Abandoned 
Town type
Farm and ranch ghost towns
Farm towns, ranch towns, homesteader settlements and farming colonies, many of them left behind when the railroad passed them by or the farms grew larger.
Town guides
114 farm and ranch town guides
Our complete guides, most-read first: history, what's left, current access, photos, maps and directions.
GuideDudleytown
41.81, -73.35Litchfield County, Connecticut
A 1740s cluster of hill farms southeast of Cornwall Bridge that emptied as farming declined, and that a 20th-century curse story turned into a…
GuideLuckenbach
30.18, -98.76Gillespie County, Texas
A German farm hamlet of 492 people in 1904 that had nearly emptied by the 1960s. Hondo Crouch bought it in 1971, and a hit song made it famous.…
GuideJulian
33.07, -116.59San Diego County, California
A gold rush boomtown of the 1870s in the mountains east of San Diego. Julian never emptied. It turned to apples and visitors, and its old Main Street…
GuideStull
38.97, -95.46Douglas County, Kansas
A farm settlement that never had more than about 50 people. A 1974 student newspaper story turned its cemetery into a widely told legend, and the…
GuideSt. Thomas
36.47, -114.37Clark County, Nevada
A farm town of about 500 that the government bought out and Lake Mead flooded in 1938. With the lake far down, its concrete foundations sit on dry…
GuideFlamingo
25.14, -80.92Monroe County, Florida
A village of fishermen, charcoal burners and farmers at the tip of the Florida mainland. After the national park was created its people were moved…
GuideGruene
29.74, -98.10Comal County, Texas
A German cotton town on the Guadalupe that the boll weevil and the Depression emptied by 1950. A kayaker and a dance hall brought it back. Today it…
GuideShaniko
45.00, -120.75Wasco County, Oregon
For a decade Shaniko was the railhead for 20,000 square miles of wool, wheat and cattle country. The trade moved to another line after 1911, and a…
GuideThistle
39.99, -111.50Utah County, Utah
A railroad town at the foot of Soldier Summit that a landslide dammed and flooded in April 1983. Federal and state agencies call it the costliest…
GuideQuapaw
36.96, -94.79Ottawa County, Oklahoma
The first town on Route 66 in Oklahoma, a hay-shipping stop that boomed with the lead and zinc mines and shrank when they closed. It had 811 people…
GuideGrafton
37.17, -113.08Washington County, Utah
A Mormon farming town on the Virgin River that floods, silt and isolation emptied by 1944. Its schoolhouse and a handful of homes have been restored…
GuideCisco
38.97, -109.32Grand County, Utah
A water stop for steam trains that grew into a small supply town, then faded when diesel and I-70 left it behind. Collapsed cabins and old cars…
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