Start My Family Tree Welcome to Geni, home of the world's largest family tree.
Join Geni to explore your genealogy and family history in the World's Largest Family Tree.

Ghost Towns - Abandoned Settlements

Project Tags

Top Surnames

view all

Profiles

  • Capt. Simon Davis (1702 - 1789)
    ===notes===From History of Chesterfield, New Hampshire, 1736-1881, page 270Page: “DAVIS, Capt. Simon, from Greenwich, Mass., was one of the earliest settlers of Chfd. Apr. 13, 1762, he purchased the wh...

Ghost Towns - Abandoned Settlements

A ghost town is an abandoned village, town or city, usually one which contains substantial visible remains. A town often becomes a ghost town because the economic activity that supported it has failed, or due to natural or human-caused disasters such as floods, government actions, uncontrolled lawlessness, war, or nuclear disasters. The term can sometimes refer to cities, towns, and neighborhoods which are still populated, but significantly less so than in years past; for example those affected by high levels of unemployment and dereliction.[1]

Some ghost towns, especially those that preserve period-specific architecture, have become tourist attractions. Some examples are Bannack, Montana; Calico, California; Centralia, Pennsylvania; Oatman, Arizona; and South Pass City, Wyoming in the United States; Barkerville, British Columbia in Canada; Craco in Italy; Elizabeth Bay and Kolmanskop in Namibia; and Pripyat in Ukraine; Danushkodi in India. Visiting, writing about and photographing ghost towns is a minor industry.

There is a ghost town that is an incumbent de jure capital: Plymouth in Montserrat.

Reasons for abandonment

Factors leading to abandonment of towns include depleted natural resources, economic activity shifting elsewhere, railroads and roads bypassing or no longer accessing the town, human intervention, disasters, massacres, wars, and the shifting of politics or fall of empires.[5] A town can also be abandoned when it is part of an exclusion zone due to natural or man-made causes.

Disease and contamination

Significant fatality rates from epidemics have produced ghost towns. Some places in eastern Arkansas were abandoned after over 7,000 Arkansans died during the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918 and 1919.[8][9] 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.

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.

Revived ghost towns

A few ghost towns get a second life, often due to heritage tourism generating a new economy able to support residents. For example Walhalla, Victoria, Australia, became almost deserted[10] 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.

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 over 200,000 inhabitants by 1882,[11] and is now home to over four million people.[12]

In Algeria, many cities became hamlets after the end of Late Antiquity. They were revived with shifts in population during and after French colonization of Algeria. Oran, currently the nation's second largest city with 1 million people, was a village of only a few thousand people before colonization.

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.

Lonely Ghost Towns:

If you discover a Ghost Town but don't have enough information to create an individual project for it please list it here and add any associated profiles to this project:

resources