From the Gold Rush to the shuttered factories of the Midwest’s former manufacturing strongholds, many American ghost towns share a similar history despite their varying eras and locations. These abandoned towns show what happens when economic decline takes hold and residents move on. Read on to discover the places America forgot.

A boom and bust in just 40 years, the town of St. Elmo got its official start in 1880. Then opportunities for gold and silver mining in the town saw a peak population of 2,000 just a decade later. Hotels, saloons and dancing halls soon opened, alongside a general store and telegraph office. 

Another key component to the town’s initial success was the Denver, South Park and Pacific Railroad. Unfortunately the mines began to close, with the last and largest shutting down in 1922, along with the railroad line. As quickly as St Elmo grew, it emptied.

It might be named after a volcanic rock, but it was gold that brought industrialists and miners to this town outside of Death Valley in 1904. But the financial panic of 1907 marked the beginning of the end for Rhyolite, which would see its lights and power shut off in 1916.

In its (albeit brief) heyday the town boasted a stock exchange, red light district, hotels, stores, a school, and an ice cream parlor, according to the National Parks Service. Hollywood studios have used the town’s crumbling infrastructure for filming scenes since 1925.

Straight from the pages of a Western novel or the silver screen, Bodie had its heyday in the era of the California Gold Rush. The roots of the town began to grow in 1859 when a group of prospectors, inlcuding one named William S Bodey, found gold. But it was a few years later, after the establishment of a mill in 1861, that Bodie really became a place for people to call home. The town only really lasted five years, between 1877 to 1882, but in that time its population grew to more than 10,000. 

Bodie, which has more than 200 abandoned buildings, is now in the care of the California State Parks, which is quick to point out they are not restoring it, instead just preserving it in a state of “arrested decay”. The Bodie State Historic Park is open year round for visitors to explore the empty streets and peek through the windows of its saloons and other buildings, such as the coffin maker’s shop (pictured).

Nearly two miles above sea level on the Alpine Loop system of roads, Aminas Forks is said to be the country’s highest mining camp. Starting in the 1870s, the town became a bustling community for gold and silver miners with a hotel, general store, saloon, and post office. Despite these amenities, the residents of Animas Forks migrated en masse to the warmer town of Silverton every fall, according to the Bureau of Land Management.

Like many ghost towns of the era, when mining profits began to decline so did Animas Forks. While it saw a brief rebound from construction of a mill in 1904, and a railroad line ran through the area, they weren’t enough to stave off the inevitable. The mill closed in 1910 and Animas Forks was a ghost town by the 1920s.

The semi-precious red garnet stone is found in this area of Montana. However, it was actually gold that tempted prospectors and homesteaders to the area around the town of Garnet. It boomed and attracted as many as 1,000 residents with its four stores, four hotels, school, and 13 saloons. But when the gold ran out all the inhabitants abandoned it within 20 years. In 1912 nearly half the town burned down, and by 1940 Garnet was a ghost town.

Restoration work began in 1970, and more than 30 buildings have been preserved. It’s the most intact ghost town in the state, and currently managed by the Bureau of Land Management and the Garnet Preservation Association. Their goal is to provide an educational experience about Montana’s history for visitors. However, in winter Garnet is only accessible to those traveling by snowmobile and cross-country skis.

In the 1850s Mexican Springs was just a stop for stagecoaches. That's until prospectors discovered silver in 1870, and the town grew to 3,000 people. The mines quickly depleted, but a rumor about diamonds being found in the area kept workers on. When it emerged that there weren't any, the population started to dwindle. A rebrand to Shakespeare and the launch of a new gold and silver mining company in 1879 brought brief respite.

But the railroad would soon be built three miles away, kickstarting Shakespeare's second downfall, which was further exacerbated by the 1893 depression. The town was declared a National Historic Site in 1970 and, while privately owned, is available for guided tours. Billy the Kid and many more of history’s most notorious wild west characters called Shakespeare home, or at least spent time in its saloons. They are featured in occasional living history re-enactments.

This gold rush town experienced a typical boom and bust, and offered a place to stop on the Oregon Trail. It has more significantly made world history as the birthplace of women’s suffrage. In 1869 during the first session of Wyoming’s territorial legislature, a South Pass City saloon keeper introduced a bill to make Wyoming the first government in the world to guarantee women the right to vote. It passed, 50 years before the rest of the nation's women were given the right.

The territory also appointed the first woman to public office when South Pass local Esther Hobart Morris was named justice of the peace. According to the Wyoming State Historical Society, starting on 14 February 1870, she presided over 34 cases during her term. Like many other towns of the era the gold wasn’t to be found and the population dwindled. By 1949 the town stood empty.

Dating to 1880, prospectors put together this mining camp's courthouse and streets in the space of just two weeks. By 1883 Ashcroft was a town of approximately 2,000 people, with two newspapers, a school, sawmills, and 20 saloons. But just five years later it went bust. The Aspen Historical Society says: “Only a handful of aging, single men made Ashcroft their home by the turn of the century. They all owned mining claims, but spent their time hunting, fishing, reading and drinking in Dan McArthur’s bar.” 

In the 1930s two sportsmen planned to build a European-style ski resort in Ashcroft until the onset of World War II interrupted their plans. Following the war it was the nearby town of Aspen that began to develop into the skiing destination it is now. The United States Forest Service took over Ashcroft and granted a permit to the Aspen Historical Society for its preservation.

Copper became a valuable mineral at the turn of the 20th century and the Kennecott Copper Corporation tempted workers to this remote town with higher salaries than any mine in the lower 48 states. Miners and their families made their homes in Kennecott, where five different mines offered work.

In 1925, a geologist (correctly) predicted that the region’s copper would be depleted, and to make matters worse prices for copper dropped during the Great Depression. By 1938 Kennecott was a ghost town. Now a tourist attraction, the National Park Service acquired much of the town in 1998 and is rehabilitating many of its buildings.

Part of the Colorado Silver Boom in the late 19th century, workers living in Gilman mined gold and silver well into the 1920s. As those mines depleted, extractions shifted to zinc and lead with operations continuing into the 1970s. Much like Picher, Oklahoma, the Environmental Protection Agency evacuated this former town in 1984 due to contamination with “high levels of arsenic, cadmium, copper, lead and zinc in the soil and in surface and groundwater”.

Located eight miles southwest of Vail, a developer proposed building a private ski resort on Battle Mountain in 2005, which would include the former Gilman site. The company eventually backed out of the project.

Located on the Missouri River, Rock Bluffs (also called Rock Bluff City) found prominence in the mid-19th century serving steamboats and freight wagons heading west. By the 1870s it had two trading houses, a mill, blacksmith, church, and post office. At this time the thriving river town established the Naomi Institute, said to be the state’s first higher education facility, which would later be called the Rock Bluff School.

All that remains of Rock Bluffs is the school. Historians say the introduction of the railroad paved a path for the town’s demise, going through nearby Plattsmouth instead, as well as crossing the river on a bridge in Omaha. Now part of the Cass County Historical Society, visitors can see the school during open house events and children can visit for field trips. A recent fundraising campaign enabled the society to replace the school’s roof.

Incredible abandoned places in every US state

When Norwegian settlers arrived in the early 1900s, along with the railroad, they named their community Falsen. This rural outpost served as a vital stop on the line, providing river water for steam trains. The town adopted the name Verendrye instead in the 1920s, a nod to the 18th-century French explorer Pierre Gaultier De La Verendrye, who was the first European to visit the area. At this time Verendrye's homes and farms lacked electricity well into the Great Depression and residents started their own electricity cooperative in 1939, according to the Verendrye Electric Cooperative, which still exists today.

In 1941, the cooperative’s directors made the controversial decision to relocate its headquarters in the nearby town of Velva, due to Verendrye being too isolated. With the decline of the steam engine, it no longer served as a stopping point for water. By 1970 the town was empty. All that remains at the former site is the façade of Falsen School, among the wheat fields of its newest occupant Ashley Farm.

Glenrio’s imprecise location straddling the state line created both conundrums and conveniences. Located on Historic Route 66, this early 20th-century town took advantage of the double state situation, locating its gas stations on the Texas side to avoid higher taxes in New Mexico. Likewise it built bars and motels on the New Mexico side because Texas’s county was dry.

The town thrived through the post-war era as cars on Route 66 stopped for fuel, food, or to stay the night at a western-themed motel. The National Parks Service describes Glenrio as “a flash of neon in the desert, an overnight Mecca, and a spot of evening cool in the days before cars had air conditioning”. But with the completion of nearby Interstate 40 in 1975, which bypasses the town, its dance halls, diners, and gas stations were left abandoned.

This town took its name in 1828 but European settlers had been there long before then: first the French, then the British, and finally the Spanish until it became part of the US’s Mississippi Territory in 1798. Quite a few notable politicians of the 19th century visited Rodney including presidents Andrew Jackson and Zachary Taylor, and it was deemed so important it was almost named Mississippi's capital.

From 1820 to 1860 the town flourished as an important river community until a sand bar developed and changed the course of the Mississippi, according to the National Park Service. Local history reports the town survived the Civil War, only for parts to succumb to fire damage in 1869. By the 1930s the town faced “benign neglect” and lacked any local government. Several churches and other buildings remain but the town is now private land.

An undeveloped site in 1819, by 1820 Cahawba had become the state capital, though not everyone was happy about it in newly-formed Alabama. The opposition complained the area was prone to flooding and used this to persuade the legislature to relocate in 1826. Within weeks the town is said to have been empty. According to the Cahawba Advisory Committee the opponents exaggerated the flood claims and the town recovered.

Down river from Mobile, Cahawba then became a distribution point for cotton, and construction of the railroad in the 1850s triggered a building boom. By the Civil War it had a population of more than 3,000. Unfortunately it was all downhill from there. The Confederate Army established a prison for 3,000 captured Union soldiers in the center of town. Then in 1865 a flood did actually inundate Cahawba and people began to leave. Many of the buildings have since been lost to fire or reclaimed by nature. 

In its earlier years one of the west’s notorious thieves called this South Dakota/Nebraska border home. Having stolen horses since he was 14 years old, Doc Middleton was known as the “King of Horse Thieves,” according to the Wyoming State Library. He had a saloon in Ardmore for a while before leaving the state.

Admore, which once boasted that it survived the Great Depression without one family going on welfare, is now abandoned. As the agriculture industry declined in the region so did the population, which hasn’t had a census taken since 1980.

European settlers set up the Batsto Iron Works along the Batsto River in 1766, which became useful during the Revolutionary War when it manufactured supplies for the Continental Army. Iron production declined and the factory would switch to glassmaking in the mid-19th century, but struggled nonetheless. Hundreds of people are said to have lived in the village during this time, which would eventually include a sawmill, gristmill (pictured), and general store. 

A Philadelphia businessman called Joseph Wharton purchased Batsto in 1876, as well as property in the surrounding area. He upgraded his mansion as well as other village buildings. From his death in 1909 until 1954 the properties were managed by a trust in Philadelphia. Then the state of New Jersey purchased the properties, allowing any remaining residents to stay in the village’s houses as long as they wanted. The last house was vacated in 1989.

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Located in the heart of Pennsylvania’s coal country, Centralia retained a steady population of around 2,000 even when mining jobs disappeared. A fire started in 1962 (who or how it set light is disputed), which spread throughout the system of abandoned strip mines under the town. The fire raged underground for decades causing health problems and structural issues for town buildings. It’s still burning today over 50 years later.

The town voted to relocate in 1983, and as of the 2020 Census there are no people living in Centralia. The municipal building still remains, but most homes left empty by vacating residents have either been demolished or reclaimed by nature.

After more than a century of lead and zinc mining, this town has been dubbed America’s “most toxic”. The mineral discovery in 1913 and the rapid establishment of a town lead to a population peak of more than 14,000 in 1926. The mines closed in the 1970s leaving groundwater contamination and other health risks, which would eventually lead to a decision by the state and the Environmental Protection Agency to evacuate the town in 2009.

The Army Corps of Engineers reported in 2006 that more than 80% of the town’s buildings, including its school, were badly undermined and could collapse at any time. Two years later a tornado ripped through the town destroying buildings (pictured) and killing several residents. In 2009, the school district dissolved, the post office closed, and the government cancelled Picher's incorporated status. According to the latest data, which came from the 2010 Census, just 20 people lived in the town. There are no data available from the 2020 Census. 

The 1880s completion of the C&O Railroad and a new river bridge, paired with the region’s rich coalfields, created a good foundation for the town of Thurmond. Incorporated in 1903, the town’s steam engine repair shop is considered one of the main reasons for its thriving economy. It would also be its downfall.

Road construction starting in 1917 was the beginning of the end. Then a series of devastating fires destroyed much of the town’s infrastructure in the 1920s to 1930s. The final blow to the rail industry in Thurmond came in 1949 when the C&O Company purchased its first diesel engine and began phasing out its steam engines. Most of the town is now owned by the National Park Service, and according to the 2020 Census the town is completely deserted. 

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