{{Short description|Abandoned settlement with intact features}} {{Redirect|Ghost city|archaeological deserted settlements|Abandoned village|other uses|Ghost city (disambiguation)|and|Ghost town (disambiguation)}} {{Use British English|date=August 2025}} {{Use dmy dates|date=August 2025}}
[[File:Plymouth Montserrat Heli.jpg|thumb|upright=1.4|alt=Aerial view of Plymouth, Montserrat, buried under grey volcanic ash|Plymouth, Montserrat is the only ghost town that is the capital of a modern political territory. It was rendered uninhabitable and evacuated in 1995 after being inundated with volcanic ash from the eruption of the Soufrière Hills Volcano.]] A '''ghost town''', '''deserted city''', '''extinct town''', or '''abandoned city''' is an abandoned or largely depopulated human settlement that usually 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. mining has exhausted a local ore deposit). The town may also have declined because of natural or human-caused disasters such as floods, prolonged droughts, government actions, war, pollution, or nuclear and radiation-related accidents and incidents. The term can sometimes refer to cities, towns, and neighbourhoods that, though still populated, are significantly less so than in past years; for example, those affected by high levels of unemployment and dereliction.<ref name=Baker/>
The definition of a ghost town is debated amongst writers. Some restrict the term to places deserted for purely economic reasons, while others require visible remains of buildings, and still others allow for a small remaining population. Common causes of abandonment include the exhaustion of natural resources such as minerals or timber, the rerouting of railways or roads, dam construction that isolates or floods a town, armed conflict, forced displacement, and environmental contamination. Epidemics, including the Black Death and the Spanish flu, have also depopulated communities, as has long-term exposure to hazardous materials such as asbestos and lead.
Ghost towns are found on every continent, including Antarctica. Africa and the Middle East have towns abandoned because of conflict and the collapse of empires of which they were a part. In Asia, settlements linked to Gulag labour camps were deserted after the camps closed, while in Europe, urbanisation has led to the emptying of rural villages across Bulgaria, Hungary, and Spain. The Americas contain thousands of former mining and railway towns, particularly in the western United States, British Columbia, and Chile's Atacama Desert. Australia and New Zealand have their own legacy of gold rush ghost towns.
A few ghost towns have been repopulated through heritage tourism, pilgrimage, or resettlement programmes. Walhalla, Victoria, Australia grew and then shrunk correlative to gold mining operations but recently has had a tourism-driven revival. Foncebadón in Spain is slowly recovering thanks in large part to christian pilgrims stopping there on their way to Santiago de Compostela. Some ghost towns that preserve period-specific architecture have become tourist attractions or filming locations: examples include Kolmanskop in Namibia, Craco in Italy, Pripyat in Ukraine, and Bodie in the United States.
==Definition== 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."<ref name=Baker>{{cite book |last=Baker |first= T. Lindsay |url={{GBurl|id=8Z4EFgxTW8oC|pg=PR9}} |title=More Ghost Towns of Texas |year=2003 |location=Norman, OK |publisher=University of Oklahoma Press |isbn=0-8061-3518-2}}</ref> Some writers restrict the term to settlements that were deserted because they were no longer economically viable, discounting those that were abandoned due to a natural or human-made disaster or other causes. Some believe that any settlement with visible tangible remains should not be called a ghost town;<ref name=Rockies>{{cite book|last=Brown|first=Robert L.|title=Ghost Towns of the Colorado Rockies|year=1990|publisher=Caxton Printers|location=Caldwell, ID |isbn=0-87004-342-0|page=15|url={{GBurl|id=fXOjzn5b-tAC|pg=PA15}}}}</ref> others say, conversely, that a ghost town should contain the tangible remains of buildings.<ref>{{cite book |last=Thomsen |first=Clint |year=2012 |title=Ghost Towns: Lost Cities of the Old West |publisher=Osprey Publishing |chapter=What is a ghost town? |isbn=978-1-78200-107-2}}</ref> Whether or not the settlement must be completely deserted or may contain a small population is also a matter for debate.<ref name=Rockies/> 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."<ref>{{cite book|last=Hall|first=Shawn|title=Ghost Towns and Mining Camps of Southern Nevada|year=2010|publisher=Arcadia Pub.|location=Charleston, SC|isbn=978-0738570129|page=7|url={{GBurl|id=DHLCS4HNjuQC|pg=PA7}}}}</ref>
==Reasons for abandonment== 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.<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Graves |first1=Philip |last2=Weiler |first2=Stephan |last3=Tynon |first3=Emily |ssrn=1540770 |title=The Economics of Ghost Towns|publisher=Social Science Research Network |date=25 January 2010 |url=https://jrap.scholasticahq.com/article/9543-the-economics-of-ghost-towns |journal=Journal of Regional Analysis & Policy |access-date=27 February 2026}}</ref> A town can also be abandoned if it is located within an exclusion zone due to natural or human-made causes.
=== Armed conflicts === [[File:Aghdam_6.jpg|thumb|alt=Overgrown rubble and ruined buildings in Aghdam|Nature slowly reclaiming the ruins in Aghdam (2010)]] [[File: An aerial view showing destruction in Rafah after Israeli forces withdrawal and as the ceasefire took hold, Gaza Strip.jpg|thumb|Rafah, destroyed (2025)]] Some towns became deserted when their populations were massacred, deported, or expelled.
Examples include Kayaköy, an ancient Greek city abandoned in 1923 as a result of the population exchange between Greece and Turkey,<ref>{{cite book |last=Clark |first=Bruce |title=Twice a Stranger: The Mass Expulsions that Forged Modern Greece and Turkey |publisher=Harvard University Press |location=Cambridge, MA |year=2006 |isbn=978-0-674-03222-4}}</ref> and the original French village at Oradour-sur-Glane which was destroyed on 10 June 1944 when 642 of its 663 inhabitants were killed by a German Waffen-SS 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.
The century-old Israeli–Palestinian conflict and Arab-Israeli conflict have caused a lot of ghost towns as well. In Palestine, the Old City of Hebron has been divided into H1, under Palestinian control, and H2, under Israeli military control since 1997. As a result of this division and the presence of Israeli settlers, the H2 area is subject to strict restrictions, shop closures, and checkpoints that have emptied the historic city centre. As for the Gaza Strip, following the Gaza war, most of its cities have been devastated by the Israeli military, Rafah and Khan Yunis in particular. Another Middle Eastern example is Quneitra, located in the Golan Heights: the city has been occupied by Israeli forces in 1967 and entirely destroyed before Israeli withdrawal in June 1974. The United Nations has condemned Israel for Quneitra's destruction, while Israel blamed Syria for not rebuilding the city.
Another example is Aghdam, a city in Azerbaijan. Armenian forces occupied Aghdam in July 1993 during the First 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.<ref>{{cite book |last=de Waal |first=Thomas |title=Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan through Peace and War |publisher=NYU Press |location=New York |year=2013 |isbn=978-0-8147-6032-1 |edition=revised and updated 10th anniversary}}</ref> More damage occurred in the following decades when locals looted the abandoned town for building materials. Azerbaijan recaptured the district in November 2020 under a Russian-brokered ceasefire agreement.<ref>{{cite news |title=Azerbaijan enters Nagorno-Karabakh district after peace deal |work=Al Jazeera |date=20 November 2020 |url=https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/11/20/azerbaijan-army-enters-district-handed-over-by-armenia |access-date=28 February 2026}}</ref>
In the 21st century, war and conflict continues to bring about the abandonment of human settlements. Examples include villages in Ukraine depopulated and largely destroyed during the Russian invasion such as Bakhmut and Avdiivka<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-68086568|title=Ukraine war: Nothing but rubble in shattered ghost town Avdiivka|date=30 January 2024|website=Bbc.com|access-date=31 May 2026}}</ref>During the ongoing Gaza war and genocide numerous Palestinian cities in Gaza have been entirely depopulated and razed. Rafah, with a pre-war population of 275,000 has been almost entirely destroyed and the population forcibly transffered. <ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-06-12/ty-article-magazine/.premium/rafah-is-gone-razed-to-the-ground-its-not-the-only-city-decimated-by-the-israeli-army/00000197-6506-db73-aff7-7d4ee6bb0000|title=Rafah is gone. Razed to the ground. It's not the only city decimated by the Israeli army|website=Haaretz.com|access-date=31 May 2026}}</ref>
=== Economic decline === {{refimprove section|date=December 2025}} [[File:Abandoned farmhouse, overgrown.jpg|thumb|right|alt=Derelict farmhouse surrounded by overgrown vegetation|As farms industrialise, smaller farms are no longer economically viable, leading to rural decay.]]
Ghost towns may result when the single activity or resource that created a boomtown (e.g., nearby mine, mill or resort) is depleted or the resource economy undergoes a "bust" (e.g., catastrophic resource price collapse). A gold rush often 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 temporary company town to 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 former mining towns on U.S. Route 66 suffered both mine closures when the resources were depleted and loss of highway traffic as US 66 was diverted from places like Oatman, Arizona, onto a more direct path. Mine and pulp mill closures 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; and Cassiar, whose asbestos mine 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 to Collingwood, Queensland, in Outback Australia when nearby Winton outperformed Collingwood as a regional centre for the livestock-raising industry. The railway reached Winton in 1899, linking it with the rest of Queensland, and Collingwood was a ghost town by the following year. More broadly across Australia, there has been a shift towards fly-in fly-out arrangements over building a company town in order to avoid the development of ghost towns once a mining resource has been fully extracted.<ref name="aso">{{cite encyclopedia |last1=Peace |first1=Adrian |date=2015 |title=Australia, Sociocultural Overviews: Australian Settler Society |url=https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780080970868120227 |encyclopedia=International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences |edition=Second |pages=239–244 |doi=10.1016/B978-0-08-097086-8.12022-7 |isbn=9780080970875 |access-date=21 October 2022|url-access=subscription }}</ref>
The Middle East (Southwest Asia) 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 as Ctesiphon.{{citation needed|date=February 2026}}
The rise of real-estate speculation and the resulting possibility of real-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 in various countries, including Spain, China, the United States, and Canada, where housing is often used as an investment rather than for habitation.{{citation needed|date=February 2026}}
=== Human intervention and infrastructure === {{refimprove section|date=December 2025}} [[File:Famagusta-Varosha 2007.JPG|thumb|upright=1.35|alt=Abandoned high-rise buildings along a fenced-off beachfront in Varosha|Prior to the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974, Varosha, now falling into ruin, was a modern tourist area.]]
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 historic Opeongo Line and along U.S. Route 66 after motorists bypassed the latter on the faster-moving highways I-44 and I-40. Some ghost towns were founded along railways where steam trains would stop at periodic intervals for repairs or to take on water, but dieselisation or electrification negated the need for the trains to stop. Amboy, California, was part of one such series of villages along the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad across the Mojave Desert. In other cases, railroads replaced rivers or canals as the primary means of overland transport, causing the decline of towns that depended on river or canal traffic; one such town was Granville, Indiana, located on the Wabash and Erie Canal.
River rerouting is another factor, one example being the towns along the Aral Sea.{{citation needed|date=February 2026}}
Ghost towns may be created when land is expropriated by a government, and residents are required to relocate. One example is the village of Tyneham in Dorset, England, acquired during World War II to build an artillery range.<ref name="wright1995">{{cite book |last=Wright |first=Patrick |title=The Village That Died for England: The Strange Story of Tyneham |year=1995 |publisher=Jonathan Cape |location=London}}</ref>
A similar situation occurred in the U.S. when NASA acquired land to construct the John C. Stennis Space Center (SSC), a rocket testing facility in Hancock County, Mississippi (on the Mississippi side of the Pearl River, which is the Mississippi–Louisiana state line). This required NASA to acquire a large (approximately {{convert|34|sqmi|adj=on|disp=or}}) buffer zone 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 (Pearlington), along with 700 families in residence, had to be completely relocated away from the facility.<ref>{{cite thesis |last=Simms |first=Stuart |title=In the Shadows of Apollo: The Space Age Legacies of Dispossession in Hancock County, Mississippi |type=MA thesis |publisher=University of Kentucky |year=2020 |doi=10.13023/etd.2020.496 |url=https://uknowledge.uky.edu/history_etds/63/ |access-date=27 February 2026}}</ref>
[[File:Akarmaraghosttown.jpg|thumb|alt=Abandoned concrete apartment buildings in a forested valley|Akarmara, a mining town in Abkhazia/Georgia, was abandoned in the early 1990s due to the War in Abkhazia.]] Sometimes the town might cease to officially exist, but the physical infrastructure remains. For instance, the facility itself still contains remnants of the five Mississippi communities abandoned for the construction of SSC. 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 of Weston, Illinois, that voted itself out of existence and turned the land over for construction of the Fermi 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.{{citation needed|date=February 2026}}
====Flooding by dams==== The construction of dams has left ghost towns submerged. Examples include: * Kensico, New York was replaced by the Kensico Reservoir.<ref>{{cite web |last=Halpern |first=W. Dyer |date=24 January 2011 |title=The Lost Village of Kensico |url=https://westchestermagazine.com/life-style/the-lost-village-of-kensico/ |access-date=18 July 2024 |website=Westchester Magazine |language=en-US}}</ref> * Loyston, Tennessee, U.S., was inundated by the creation of Norris Dam and reconstructed on nearby higher ground.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Watts |first1=Jennifer |title=Underwater Ghost Towns of Tennessee |url=https://tnmuseum.org/junior-curators/posts/underwater-ghost-towns-of-tennessee |website=Tennessee State Museum |access-date=26 February 2023}}</ref> * St. Thomas, Nevada, U.S., flooded by up to 70 feet of water by Lake Mead following construction of the Hoover Dam.<ref>{{cite web |title=St Thomas Nevada - Lake Mead National Recreation Area (U.S. National Park Service) |url=https://www.nps.gov/lake/learn/nature/st-thomas-nevada.htm |website=National Park Service |access-date=26 February 2023}}</ref> * Stiltner, West Virginia, inundated by the creation of East Lynn Lake in 1969.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Thompson |first1=Robert |title=The Lost Town of Stiltner |url=https://www.herald-dispatch.com/wcn/wc_news/the-lost-town-of-stiltner/article_9f834abc-d8d6-503c-8abe-8bb6a9c387f8.html |website=The Wayne County News |access-date=30 May 2019}}</ref> * The Lost Villages of Ontario, flooded by Saint Lawrence Seaway construction in 1958.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Wheeler |first1=Maggie |title=The Lost Villages |url=https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/the-lost-villages |website=The Canadian Encyclopedia |publisher=Historica Canada |access-date=26 February 2023}}</ref> * Nether Hambleton and Middle Hambleton in Rutland, England, which were flooded to create Rutland Water.<ref>{{cite web |title=Hambleton, Upper Hambleton, Middle Hambleton, Nether Hambleton |url=https://epns.nottingham.ac.uk/browse/Rutland/Hambleton/53286f79b47fc40c0d000400-Hambleton%2C+Upper+Hambleton%2C+Middle+Hambleton%2C+Nether+Hambleton |website=Survey of English Place-Names |publisher=English Place-Name Society |access-date=26 February 2023 |archive-date=26 February 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230226235511/https://epns.nottingham.ac.uk/browse/Rutland/Hambleton/53286f79b47fc40c0d000400-Hambleton,+Upper+Hambleton,+Middle+Hambleton,+Nether+Hambleton |url-status=dead }}</ref> * Ashopton and Derwent, England, flooded during the construction of the Ladybower Reservoir.<ref>{{cite web |last1=York |first1=Chris |title=Two Lost Derbyshire Villages Have Been revealed By Low Water Levels At Ladybower Reservoir |url=https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/derwent-derbyshire_uk_5befe523e4b07573881ece57 |website=HuffPost UK News |date=17 November 2018 |publisher=Huffington Post |access-date=26 February 2023}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Ladybower |url=https://www.peakdistrict.gov.uk/visiting/miles-without-stiles/ladybower |website=Peak District National Park |access-date=26 February 2023}}</ref> * The Tignes Dam flooded the village of Tignes in France, displacing 78 families.<ref>{{cite web |title=Village Destroyed as New Dam Floods Reservoir |url=https://www.britishpathe.com/video/VLVA436HY83AJ25IFMIA88LM67F2B-VILLAGE-DESTROYED-AS-NEW-DAM-FLOODS-RESERVOIR/query/Tignes |website=British Pathe |publisher=Reuters |access-date=26 February 2023}}</ref> * Mologa in Russia was flooded by the creation of Rybinsk reservoir between 1941 and 1947.<ref>{{cite news|last=Mandraud|first=Isabelle|date=30 January 2015|title=Sunken towns of the Volga revive memories of Stalinist-era Russia|work=The Guardian|url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/30/mologa-russia-flooded-rybinsk-reservoir-dam|access-date=27 February 2026}}</ref> * Many ancient villages were abandoned during construction of the Three Gorges Dam in China, leading to the displacement of many rural people.<ref>{{cite web |title=Three Gorges Dam |url=https://www.britannica.com/topic/Three-Gorges-Dam |website=Encyclopedia Britannica |publisher=Britannica |access-date=26 February 2023}}</ref> * In Guanacaste Province, Costa Rica, inhabitants of Arenal and Tronadora were forced to relocate in 1978 to make room for the human-made Lake Arenal.<ref>{{cite web |title=La Nacion Costa Rica |url=https://lanacioncostarica.pressreader.com/article/281496460663685 |access-date=1 June 2023 |website=lanacioncostarica.pressreader.com}}</ref> * Old Adaminaby in New South Wales, Australia, was flooded by a dam of the Snowy River Scheme.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Elder |first1=Bruce |title=A Complete Guide to Adaminaby, NSW |url=https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/topics/history-culture/2022/12/a-complete-guide-to-adaminaby-nsw/ |website=Australian Geographic |date=9 December 2022 |access-date=26 February 2023}}</ref> * Construction of the Aswan High Dam on the Nile River in Egypt submerged archaeological sites and ancient settlements, such as Buhen under Lake Nasser.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Harford |first1=Tim |title=The Spectacular Failures and Successes of Massive Dams |work=BBC News |date=11 March 2020 |url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-51459930 |access-date=26 February 2023}}</ref> * Tehri was drowned after the construction of the Tehri Dam in the Indian state of Uttarakhand.<ref>{{cite web |title=New Tehri – Overlooks the Gigantic Tehri Lake and Dam |url=https://uttarakhandtourism.gov.in/destination/new-tehri |website=Uttarakhand Tourism |access-date=27 February 2026}}</ref> * Aceredo and five other villages in the region of Galicia, Spain, drowned by the construction of Alto Lindoso Dam downstream in Portugal in 1992<ref name="Pontevedra 2012">{{cite news | last=Pontevedra | first=Silvia R. | title=Memoria de un pueblo ahogado | website=El País | date=14 December 2012 | url=https://elpais.com/sociedad/2012/12/14/actualidad/1355517771_214178.html | language=es | access-date=21 February 2022}}</ref> (later exposed after extreme drought conditions in early 2022<ref>{{cite web | title=Ghost village emerges in Spain as drought empties reservoir | website=The Guardian |date=12 February 2022 |agency=Reuters |location=Concello de Lobios |url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/11/ghost-village-emerges-in-spain-as-drought-empties-reservoir-aceredo | access-date=21 February 2022}}</ref><ref>{{cite web | last=Butterfield | first=Michelle | title=Incredible photos show Spanish ghost village emerge after 30 years underwater | website=Global News | date=18 February 2022 | url=https://globalnews.ca/news/8628758/ghost-village-spain-drought-reservoir-aceredo/ | access-date=21 February 2022}}</ref>). * Capel Celyn, Gwynedd, Wales, was lost to the Trywern Flooding of 1965. This was to create a reservoir, Llyn Celyn, in order to supply the English areas of Liverpool and Wirral with water for industry.<ref>{{cite news |date=21 October 2015 |title=Tryweryn: Personal stories 50 years after drowning |url=https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-34528336 |access-date=20 October 2024 |work=BBC News |language=en-GB}}</ref> * Dana, Enfield, Greenwich, and Prescott, Massachusetts; four towns in the Swift River Valley that were flooded in 1938 to create the Quabbin Reservoir, a water supply for the growing city of Boston and the surrounding suburbs.<ref>{{cite web |title=The Harvard Advocate |url=https://theharvardadvocate.com/content/drowned-towns-preserving-the-lost-communities-of-the-swift-river-valley |access-date=20 May 2025 |website=The Harvard Advocate}}</ref>
=== Disasters, actual and anticipated === {{refimprove section|date=December 2025}} [[File:Craco il paese fantasma.jpg|thumb|left|alt=Ruined stone buildings of the medieval village of Craco on a hilltop|Craco, Italy, was abandoned due to a landslide in 1963. It has since become a popular film set.]] Both natural and man-made disasters can lead to the creation of ghost towns. For example, after being flooded more than 30 times since their town was founded in 1845, residents of Pattonsburg, Missouri, decided to relocate after two floods in 1993. With government help, the whole town was rebuilt {{convert|3|mi|0|abbr=out|disp=or}} away.{{citation needed|date=February 2026}}
Craco, a medieval village in the Italian region of Basilicata, was evacuated after a landslide in 1963. Nowadays it is a filming location for many movies, including ''The Passion of The Christ'' by Mel Gibson, ''Christ Stopped at Eboli'' by Francesco Rosi, ''The Nativity Story'' by Catherine Hardwicke and ''Quantum of Solace'' by Marc Forster.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.imdb.com/search/title?locations=Craco,%20Matera,%20Basilicata,%20Italy&ref_=ttloc_loc_14|title=Most Popular Titles With Location Matching "Craco, Matera, Basilicata, Italy"|website=Internet Movie Database|access-date=15 November 2013}}</ref>
In 1984, Centralia, Pennsylvania, was abandoned due to an uncontainable mine fire, which began in 1962 and still rages to this day; eventually the fire reached an abandoned mine underneath the nearby town of Byrnesville, which caused that mine to catch on fire too and forced the evacuation of that town as well.<ref>{{cite book |last=DeKok |first=David |title=Fire Underground: The Ongoing Tragedy of the Centralia Mine Fire |year=2009 |edition=rev. |publisher=Globe Pequot Press |location=Guilford, CT |isbn=978-0-762-75427-4}}</ref>
[[File:Pripyat-today.jpg|thumb|alt=Abandoned apartment blocks with overgrown trees in Pripyat|Pripyat, Ukraine, was abandoned after the Chernobyl disaster.]] Ghost towns may also occasionally come into being due to an ''anticipated'' natural disaster – for example, the Canadian town of Lemieux, Ontario, was abandoned in 1991 after soil testing revealed that the community was built on an unstable bed of Leda clay. Two years after the last building in Lemieux was demolished, a landslide swept part of the former townsite into the South Nation River. Two decades earlier, the Canadian town of Saint-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.{{citation needed|date=February 2026}}
Following the Chernobyl disaster of 1986, dangerously high levels of nuclear contamination escaped into the surrounding area, and nearly 200 towns and villages in Ukraine and neighbouring Belarus were evacuated, including the cities of Pripyat and Chernobyl. 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 the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant and had a population of almost 50,000 at the time of the disaster.<ref name=chernobyl>{{cite book|last=Mould|first=R. F.|title=Chernobyl Record: The Definitive History of the Chernobyl Catastrophe|year=2000|publisher=Institute of Physics Publishing|location=Bristol|isbn=0-7503-0670-X|pages=103–117|chapter-url={{GBurl|id=O36UC03ODtcC|pg=PA103}}|chapter=Evacuation and Resettlement}}</ref>
==== Human health ==== [[File:Rerik-West-September-2014.jpg|thumb|upright=1.35|alt=Fenced-off abandoned buildings at Rerik West behind security barriers|Rerik West, Germany. Turned into a restricted area after 1992 due to ammunition contamination from a nearby abandoned Soviet Army barracks.]]
Significant fatality rates from epidemics have produced ghost towns. Multiple hamlets in England were depopulated in the wake of the Black Death in the mid-14th century. Some places in eastern Arkansas were abandoned after more than 7,000 Arkansans died during the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918 and 1919.{{citation needed|date=February 2026}}<ref name="CDC">{{cite journal |url=https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/content/14/8/1193.htm |volume=14 |issue= 8 |date=August 2008 |title=Deaths from Bacterial Pneumonia during 1918–19 Influenza Pandemic |last1= Brundage |first1=John F. |first2=G. Dennis |last2=Shanks |journal=Emerging Infectious Diseases |publisher=U.S. Centers for Disease Control |access-date=11 July 2010|doi=10.3201/eid1408.071313 |pages=1193–1199|pmc=2600384 |pmid=18680641}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |title=Annual report of the Surgeon General of the Public Health Service of the United States - 1920 |location=Washington, DC |publisher=Public Health Service}}</ref> Several communities in Ireland, particularly in the west of the country, were wiped out due to the Great Famine in the latter half of the 19th century and the years of economic decline that followed.<ref>{{cite book |last=Woodham-Smith |first=Cecil |title=The Great Hunger: Ireland 1845–1849 |year=1962 |publisher=Hamish Hamilton |location=London}}</ref>
Catastrophic environmental damage caused by long-term contamination can also create a ghost town. Some notable examples are Times Beach, Missouri, whose residents were exposed to a high level of dioxins, and Wittenoom, Western Australia, which was once Australia's largest source of blue asbestos, but was shut down in 1966 due to health concerns. Treece and Picher, twin communities straddling the Kansas–Oklahoma border, were once one of the United States' largest sources of zinc and lead, but over a century of unregulated disposal of mine tailings led to groundwater contamination and lead poisoning in the town's children, eventually resulting in a mandatory Environmental Protection Agency buyout and evacuation. Contamination due to ammunition caused by military use may also lead to the development of ghost towns. Tyneham, in Dorset, was requisitioned for military exercises during the Second World War, and remains unpopulated, being littered with unexploded munitions from regular shelling.<ref name="wright1995" />
==Ghost town repopulation== {{multiple image | align = right | direction = vertical | width = 220 | image1 = Walhalla 1910 view4.jpg | alt1 = Walhalla township in 1910 | caption1 = Walhalla township in 1910 | image2 = WalhallaVicCorner.jpg | alt2 = Walhalla township in 2004 | caption2 = Part of Walhalla in 2004, showing a mix of original and reconstructed buildings | footer = Walhalla, Victoria, was almost abandoned after being mined for gold, but is now becoming repopulated. | footer_align = left }}
A few ghost towns have managed to get a second life, and this happens for a variety of reasons. One of these reasons is heritage tourism generating a new economy able to support residents.<ref>{{cite web |title=11 Ghost Towns in the U.S. You Can Still Visit |url=https://www.travelandleisure.com/ghost-towns-in-the-us-6747202 |access-date=13 May 2024 |website=Travel + Leisure |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last=Kirouac |first=Matt |date=19 October 2023 |title=Ghost Towns Are Being Resurrected as Tourist Destinations |url=https://www.thrillist.com/travel/nation/ghost-town-tourism |access-date=13 May 2024 |website=Thrillist |language=en}}</ref>
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.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.walhalla.org.au/p2.htm#ghosts |title=Frequently-Asked Questions about Walhalla |author=<!--Staff writer(s); no by-line.--> |date=2006–2013 |website=walhalla.org.au |publisher=Walhalla Heritage and Development League Inc |access-date=12 January 2014 |archive-date=2 March 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220302144733/http://walhalla.org.au/p2.htm#ghosts |url-status=dead }}</ref> Another town, Sungai Lembing, Malaysia, which was almost deserted due to closure of a tin mine in 1986 was revived in 2001 and has become a tourist destination since then.<ref>{{cite news | last = Pek Yee | first = Foong | date = 14 July 2017 | title = Ex-mining town embraces ecotourism | url = https://www.thestar.com.my/metro/focus/2017/07/14/exmining-town-embraces-ecotourism-kampung-baru-sungai-lembing-folk-happy-to-show-off-towns-attractio | work = The Star | access-date = 5 July 2020 }}</ref>
Foncebadón, a village in León, 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 Santiago de Compostela.{{citation needed|date=February 2026}}
Some ghost towns (e.g. Riace, Muñotello) are being repopulated by refugees and homeless 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).<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.bbc.com/news/in-pictures-37289713|title = Riace: The Italian village abandoned by locals, adopted by migrants|work = BBC News|date = 25 September 2016 |others=photographs by Francesco Pistilli|access-date=27 February 2026}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |work=EuroNews |url=https://www.euronews.com/2020/12/30/spain-s-homeless-help-repopulate-rural-ghost-towns |title=Spain's homeless help repopulate rural ghost towns |first=Juan Carlos |last=De Santos Pascual |date=30 December 2020 |access-date=27 February 2026}}</ref>
In Algeria, many cities became hamlets after the end of Late Antiquity. They were revived with shifts in population during and after French colonisation of Algeria. Oran, currently the nation's second-largest city with 1 million people, was a village of only a few thousand people before colonisation.{{citation needed|date=February 2026}}
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,<ref>{{cite book |last1=Ágoston |first1=Gábor |last2=Masters |first2=Bruce |year=2009 |url={{GBurl|id=QjzYdCxumFcC|pg=PA33}} |title=Encyclopedia of the Ottoman Empire |publisher=Infobase Publishing |page=33 |isbn=978-1-4381-1025-7}}</ref> and is now home to more than four million people.<ref>{{cite web |title=Egypt |url=https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/egypt/ |website=The World Factbook |publisher=Central Intelligence Agency |access-date=13 September 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20260118070053/https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/egypt/ |archive-date=18 January 2026 |url-status=live}}</ref>
==Around the world== {{See also|List of ghost towns by country}}
===Africa=== [[File:Kolmanskop Ghost Town Buildings.jpg|thumb|alt=Sand-filled rooms inside abandoned buildings at Kolmanskop|Kolmanskop, Namibia (2016); a ghost town since 1956]] Wars and rebellions in some African countries have left many towns and villages deserted. Since 2003, when President François Bozizé came to power, thousands of citizens of the Central African Republic 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 Paoua, are ransacked by government soldiers. Those who are not killed have no choice but to escape to refugee camps.<ref>{{cite news |last=Thompson |first=Mike | title=Deserted villages and abandoned lives | url=https://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_7779000/7779890.stm |work=BBC News |date=15 December 2008 |access-date=18 December 2008}}</ref> The instability in the region also leaves organised and well-equipped bandits free to terrorise the populace, often leaving villages abandoned in their wake.<ref>{{cite news |last=Thompson |first=Mike | title=Massacre haunts CAR villagers | url=https://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/7788626.stm |work=BBC News |date=18 December 2008 |access-date=18 December 2008}}</ref> Elsewhere in Africa, the town of Lukangol was burnt to the ground during tribal clashes in South Sudan. Before its destruction, the town had a population of 20,000.<ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-16377824 |title=South Sudan 'sends more troops' to strife-torn town Pibor |date=1 January 2012|access-date= 1 January 2012|work=BBC News}}</ref> The Libyan town of Tawergha had a population of around 25,000 before it was abandoned during the 2011 civil war, and it has remained empty since. As of January 2026, El Fasher, the de-facto capital city of Darfur, was largely abandoned, described by UN officials as a "crime scene".{{citation needed|date=January 2026}}
Many of the ghost towns in mineral-rich Africa are former mining towns. Shortly after the start of the 1908 diamond rush in German South-West Africa, now known as Namibia, the German Imperial government claimed sole mining rights by creating the {{lang|de|Sperrgebiet}} ("forbidden zone"),<ref name="Handbook">{{cite book|year=2001|title=Namibia Handbook: The Travel Guide <!-- access-date=24 May 2008 (deprecated) --> |publisher=Footprint Handbooks|isbn=1-900949-91-1|last1=Santcross|first1=Nick|last2=Ballard|first2=Sebastian|last3=Baker|first3=Gordon}}</ref> effectively criminalising new settlement. The small mining towns of this area, among them Pomona, Elizabeth Bay and Kolmanskop, were exempt from this ban, but the denial of new land claims soon rendered all of them ghost towns.
===Asia=== [[File:Chenggong, Kunming, Yunnan province.jpg|thumb|alt=Rows of empty high-rise residential towers in Chenggong District|Unoccupied residential complexes in the Chenggong District, Kunming, China]] The town of Dhanushkodi, India, is a ghost town. It was destroyed during the 1964 Rameswaram cyclone and remains uninhabited in the aftermath.<ref>{{cite web|title=Did you know? Dhanushkodi is the place where you can see the origin of the Ram Setu!|url=https://www.indiatoday.in/travel/destinations/story/dhanushkodi-ram-setu-adams-bridge-rameshwaram-tamil-nadu-travel-india-tourism-lifetr-343293-2016-09-26|last=Duttagupta|first=Samonway|website=India Today|date=26 September 2016 |language=en|access-date=2 May 2020}}</ref>
The Middle East is also home to several ghost towns. In Palestine, Hebron's Old City has been emptied by Israeli restrictions and checkpoints; and in the Gaza Strip, since the onset of the Gaza genocide, the cities of Rafah and Khan Yunis are now considered ghost towns. In Syria, the city of Quneitra, located in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, has been completely destroyed by the Israeli army in 1974 and a ghost town since then.
Many abandoned towns and settlements in the former Soviet Union were established near Gulag labour camps to supply necessary services. The 1950s saw the abandonment of most of these camps, which in turn led to the abandonment of the towns. One such town is located near the former Gulag camp called Butugychag (also called Lower Butugychag). Other towns were deserted due to deindustrialisation and the economic crises of the early 1990s attributed to post-Soviet conflicts—one example being Tkvarcheli in Georgia, a coal mining town that suffered a drastic population decline as a result of the War in Abkhazia in the early 1990s, and Aghdam, made ruined and uninhabited after the First Nagorno-Karabakh War.{{citation needed|date=February 2026}}
Although in the 2010s Chinese ghost cities became a frequent feature of discourse regarding China's economy and urbanisation, underoccupied cities filled up.<ref name=":102">{{cite book |last=Brown |first=Kerry |title=China Incorporated: The Politics of a World Where China is Number One |date=2023 |publisher=Bloomsbury Academic |isbn=978-1-350-26724-4 |location=London |author-link=Kerry Brown (historian)}}</ref>{{Rp|page=151}} Writing in 2023, academic and former UK diplomat Kerry Brown described the idea of Chinese ghost cities as a popular bandwagon that was shown to be a myth.<ref name=":102" />{{Rp|page=151–152}}
The town of Namie, along with several other towns in Fukushima Prefecture, Japan, was temporarily evacuated as a result of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster following the 2011 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.<ref>{{cite web | last=Pearce | first=Fred | title=A nuclear ghost town in Japan welcomes back residents this week | website=New Scientist | date=27 March 2017 | url=https://www.newscientist.com/article/2125805-a-nuclear-ghost-town-in-japan-welcomes-back-residents-this-week/ | access-date=19 May 2023}}</ref>
===Europe=== [[File:Oradour-sur-Glane-Streets-1294.jpg|thumb|alt=Ruined stone buildings lining an empty street in Oradour-sur-Glane|Main street of Oradour-sur-Glane, France, unchanged since the German massacre]] [[File:Jussarö building1.jpg|thumb|alt=Weathered concrete mining building on Jussaro island|Abandoned mining building on the Jussarö island in Ekenäs, Raseborg, Finland]] [[File:Заброшенная деревня Кривец.jpg|thumb|alt=Forest growing over the remains of abandoned wooden houses in Krivets village|The forest occupies the territory of the village of {{ill|Krivets, Arkhangelsk Oblast|lt=Krivets|RU|Кривец (Архангельская область)}}, deserted by urbanisation. Arkhangelsk Oblast, Russia]] 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.<ref>{{cite news |url=http://sofiaecho.com/2011/07/21/1126999_bulgarias-population-is-73-million-official-2011-census-results |title=Bulgaria's population is 7.3 million – official 2011 census results |newspaper=The Sofia Echo |date=21 July 2011 |access-date=21 August 2012 |archive-date=8 February 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130208224710/http://sofiaecho.com/2011/07/21/1126999_bulgarias-population-is-73-million-official-2011-census-results |url-status=dead }}</ref> In Hungary, dozens of villages are also threatened with abandonment. The first village officially declared as "dead" was {{interlanguage link|Gyűrűfű|hu}} 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 Kán, Tornakápolna, Szanticska, Gorica, and Révfalu.
In Spain, large zones of the mountainous Iberian System and the Pyrenees have undergone heavy depopulation since the early 20th century, leaving a string of ghost towns in areas such as the Solana 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. La Estrella, Teruel, is an 18th-century sanctuary village that became abandoned following mass rural flight. <ref name="Artigrama2022">{{cite journal |last1=Martín Marco |first1=Jorge |last2=Cercós Maícas |first2=Pablo |title=El santuario de La Estrella y el problema del patrimonio y la despoblación |journal=Artigrama |date=2022 |issue=37 |pages=401–411 |doi= |url=https://zaguan.unizar.es/record/126594/files/texto_completo.pdf |access-date=2026-03-18 |language=es |publisher=Universidad de Zaragoza}}</ref> <ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.diariodeteruel.net/comarcas/30412-sos-mundo-rural-aragones-alerta-de-la-despoblacion-de-los-pueblos.html |title=Sos Mundo Rural Aragonés alerta de la despoblación de los pueblos |publisher=Diario de Teruel |language=es |date=12 March 2013 |access-date=11 April 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130315150215/http://www.diariodeteruel.net/comarcas/30412-sos-mundo-rural-aragones-alerta-de-la-despoblacion-de-los-pueblos.html |archive-date=15 March 2013 |url-status=dead }}</ref>
Examples of ghost towns in Italy include the medieval village of Fabbriche di Careggine near Lago di Vagli, in the province of Lucca, in Tuscany,<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.italyundiscovered.com/2015/06/14/lake-of-vagli/|title=Lake of Vagli|work=Italy Undiscovered|date=14 June 2015|access-date=17 February 2021|archive-date=29 November 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201129010046/http://www.italyundiscovered.com/2015/06/14/lake-of-vagli/|url-status=dead}}</ref> the deserted mountain village of Craco, located in Basilicata, which has served as a filming location,<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.visititaly.eu/places-and-tours/craco-the-ghost-town-jewel-of-basilicata|title=Craco, the Ghost Town jewel of Basilicata|website=visititaly.eu|access-date=17 February 2021|archive-date=15 January 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220115062724/https://www.visititaly.eu/places-and-tours/craco-the-ghost-town-jewel-of-basilicata|url-status=dead}}</ref> and the ghost village of Roveraia, in the municipality of Loro Ciuffenna, in province of Arezzo, situated near Pratovalle.<ref name=":0">{{cite web |last=Fanti |first=Marco |date=29 July 2023 |title=Tomba di Rinaldo Mori al Cimitero di Pratovalle e Roveraia – Loro Ciuffenna (AR) |url=https://www.pietredellamemoria.it/pietre/tomba-di-rinaldo-mori-al-cimitero-di-pratovalle-e-roveraia-loro-ciuffenna-ar/ |access-date=14 April 2025 |website=Pietre della Memoria |publisher=Associazione fra Mutilati ed Invalidi di Guerra |language=it}}</ref> The presence of the village is attested since the Middle Ages, when there was a tower.<ref>{{cite web |last= |title=Piano territoriale paesistico della provincia di Arezzo – Pratomagno: valle dell'Agna |url=https://pianificazioneterritoriale.provincia.arezzo.it/wp-content/uploads/PTCP/QC_16_SCHEDE/QC_16a_unita_paesaggio/AP_0913.pdf |access-date=20 April 2025 |website=Provincia di Arezzo - Pianificazione Territoriale |publisher=Provincia di Arezzo |pages=1–2 |language=it}}</ref> During World War II it was an important partisan base<ref>{{cite web |last=Irdani |first=David |date=24 April 2010 |title=Rappresaglie di San Giustino |url=https://resistenzatoscana.org/storie/rappresaglie_di_san_giustino/ |access-date=20 April 2025 |website=Resistenza Toscana |publisher=Federazione Regionale Toscana delle Associazioni Antifasciste e della Resistenza |language=it}}</ref><ref name=":0" /> and it was abandoned between the 1960s and the 1980s, when the last family who lived here left the village.<ref>{{cite web |last=Fanti |first=Marco |date=4 April 2020 |title=Parco della Rimembranza ai Caduti di Pratovalle e Roveraia nella Grande Guerra |url=https://www.pietredellamemoria.it/pietre/monumento-ai-caduti-di-pratovalle-nella-grande-guerra/ |access-date=15 April 2025 |website=Pietre della Memoria |publisher=Associazione fra Mutilati ed Invalidi di Guerra |language=it}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last=Centrone |first=Daniel |date=November 2024 |title=Sentieri partigiani sul Pratomagno |url=https://www.toscananovecento.it/custom_type/sentieri-partigiani-sul-pratomagno/ |access-date=29 March 2025 |website=ToscanaNovecento. Portale di Storia Contemporanea |publisher=Regione Toscana |language=it}}</ref> 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,<ref>{{cite web |title=Il Progetto delle Funzioni |url=https://it.scribd.com/document/67728479/Il-Progetto-Delle-Funzioni |access-date=20 April 2025 |website=Scribd |publisher=Movimento Libero Perseo |language=it}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Roveraia eco - lab |url=https://vimeo.com/13408245 |access-date=20 April 2025 |website=Vimeo |publisher=Movimento Libero Perseo |language=it}}</ref> and in 2019 there was a proposal aiming to recover the village with a mix of functions called "Ecomuseum of Pratomagno."<ref>{{cite web |date=13 July 2021 |title=Ecomuseo del Pratomagno |url=https://issuu.com/dida-unifi/docs/ecomuseo_del_pratomagno_emma_amidei |access-date=20 April 2025 |website=Issuu |publisher=DIDA - Department of architecture, University of Florence |language=it}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last=Amidei |first=Emma |date=14 January 2021 |title=Portfolio di architettura |url=https://issuu.com/emmaamidei/docs/portfolio_amidei |access-date=20 April 2025 |website=Issuu |language=it |archive-date=20 October 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211020051900/https://issuu.com/emmaamidei/docs/portfolio_amidei |url-status=dead }}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last=Amidei |first=Emma |date=10 October 2020 |title=Architecture Portfolio |url=https://issuu.com/emmaamidei/docs/portfolio_amidei_0409c0677fe129 |access-date=20 April 2025 |website=Issuu |archive-date=20 October 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211020091953/https://issuu.com/emmaamidei/docs/portfolio_amidei_0409c0677fe129 |url-status=dead }}</ref><ref>{{cite web |date=1 March 2021 |title=Ecomuseum of Pratomagno |url=https://www.koozarch.com/interviews/ecomuseum-of-pratomagno/ |access-date=20 April 2025 |website=KooZA/rch}}</ref> thumb|alt=Crumbling stone buildings amid vegetation in the abandoned village of Roveraia|Ghost village of Roveraia
In the United Kingdom, thousands of villages were abandoned during the Middle Ages as a result of the Black Death, revolts, and enclosure, 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 as deserted medieval villages.<ref>{{cite book |last=Beresford |first=M. W. |title=The Lost Villages of England |year=1954 |publisher=Lutterworth Press |location=London}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Deserted Medieval Villages in Northamptonshire Designated as Ancient Monuments |url=https://historicengland.org.uk/whats-new/news/deserted-medieval-villages-in-northamptonshire/ |website=Historic England |access-date=27 February 2026}}</ref>
Sometimes, wars and genocide end a town's life. In 1944, occupying German ''Waffen-SS'' troops murdered almost the entire population of the French village Oradour-sur-Glane. A new settlement was built nearby after the war, but the old town was left depopulated on the orders of President Charles de Gaulle, as a permanent memorial.<ref>{{cite book |last=Farmer |first=Sarah |title=Martyred Village: Commemorating the 1944 Massacre at Oradour-sur-Glane |year=1999 |publisher=University of California Press |location=Berkeley |isbn=978-0-520-21186-5}}</ref> In Germany, numerous smaller towns and villages in the former eastern territories were completely destroyed in the last two years of the war. These territories later became part of Poland and the Soviet Union, and many of the smaller settlements were never rebuilt or repopulated, for example Kłomino (''Westfalenhof''), Pstrąże (''Pstransse''), and Janowa Góra (''Johannesberg''). Some villages in England were also abandoned during the war, but for different reasons. Imber, on Salisbury Plain, and several villages in the Stanford Battle Area, were commandeered by the War Office for use as training grounds for British and US troops. Although the occupation 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. {{Convert|3|mi|0|abbr=out|spell=In|disp=or}} southeast of Imber is Copehill Down, a deserted village purpose-built for training in urban warfare.{{citation needed|date=February 2026}}
Disasters have also played a part in the abandonment of settlements within Europe. After the Chernobyl disaster of 1986, Pripyat and Chernobyl were evacuated due to dangerous radiation levels; Pripyat remains completely abandoned, and Chernobyl has around 500 remaining inhabitants. Todoque in the Canary Islands, Spain, was severely affected during the 2021 Cumbre Vieja volcanic eruption. Hundreds of buildings were destroyed, and by 10 October new lava flows destroyed the remaining structures, leaving the town practically erased from the map.{{citation needed|date=February 2026}}
An example in the UK of a ghost village that was abandoned before it was ever occupied is at Polphail, 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.<ref>{{cite web |title=Case Study 17: Polphail Village |url=https://scarf.scot/regional/rarfa/regional-archaeological-research-framework-for-argyll-case-studies/case-study-17-pollphail-village/ |website=Scottish Archaeological Research Framework |access-date=27 February 2026}}</ref>
===North America=== [[File:RobsartHospital.jpg|thumb|alt=Abandoned wooden hospital building in Robsart, Saskatchewan|Robsart Hospital, one of many abandoned buildings in Robsart, Saskatchewan]]
====Canada==== {{See also|Lists of ghost towns in Canada}} Canada has several ghost towns in parts of British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario, Saskatchewan, Newfoundland and Labrador, and Quebec. Some were logging towns or dual mining and logging sites, often developed 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.<ref>{{cite book |last=Ramsey |first=Bruce |title=Ghost Towns of British Columbia |year=1963 |publisher=Mitchell Press |location=Vancouver}}</ref> Among the most notable are Anyox, Kitsault, and Ocean Falls.
Some ghost towns have revived their economies and populations due to historical and eco-tourism, such as Barkerville; once the largest town north of Kamloops, it is now a year-round provincial museum. In Quebec, Val-Jalbert is a well-known tourist ghost town; founded in 1901 around a mechanical pulp mill that became obsolete when paper mills began to break down wood fibre by chemical means, it was abandoned when the mill closed in 1927 and reopened as a park in 1960. {{clear left}}
====Mexico==== A former mining town in Mexico, Real de Catorce, has been used as a backdrop for Hollywood movies such as ''The Mexican'' (2001) and ''Bandidas'' (2006).<ref>{{cite web|title=Bandidas (2006) - Filming & production |url=https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0416496/locations|website=IMDb |access-date=27 February 2026 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230521235126/https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0416496/locations/ |archive-date=21 May 2023 }}</ref>
====United States==== {{See also|Lists of ghost towns in the United States}} [[File:A363, Rhyolite, Nevada, USA, John S Cook and Company building, 2004.jpg|thumb|alt=Ruined concrete facade of the Cook Bank building in Rhyolite, Nevada|Cook Bank building in Rhyolite, Nevada, a gold mining town]] Many ghost towns or abandoned communities exist in the American Great Plains, the rural areas of which have lost a third of their population since 1920. Thousands of communities in the northern plains states of Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota became railroad ghost towns when a rail line failed to materialise. Hundreds of towns were abandoned as the Interstate highway system replaced the railroads as the favoured means of transportation. Ghost towns are common in mining or mill towns in 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 are eventually exhausted.
Sometimes a ghost town consists of many abandoned buildings as in Bodie, California, or standing ruins as in Rhyolite, Nevada, while elsewhere only the foundations of former buildings remain as in Graysonia, Arkansas. Old mining camps that have lost most of their population at some stage of their history, such as Aspen, Deadwood, Oatman, Tombstone and Virginia City are sometimes referred to as ghost towns, although they are presently active towns and cities.{{citation needed|date=February 2012}} Many U.S. ghost towns, such as South Pass City in Wyoming are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.<ref>{{cite book |last=Weis |first=Norman D. |title=Ghost Towns of the Northwest |year=1971 |publisher=Caxton Press |location=Caldwell, Idaho |isbn=0-87004-358-7}}</ref><ref name=nris>{{NRISref|2009a|dateform=dmy}}</ref>
[[File:Wickenburg Vulture Mine-Assay office-1884-1.jpg|thumb|alt=Stone assay office building at Vulture Mine in Arizona|1884 assay office in Vulture City, Arizona, a gold mining town]]
Starting in 2002, an attempt to declare an official ghost town in California stalled when the adherents of the town of Bodie and those of Calico, in Southern California, could not agree on the most deserving settlement for the recognition. A compromise was eventually reached—Bodie was designated the official state gold rush ghost town in 2002, while Calico was named the official state silver rush ghost town in 2005.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.netstate.com/states/symb/towns/ca_gold_rush_ghost_town.htm |title=California State Gold Rush Ghost Town |publisher=NetState |access-date=28 December 2011}}</ref>
===South America=== 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.<ref>{{cite news|last=Baraniuk|first=Chris|date=15 July 2016|title=The ghost towns that were created by the oil rush|work=BBC|url=https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20160715-the-ghost-towns-left-by-oil-booms-and-busts |access-date=27 February 2026 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230521233125/https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20160715-the-ghost-towns-left-by-oil-booms-and-busts |archive-date=21 May 2023 }}</ref>
In Colombia, a volcano erupted in 1985, and the city of Armero was engulfed by lahars, which killed approximately 23,000 people in total.<ref>{{cite web |title=Benchmarks: November 13, 1985: Nevado del Ruiz eruption triggers deadly lahars |url=https://www.earthmagazine.org/article/benchmarks-november-13-1985-nevado-del-ruiz-eruption-triggers-deadly-lahars |first1=Bethany |last1=Augliere |date=20 October 2016 |website=Earth Magazine |publisher=American Geosciences Institute |access-date=13 November 2016}}</ref> 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 by Pope John Paul II.<ref>{{cite book|last=Zeiderman|first=Austin|title=Life at Risk: Biopolitics, Citizenship, and Security in Colombia|publisher=Congress of the Latin American Studies Association|year=2009|pages=12|citeseerx=10.1.1.509.6961}}</ref>
In 1985, the town of Potosi, located east of the state of Táchira was flooded by the Venezuelan government to build a hydroelectric dam. It was later uncovered in 2010 by the weather phenomenon known as El Niño, which was a severe drought affecting the area.
Several ghost towns throughout South America were once mining camps or lumber mills, such as the many saltpetre mining camps that prospered in Chile from the end of the Saltpeter War until the invention of synthetic saltpetre during World War I. Some of these towns, such as the Humberstone and Santa Laura Saltpeter Works in the Atacama Desert, have been declared UNESCO World Heritage Sites.<ref>{{cite web|title=Humberstone and Santa Laura Saltpeter Works|url=https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1178/|website=UNESCO World Heritage Centre |access-date=27 February 2026}}</ref>
===Oceania=== [[File:Ruins at Farina.JPG|thumb|alt=Stone ruins of buildings in the arid landscape of Farina, South Australia|After many years of drought and dust storms, the town of Farina, South Australia, was abandoned.]] The boom and bust of gold rushes and the mining of other ores have 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, the Victoria gold rush led to numerous ghost towns (such as Cassilis and Moliagul), as did the hunt for gold in Western Australia (for example, the towns of Ora Banda and Kanowna). The mining of iron and other ores has also led to towns flourishing briefly before dwindling. The town of Wittenoom was abandoned and demolished due to the health hazards posed by asbestos mining in the area.
In New Zealand, the Otago gold rush similarly led to several ghost towns (such as Macetown).<ref>{{cite web |title=Gold and gold mining |url=https://teara.govt.nz/en/gold-and-gold-mining/print |website=Te Ara: The Encyclopedia of New Zealand |access-date=27 February 2026}}</ref> New Zealand's ghost towns also include numerous coal mining areas in the South Island's West Coast Region, including Denniston and Stockton.<ref>{{cite web |title=History: Denniston area |url=https://www.doc.govt.nz/parks-and-recreation/places-to-go/west-coast/places/denniston-area/history/ |website=Department of Conservation |access-date=27 February 2026}}</ref> Natural disasters have also led to the loss of some towns, notably Te Wairoa, "The Buried Village," destroyed in the 1886 eruption of Mount Tarawera,<ref>{{cite web |title=Eruption of Mt Tarawera |url=https://nzhistory.govt.nz/eruption-mt-tarawera |website=NZ History |publisher=New Zealand Ministry for Culture and Heritage |access-date=27 February 2026}}</ref> and the Otago town of Kelso, abandoned after it was flooded repeatedly after heavy rainstorms. Early settlements on the rugged southwest coast of the South Island at Martins Bay and Port Craig were also abandoned, mainly due to the inhospitable terrain.
===Antarctica===
[[File:Deception-Base.jpg|thumb|alt=Rusted and collapsed buildings of the former British base at Whalers Bay, Deception Island|The derelict British base in Whalers Bay, Deception Island, destroyed by a volcanic eruption]]
The oldest ghost town in Antarctica is on Deception 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, 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 Great Depression, and was abandoned in 1931. A volcanic eruption partially destroyed the station in 1969. There are also many abandoned scientific and military bases in Antarctica, especially in the Antarctic Peninsula.<ref>{{cite web |title=Deception Island: Fire and Ice, History and Humans |url=https://divediscover.whoi.edu/hot-topics/deception-island-fire-and-ice-history-and-humans/ |website=Dive & Discover |publisher=Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution |access-date=27 February 2026}}</ref>
The Antarctic island of South Georgia had several active whaling settlements during the first half of the 20th century, with a combined population exceeding 2,000 in some years. These included Grytviken (operating 1904–64), Leith Harbour (1909–65), Ocean Harbour (1909–20), Husvik (1910–60), Stromness (1912–61), and Prince Olav Harbour (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, dwellings, 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.<ref>{{cite book |last=Headland |first=Robert K. |title=The Island of South Georgia |year=1984 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |location=Cambridge |isbn=978-0-521-42474-5}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Whaling Stations |url=https://gov.gs/whaling-stations/ |website=Government of South Georgia & the South Sandwich Islands |access-date=27 February 2026}}</ref>
==See also== {{div col|colwidth=22em}} * Abandoned mine * Abandoned village * Ghost ship * Lost cities * Modern ruins * Old field (ecology) * Passive rewilding * Phantom settlement * Population decline * Potemkin village * Unused highway * Urban decay * Urbicide * Urban exploration * Yellowcake boomtown {{div col end}}
==References== {{reflist}}
==Bibliography== {{refbegin}} *{{cite book|last=Baker|first=T. Lindsay|title=Ghost Towns of Texas|year=1991|publisher=University of Oklahoma Press|location=Norman|isbn=0-8061-2189-0|url={{GBurl|id=-OxnaXdxjgkC}}|edition=2nd}} *{{cite journal |last1=McIntyre |first1=Tobi |last2=Politis |first2=Paul |date=September–October 2005 |url=http://www.canadiangeographic.ca/magazine/so05/indepth/socgeography.asp |title=Standing legacy: Ghost towns preserve the Ottawa Valley's rich history |journal=Canadian Geographic |access-date=3 October 2005 |archive-date=16 June 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160616174432/http://www.canadiangeographic.ca/magazine/so05/indepth/socgeography.asp |url-status=dead }} *{{cite book|last=Steinhilber|first=Berthold|title=Ghost Towns of the American West|year=2003|publisher=Harry N. Abrams|location=New York|isbn=0-8109-4508-8}} *{{cite book|last=Wolle|first=Muriel Sibell|year=1993|title=Timberline Tailings: Tales of Colorado's Ghost Towns and Mining Camps|orig-year=1977|publisher=Swallow Press/Ohio University Press|location=Athens, Ohio|isbn=0-8040-0963-5|edition=1st}} *{{cite book|last=Wolle|first=Muriel Sibell|title=Stampede to Timberline: The Ghost Towns and Mining Camps of Colorado|year=1991|publisher=Swallow Press/Ohio University Press|location=Athens, OH|isbn=0-8040-0946-5|edition=2nd}} {{refend}}
==Further reading== * {{cite web |last=Curtis |first=Daniel R. |url=https://www.academia.edu/1932627 |title=Pre-industrial societies and strategies for the exploitation of resources: A theoretical framework for understanding why some settlements are resilient and some settlements are vulnerable to exploitation |website=Academia.edu |date=13 September 2012 |access-date=27 February 2026}}
==External links== {{Commons category|Ghost towns}} {{Wiktionary}} {{Wikivoyage|Ghost towns}}
{{Cities}} {{Urban Planning}} {{United States – Commonwealth of Nations recessions}} {{Authority control}}
Category:Ghost towns Category:Urban decay Category:Metaphors referring to monsters