks of workers.

What event emptied Varosha, Famagusta's beach-resort quarter, of its residents?

The 1974 Turkish invasion of Cyprus emptied Varosha: its Greek Cypriot residents fled in August 1974 and the Turkish army fenced off the quarter, which had been one of the Mediterranean's busiest resorts.

The Turkish ghost village of Kayaköy was emptied in 1923 following which agreement?

The Treaty of Lausanne settlement of 1923 mandated the Greek-Turkish population exchange; Kayaköy's Greek Orthodox residents, who knew it as Livissi, were deported and the village was never resettled.

The Western Australian town of Wittenoom was wiped from official maps because of decades of mining what?

Blue asbestos (crocidolite) was mined at Wittenoom from 1937 to 1966; the town was degazetted in 2007, its name removed from maps, and the last resident was moved out in 2022.

Which Missouri town was abandoned after its residents were exposed to high levels of dioxins?

Times Beach, west of St. Louis, had its dirt roads sprayed with dioxin-laced waste oil in the early 1970s; the EPA ordered a buyout in 1983 and the town was disincorporated in 1985.

St. Thomas, Nevada, was drowned under 70 feet of water when which reservoir filled behind Hoover Dam?

Lake Mead's drought-exposed ruins have since resurfaced; the Spanish village of Aceredo, drowned in 1992, similarly reappeared in 2022.

The ghost town of Rhyolite, near Death Valley, is best known for a house built chiefly of what?

Tom Kelly built Rhyolite's Bottle House in 1906 from roughly 50,000 empty bottles of beer and liquor; it survived the bust that left the town almost empty by 1916.

Which theme-park founder bought and rebuilt the California ghost town of Calico in the 1950s?

Walter Knott of Knott's Berry Farm bought Calico in 1951 and rebuilt it; his uncle had grubstaked the prospectors who found its richest mine, and Knott gave the town to San Bernardino County in 1966.

Bannack, a gold-rush ghost town, briefly served in 1864 as the first capital of which US territory?

Montana Territory's first legislature met at Bannack in 1864 before the capital moved to Virginia City; sheriff Henry Plummer had been hanged by vigilantes that January as an accused road-agent boss.

Which future US president managed the Sons of Gwalia gold mine in Western Australia in 1898?

Herbert Hoover, then a young engineer for Bewick, Moreing and Co., ran the Sons of Gwalia mine in 1898; when the mine closed in December 1963 the town of Gwalia emptied within weeks.

In which year did Montserrat's Soufrière Hills volcano begin its modern series of eruptions?

The Soufrière Hills volcano, dormant for centuries, began erupting on 18 July 1995; Plymouth was evacuated that year and permanently abandoned in 1997.

The Azerbaijani city of Aghdam was largely destroyed after being occupied in 1993 during which conflict?

Armenian forces captured Aghdam in July 1993 during the First Nagorno-Karabakh War and razed most of it to deter returnees; Azerbaijan regained the ruined city in November 2020.

The Spanish village of Foncebadón is reviving thanks to pilgrims walking to which city?

Foncebadón lies on the Camino Francés to Santiago de Compostela, just below the Cruz de Ferro pass; after dwindling to a handful of residents it regained hostels and bars serving the pilgrim trade.

Hashima Island's coal mine was added to the UNESCO World Heritage list in 2015 as part of which grouping?

Hashima was inscribed in 2015 within the Sites of Japan's Meiji Industrial Revolution, a 23-site serial listing; South Korea objected because conscripted Koreans had been forced to work in the mine.

A seven-floor miners' apartment block built on Hashima Island in 1916 was Japan's first large building made of what?

Reinforced concrete was chosen to withstand typhoons; the island's silhouette earned it the nickname Gunkanjima.

The Namibian diamond town's fate was sealed in 1928 by the discovery of far richer deposits lying where?

The new finds could be gathered by scouting the beaches rather than mining, and the old town was finally abandoned in 1956.

The town of Namie was evacuated in 2011 after a nuclear disaster in which Japanese prefecture?

Fukushima Daiichi melted down after the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami; nearly 200 towns and villages were similarly emptied around Chernobyl in 1986.

Which European country counted 181 completely uninhabited settlements at its 2011 census?

Rural depopulation has left ghost villages across Bulgaria, Hungary and Spain.

The Nevada ghost town of Rhyolite takes its name from what?

Rhyolite is an igneous rock, a silica-rich volcanic lava usually buff to pink, found in the hills around the 1905 gold camp; the town simply took the rock's name.

California's best-known gold-rush ghost town officially became a State Historic Park in which year?

Its boom began in 1876 when the Standard Company struck a rich vein, and by 1879 it had around 2,000 buildings.

The Chernobyl workers' city, named after a nearby river, was founded in which year?

Pripyat was founded on 4 February 1970 to house the builders and staff of the Chernobyl plant about three kilometres away; it was proclaimed a city in 1979.

How does T. Lindsey Baker's guide Ghost Towns of Texas define a ghost town?

Baker's Ghost Towns of Texas defines a ghost town as a place whose reason for being no longer exists; some writers narrow the term to places deserted because they were never economically viable.

Which city on the Golan Heights was destroyed before the Israeli withdrawal of June 1974?

Quneitra, the Golan's main town, was systematically demolished by Israeli forces before the June 1974 disengagement returned it to Syria; the UN condemned the destruction and Syria left the ruins untouched.

The 'Lost Villages' of Ontario were flooded in 1958 by the construction of what?

The Saint Lawrence Seaway project's Moses-Saunders power dam flooded ten communities near Cornwall on 1 July 1958, 'Inundation Day'; about 6,500 people had been moved to the new towns of Ingleside and Long Sault.

Nether Hambleton and Middle Hambleton in England were flooded to create which reservoir?

Rutland Water, filled from 1976 to supply the East Midlands, drowned Nether Hambleton and most of Middle Hambleton; Upper Hambleton survives on the peninsula that juts into the reservoir.

How many families were displaced when the Tignes Dam flooded the French village of Tignes?

The Russian town of Mologa vanished the same way under the Rybinsk reservoir between 1941 and 1947.

Which ancient Nubian settlement lies drowned under Lake Nasser behind the Aswan High Dam?

Buhen, an Egyptian fortress town near the Second Cataract, was excavated by Walter Emery before Lake Nasser covered it in 1964; Abu Simbel, by contrast, was cut up and moved to higher ground.

In 1978, residents of Arenal and Tronadora were relocated to make room for a lake in which country?

Costa Rica's state power company ICE dammed the Arenal valley in Guanacaste Province, and the enlarged Lake Arenal flooded the old towns of Arenal and Tronadora, whose residents were moved to new sites on higher ground.

Wharram Percy, England's best-studied deserted medieval village, lies in which county?

Wharram Percy sits in the Yorkshire Wolds near Malton, North Yorkshire; excavated from 1950 to 1990, it was emptied around 1500 when its lord turned the fields over to sheep, leaving only the ruined St Martin's church.

Which Suffolk port, among medieval England's largest towns, was lost to the sea?

Dunwich, once one of England's busiest ports, was swallowed by the North Sea after storms in 1286 and 1347 silted its harbour and ate the cliffs; only a small village remains above the beach.

Why were Tyneham's 225 villagers in Dorset ordered out just before Christmas 1943?

The War Office wanted a firing range: Tyneham fell inside the Lulworth tank gunnery ranges and was cleared on 19 December 1943; a note on the church door asked the Army to treat the village kindly.

In 1943, how many days' notice were Imber's villagers on Salisbury Plain given to leave?

Imber's people were told on 1 November 1943 to be out by 17 December, 47 days later, so US troops could practise street fighting; promised a return after the war, they were never let back.

Henry Ford built the Amazon town of Fordlândia in 1928 to grow a supply of what?

Rubber for Ford's tyres was the goal: Fordlândia's closely planted rubber trees fell to leaf blight and pests, the project moved downriver to Belterra in 1934, and Ford's grandson sold both to Brazil in 1945.

How high did floodwater peak over Argentina's Villa Epecuén after its dike broke in 1985?

The water kept rising for years after the 10 November 1985 breach, peaking at 10 metres (33 ft) over Villa Epecuén in 1993; it began receding in 2009, exposing the salt-crusted ruins.

Armero, Colombia, was erased in 1985 by lahars from which volcano?

Nevado del Ruiz erupted on 13 November 1985 and its lahars swept down the Lagunilla valley, burying Armero and killing more than 20,000 of its roughly 29,000 people.

Oklahoma's Picher was abandoned after a century of mining which two metals?

Lead and zinc from the Tri-State district were mined under Picher from 1913 to 1967, leaving toxic chat piles and collapsing ground; after a federal buyout and a 2008 EF4 tornado, the city government shut down in 2009.

What wiped out the Utah town of Thistle in April 1983?

A landslide that dammed the river in April 1983 backed the Spanish Fork up over Thistle; federal agencies called it the costliest landslide in US history, and it brought Utah's first presidential disaster declaration.

A 1964 cyclone left India's Dhanushkodi unfit for living and also swept away what?

A passenger train, the Pamban-Dhanushkodi service, was swept off the line with more than 100 aboard on the night of 22 December 1964; the cyclone killed an estimated 1,800 people and the town was declared unfit for habitation.

Chile's empty company town of Sewell, too steep for cars, is known as the city of what?

Sewell was nicknamed the City of Staircases because its streets were flights of steps up the Andean slope; everything arrived by narrow-gauge rail, and the UNESCO-listed camp served El Teniente, the world's largest underground copper mine.

Houtouwan, a deserted fishing village near Shanghai, is famous for being engulfed by what?

Greenery swallowed Houtouwan after its 2,000 fishermen left for the mainland by 2002; ivy and creepers blanket the stone houses on Shengshan Island, which became a tourist draw after photos spread online in 2015.

Kantubek, a ghost town on an island in the Aral Sea, housed staff of what Soviet facility?

Kantubek housed staff of a biological weapons test site, Aralsk-7, on Vozrozhdeniya Island, closed in 1992; a US-led team later spent three months neutralising 100 to 200 tonnes of buried anthrax for about US$5 million.

Storms wrecked Devon's Hallsands in 1917 after years of offshore dredging for what?

Gravel for a naval dockyard, the Keyham extension at Devonport, was dredged off Hallsands from 1897 to 1902; the beach dropped by up to 12 feet and storms in January 1917 brought the sea down the chimneys.

Capel Celyn, a Welsh-speaking village, was drowned in 1965 to supply water to which city?

Liverpool's corporation pushed the Tryweryn reservoir through by a private Act of Parliament in 1957, so Welsh councils never got a say; Capel Celyn's dozen farms and houses vanished under Llyn Celyn, opened in 1965.

How many Mologa locals reportedly refused to leave and drowned as Rybinsk Reservoir rose?

A 1941 NKVD report claimed that 294 Mologa residents refused to leave and drowned as the water rose, a figure historians treat as legend; around 130,000 people were moved for the Rybinsk dam.

Old Goussainville, north of Paris, emptied out after 1974 when what opened nearby?

Charles de Gaulle Airport opened in March 1974 with flight paths over the old village, and noise drove residents out; a year earlier a Tu-144 at the Paris Air Show had crashed into Goussainville, killing eight on the ground.

Spinalonga, the Cretan islet uninhabited since the early 1960s, was last used as what?

A leper colony occupied Spinalonga from 1903 until 1957, when the last patients were moved to Athens; a priest stayed until 1962, and the Venetian fortress has since become one of Crete's most visited sites.

The ruined medieval Armenian capital of Ani was nicknamed the city of how many churches?

Ani was styled the City of 1,001 Churches at its 11th-century peak under the Bagratid kings; archaeologists have traced about 50 churches, and the Mongol sack of 1236 and a 1319 earthquake emptied it.

The Gedi Ruins, a Swahili stone town abandoned in the early 1600s, lie in which country?

Gedi lies near Malindi on Kenya's coast inside the Arabuko-Sokoke Forest; abandoned around 1600, the walled town was excavated from 1948 under James Kirkman and inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2024.

Cambodia's French-built Bokor Hill Station was abandoned again in 1972 when who moved in?

Nine hundred people died in nine months building the resort, whose grand hotel opened in 1925; it was among the last Khmer Rouge strongholds into the 1990s.

Which 1996 event prompted the closure of Kadykchan, a mining town in Russia's Kolyma?

A mine explosion that killed six workers in 1996 led the authorities to shut Kadykchan's coal mine and pay residents to leave; the main buildings were blown up and the 2010 census recorded nobody there.

Terlingua, a Texas ghost town, grew around mines producing which metal?

Mercury, or quicksilver, was roasted out of cinnabar ore at Terlingua; owner Howard Perry ran the Chisos Mining Company from Chicago by coded telegram and built a Moorish mansion in the desert.

Thurmond, a near-empty West Virginia town, is mostly owned by which federal agency?

The National Park Service owns most of Thurmond's buildings as part of New River Gorge National Park and Preserve; the former C&O depot is its visitor centre, and the 2020 census counted five residents.

Cahaba, now a ghost town, was the first permanent capital of which US state?

Alabama's legislature met at Cahaba from 1820 until 1826, when repeated flooding at the junction of the Alabama and Cahaba rivers pushed the capital to Tuscaloosa; the county seat moved to Selma in 1866.

The Route 66 ghost town of Glenrio straddles the border between Texas and which state?

New Mexico got the bar because the Texas county was dry, while the fuel pumps sat in Texas to dodge higher taxes; I-40 bypassed the town in 1973.

In 1917, about 60 members of which union were run out of Jerome, Arizona, in a cattle car?

The Industrial Workers of the World had called a strike at Jerome's copper mines; on 10 July 1917 vigilantes loaded some 60 Wobblies into a cattle car and shipped them out, two days before the larger Bisbee Deportation.

Bombay Beach, a derelict resort on California's Salton Sea, sits how far below sea level?

Bombay Beach lies 223 feet below sea level on the Salton Sea's eastern shore, among the lowest communities in North America; since 2016 artists have staged the Bombay Beach Biennale among its rotting trailers.

Barkerville, BC's preserved gold-rush town, is named for a man from which English county?

Billy Barker, born in Cambridgeshire in 1817, struck gold on Williams Creek in August 1862; his claim yielded about 37,500 ounces, and the town that grew beside it took his name.

Kitsault, BC, emptied in 1982 after 18 months when the price of which metal collapsed?

Molybdenum prices collapsed in 1982, 18 months after Amax opened the mine, and Kitsault's 1,200 residents left; the intact town, with mall, pool and bowling alley, was bought in 2004 by Krishnan Suthanthiran for $5.7 million.

Quebec's Val-Jalbert, deserted after its mill shut in 1927, grew up around what industry?

Val-Jalbert's pulp and paper mill, powered by the Ouiatchouan Falls, made mechanical pulp from 1902 until it shut in 1927; the company ordered every house boarded up in 1929 and the last nuns left that September.

In 1998 Walhalla became the last town in Victoria, Australia, to get what?

Mains electricity reached Walhalla only in December 1998, by then the last town in Victoria without it; the old gold town's cricket ground was carved from a hilltop because there was no flat land.

Real de Catorce, in San Luis Potosí, emptied after 1900 as the price of which metal fell?

Silver made Real de Catorce, whose mines were among Mexico's richest in the 1800s, and the silver price slump after 1900 emptied it; the 2.4 km Ogarrio tunnel is the main road in, and Huichol pilgrims visit each spring.

Which new volcano buried the town of San Juan Parangaricutiro in Michoacán in 1943?

Parícutin erupted from a cornfield in February 1943 and its lava reached San Juan Parangaricutiro the next year; only the church towers poke above the flow, and residents rebuilt as Nuevo San Juan near Uruapan.

Chinese-built Kilamba, 750 tower blocks once dubbed a ghost town, lies in which country?

Angola's government had China's CITIC build Kilamba, 30 km from Luanda, for about US$3.5 billion financed against oil; flats priced around US$125,000 sat empty until subsidised mortgages and price cuts filled them.

Ross Island, the ruined British HQ of the Andamans, was renamed in 2018 for which leader?

The island's ballrooms, bakery and swimming pool now lie in ruins; Bose himself stayed there during the Japanese occupation in December 1943.

Kuldhara, an abandoned village near Jaisalmer, Rajasthan, was home to which Brahmin group?

Paliwal Brahmins settled Kuldhara around the 13th century; legend blames the Jaisalmer minister Salim Singh's taxes for its desertion, though drying wells are the likelier cause, and the 1890 census counted 37 people.

Mario Bagno bulldozed the Italian village of Consonno in the 1960s to build what?

Mario Bagno razed Consonno from 1962 to build a Las Vegas-style resort, the 'City of Toys', with a minaret-topped shopping gallery and dance hall; landslides in 1976 and 1977 cut the access road and the project died.

After a 1968 quake levelled Gibellina, Sicily, Alberto Burri covered the ruins with what?

Burri poured white cement over the rubble of old Gibellina from 1985, preserving the street plan as walkable cracks across some 80,000 square metres; the Cretto was completed in 2015 for his centenary.

Doel, a near-empty Belgian village, spent decades slated for demolition to expand what?

The Port of Antwerp's planned Saeftinghe dock would have erased Doel, which sits beside the Deurganck container dock; a 2022 agreement finally let the village survive behind a green buffer, its 1611 stone windmill intact.

A 14th-century bell tower rising from the water marks a drowned village in which Italian lake?

Lake Reschen in South Tyrol, created in 1950 when a hydroelectric dam merged two natural lakes, drowned the village of Graun (Curon); its 14th-century church tower was left standing in the water.

What share of Neftegorsk's 3,977 people died in the Sakhalin quake that ended the town?

Shoddy precast apartment blocks collapsed during a dance at the cultural centre; 1,989 died and a memorial was built instead of a new town.

Mardale Green in England's Lake District was submerged in the 1930s under which reservoir?

Haweswater's dam, built by Manchester Corporation from 1929 to 1935, raised the lake about 29 metres and drowned Mardale Green; the Royal Engineers blew up its houses for practice and the church was dismantled stone by stone.

Grafton, Utah, seen in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, lies just south of which park?

Grafton sits on the Virgin River just outside Zion National Park's south-west corner; called the West's most photographed ghost town, it hosted 1929's In Old Arizona, the first talkie shot outdoors, and the last residents left in 1944.

Akarmara, a Soviet mining quarter emptied by war in 1992–93, is in which breakaway region?

Akarmara was a coal-mining quarter of Tkvarcheli in Abkhazia, the breakaway Georgian region fought over in 1992-93; its Stalin-era apartment blocks are being reclaimed by forest and only a few dozen people remain.

Anyox, a BC smelter town abandoned in 1935, was finished off by what in 1942 and 1943?

Forest fires in 1942 and 1943 burned most of what was left of Anyox, whose Granby copper smelter had closed in 1935; it had built a 156-foot dam, Canada's tallest, and acid rain had stripped the hillsides bare.

Uranium City, Saskatchewan, a busted mining boomtown, was modelled on which Quebec town?

Arvida, the Alcan company town in Quebec's Saguenay region, was the model planners chose for Uranium City in the 1950s to avoid the ills of northern Ontario mining camps; the population fell from 2,507 in 1981 to 73 by 2016.

Pine Point, NWT, a mining town that peaked at 1,915 people, was dismantled in which year?

Pine Point's Cominco mine closed in 1987 and the town was dismantled in 1988; houses sold cheaply and were trucked to Hay River and Fort Resolution, ice arena included, leaving only the street grid.

Taiwan's Sanzhi 'UFO houses', an unfinished pod resort razed by 2010, were aimed at whom?

The pods were marketed as a holiday resort for US military officers posted to East Asia; work stopped in 1980 amid losses and fatal accidents that locals blamed on cutting a dragon sculpture in half to widen the road.

Volunteers restored and reopened what in the stone ruins of Farina, a South Australian ghost town?

An underground bakery built in the 1880s was restored by Farina volunteers, who fire its Scotch oven during annual winter working bees; settlers had arrived believing rain would follow the plough, and the town was empty by 1967.

Kangbashi, dubbed a 'ghost city' in 2009, is a district of which Inner Mongolian city?

Ordos built Kangbashi for a million people, yet it had about 30,000 in 2009; by 2017 it housed 153,000 and hosted the 2012 Miss World final along the way.