America's former manufacturing and farm communities have faced serious economic downturn over the last 50 years, with the modernization of industry and the construction of new highways meaning that brighter opportunities simply lie elsewhere. Read on to see some historic American towns that are being left for dead.

Home to General Motors, which was founded in the city in 1908, Flint thrived during the early 20th century. With a focus on the lucrative automobile industry, carriages and later cars were made in the area, earning it the nickname "Vehicle City".

The success of automotive manufacturing provided stable jobs and economic prosperity for the residents of Flint. In the 1960s, close to 200,000 people lived in Flint, but this number began to fall when General Motors began to streamline its workforce. As of 2020, the population sits at just under 96,000.

With manufacturing jobs disappearing, investment in the city also began to dwindle. Flint has also suffered several financial emergencies, as well as a major public health crisis that ran from 2014 to 2019 after lead contaminated the city’s water.

While there have been local efforts to renovate and renew the downtown, many buildings are still shuttered. Residents of Flint have asked the city to spend COVID-19 recovery funding on reversing the fortunes of the area.

Steel producer U.S. Steel founded Gary in 1906, with the city serving as the home for the corporation's new Gary Works plant. It was named after the lawyer Elbert Henry Gary, who was also the founding chairman of U.S. Steel.

The huge range of jobs available in Gary sparked a population boom of more than 400% in its first 20 years, with the number of residents reaching upward of 100,000 by 1930. Life was good, and grand buildings, department stores, and movie theaters lined the streets.

The population peaked in 1960, with that year's Census recording 178,320 residents. However, the 1970s and 1980s saw job prospects in the steel manufacturing industry begin to falter. Gary and its residents had relied almost entirely on this one industry, and the city began to struggle.

Now with less than half the population of its heyday, vacant stores and derelict buildings are commonplace in downtown Gary. In 2020, the city agreed on tax incentives for developers to build affordable housing on a vacant lot, which could potentially bring some much-needed life back to the area. Its population today is around 75,400.

For most of the 19th century, the lumber trade fueled the growth of Saginaw, with salt production also lucrative for the city. While the salt and lumber industries had both left the area by the start of the 20th century, the automotive sector quickly took over. While none of the major automotive manufacturers produced cars in Saginaw, plenty of factories opened to supply the industry, particularly with steering gear, plate glass, and metal fabrication.

The Saginaw population boomed as a result, with the 1960 Census recording 98,265 residents, over double the 42,345 who lived there in 1900.

However, as with other towns and cities already mentioned, the modernization of how companies operated meant that jobs began to disappear in the 1970s and 80s. Accordingly, the population dwindled, sitting at just over 48,400 as of 2020.

The slump was further accentuated by the financial crisis of 2007, which had a knock-on effect on employment levels and property values. The city's poverty rate is currently around 33%.

Pennsylvania’s first and oldest city, European settlers first arrived in Chester in the late 1600s. Due to its proximity to the Delaware River, it became a hub for business, and textile mills began to open in the mid-1800s. The construction of a major shipyard followed, which spurred on the development of other industries in the area, including steel.

World War I saw the town’s population double to nearly 60,000 as factories increased their output to fulfill military demand; merchant ships were also built in the area to support the war effort. Similar work was undertaken during World War II.

However, the 1960s saw the shipyards and factories begin to cut jobs, and even the Ford Motor Company shut its Chester plant. At present, there's a distinct lack of industry in the city, and the current population (33,855 as of 2020) is around half that of its mid-century peak.

In 1995, the state deemed Chester a financially distressed municipality. A waterfront redevelopment plan was approved in 2020, with officials hoping it will improve the local economy. However, much of this work will not be completed until later in the decade.

In 1919, the Dodge Brothers Plant opened its doors in Hamtramck, Michigan. This signaled the start of a briefly booming automobile industry as immigrants flocked to the city to look for work. But like surrounding Detroit, Hamtramck soon ran into difficulties as the sector started to falter.

Today, Hamtramck is one of the poorest cities in the United States. With a shocking poverty rate of 49.7%, Hamtramck has an average household income of just $23,609 across its 21,704 residents. This is a sharp decline from 1920 when the city boasted 60,000 residents, many of who worked in the now-burst automotive bubble.

In the early 20th century, booming industries brought jobs and prosperity to East Cleveland, Ohio. The town's economy benefited from the National Bindery Company, which opened in 1905, as well as the lamp division of the General Electric Company, which came to East Cleveland in 1911.

Today, however, it's a different story. East Cleveland was the fourth poorest city in America in 2018 and things haven't looked up since then, with a sky-high poverty rate of 41.8% and an average household income of just $19,953 a year across its population of just over 17,000. To make matters worse, GE Lighting announced plans to move its headquarters from Nela Park to nearby Beachwood in 2021. The CEO of the East Cleveland Growth Association described the relocation as "tragic," saying: "This was the anchor, this was the only real viable corporate entity that we had in East Cleveland and it was something to grow from."

Laurinburg in North Carolina had a prosperous start in life. At the end of the 19th century, the textile industry, which is still a major source of wealth in the Tar Heel State, brought manufacturing jobs to Laurinburg and a number of textile plants were built in the east of the town. Villages sprang up around the factories to house textile workers, such as these men pictured in 1908.

Fast-forward to the 2000s and everything has changed. Today, the profitable textile industry is centered around bigger cities such as nearby Charlotte, leaving Laurinburg with a population of just over 15,000 and a staggering poverty rate of 36.6%. Pictured is the city's main street, which started declining in the 1980s when the department store Belk shut up shop and moved to a nearby shopping plaza, taking many other businesses with it.

Bogalusa in Louisiana was founded by a pair of New York lumber barons in the early 1900s. After building what was then the world's largest sawmill, the barons realized they needed a new town to house workers, and Bogalusa was born. It was reportedly known as the Magic City because it was built so quickly. But the magic began to run out after 1960 when the local timber industry went into decline.

A series of disasters helped seal Bogalusa's fate. In 1995, a tank car belonging to the Gaylord Chemical Corporation – which was headquartered in the city – imploded, forcing thousands of people to evacuate the area. Ten years later Hurricane Katrina wreaked havoc on Bogalusa, destroying several buildings and leaving many residents without power for a month. Today, the city has a poverty rate of 38.2% and a typical household income of $23,604. Only 9.7% of adults have at least a bachelor's degree. It has a population of just over 11,600.

Now take a look at some abandoned projects the US government spent billions of taxpayers' money on

Camden in Arkansas once had a thriving cotton trade, producing roughly 40,000 bales of cotton every day. Developments such as a local railroad and the South Arkansas oil boom further boosted the city's economy. But as foreign markets became competitive in the wake of World War II, Camden's status as an important industrial center began to weaken.

According to census data, the population of Camden peaked at 15,823 in 1960. This number has steadily fallen ever since, reaching a low of 10,877 in 2020 as people leave the city to look for opportunities elsewhere. In 2019, Camden's poverty rate was 31.8% while the average across Arkansas was 16.2%, showing its once-bustling industries have well and truly shut up shop.

Meaning 'flat town' in French, Ville Platte in Louisiana has had a checkered past. Its population more than doubled in 1930 when reserves of oil were discovered just six miles north of the town. But today, it's a shadow of its former booming self.

Although there's still a black carbon facility at Ville Platte, it now employs just 90 people. The population of the town fell from 8,145 in 2000 to 7,117 in 2020 and the typical household income is a modest $18,679.

Founded in 1897, Monessen attracted a wide range of factories and steel works thanks to its location on the Monongahela River and proximity to coal reserves and natural gas. Steel was also a big industry in the city; at one time, the Pittsburgh Steel Company was the area's largest employer.

The city began to boom, and had more than quadrupled its population between the 1900 and 1910 censuses, rising from 2,197 citizens to just under 12,000.

However, the good times weren't to last. Plant lay-offs began in the 1960s and continued into the 70s and 80s as factories continued to close. As of 2020, the city is now home to around 7,000 people, having lost almost two-thirds of its steel-era peak population. Many of its long-abandoned downtown buildings have started to crumble, and in February 2022 the city had to close roads due to debris falling from decaying buildings.

At the time, the mayor told local media there wasn't enough money to pay for demolition. Four buildings have since been approved for bulldozing.

A rural town of about 1,000 people, Meigs is one of the many small communities that sits along Georgia's State Route 3, a historic highway and scenic byway.

The highway, which runs north to south from Michigan down to Miami, dates back a century to the era when Americans first started traveling the countryside by automobile. 

During the early days of driving by car, roadside businesses flourished – until larger highways and the interstate system started to offer tourists faster travel. Nowadays, the four-lane Highway 19 skirts the edge of the town.

Many of Meigs's downtown buildings have now been condemned. The population of the city has dipped; it reached a high of 1,236 residents in the early 1960s but reported just 1,068 in the 2020 Census. 

Much like its northern neighbor Meigs, the small town of Ochlocknee straddles Old Georgia Route 3.

Ochlocknee was one of the country's top producers of cane syrup at the start of the 20th century. While this might no longer be the case, its rural community has still seen its population slowly grow over the decades. In the 1910 Census, it recorded 350 residents, compared to 718 by the time of the 2020 Census. 

Though its downtown is facing deterioration, Ochlocknee and other communities along Route 3 are hoping its inclusion among the state’s scenic bypasses (granted in 2015) will have a positive economic impact for the area and bring much-needed support for small businesses.

According to Census data, over a quarter of the town's residents lived in poverty at the turn of the millennium.

This town can take a punch. Settlers first arrived in the 1790s but many of the early buildings were destroyed in the Civil War. By the 1880s it had rebuilt stores and mills, but for reasons unexplained it repealed its charter in 1899. It then reincorporated in 1908, and incorporated as a city in 1963. Up until the 1960s Adams thrived due to its location on both Highway 41 and railroad connections between Chicago and Miami.

While there are still 600 or so people living in Adams, the downtown has been abandoned ever since the railroad left and new interstates replaced local Highway 41. Local author Pat Fitzhugh says it is “practically a ghost town. Only a few small businesses operate there now; everything else is farmland. Most residents are either retired or work in nearby towns.”

Abbott is the birthplace of the musician Willie Nelson, and he even owned the city's grocery store (pictured) for a while. This rural Texas location was founded in 1871 as part of the southern expansion of the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad, and peaked at 713 citizens by the time of the 1910 Census. Since then, it has maintained a relatively steady population of around 350.

In the early days of Abbott, agriculture, particularly the growing of cotton, contributed to the railroad’s town success. At its turn-of-the-century heyday, it was home to barbershops, hotels, blacksmiths, a bank, and a newspaper, as well as a range of other businesses. Impressively, the town managed to rebuild itself three times after devastating fires in 1897, 1903, and 1904. 

A highway was constructed through the town in the 1920s, and the future looked bright. However, Abbott was never quite able to recover from the impact of the Great Depression, and by the 1930s its once-popular train service only pulled into town when flagged down by passengers.