Abandoned Browse
Ghost towns by type
What each town was built for: gold, silver, copper or coal, other mines, the railroad and the road, farms and ranches, rivers and lakes, or a mill. Each guide is filed under its main purpose, and some under a second one too.
Gold mining
96 guides
Gold camps, placer diggings and the mill towns that grew around them. Most boomed on a strike and emptied when the ore, the water or the money ran out.
Silver mining
69 guides
Towns built on silver lodes. Many boomed in the 1870s and 1880s and collapsed with the price of silver in the 1890s.
Copper mining
30 guides
Camps and company towns built around copper mines and smelters. Most of our copper guides are in Arizona.
Coal mining
22 guides
Coal camps and company towns, from patch towns in the East to company towns in the West, most of them emptied when their mines closed.
Other mining and oil
47 guides
Towns built on lead, zinc, iron, mercury, borax, turquoise, quarry stone and oil: the mines and booms that weren't gold, silver, copper or coal.
Railroad and road
120 guides
Railroad sidings, division points and water stops, stage stations and wagon-road stops, highway towns the interstates bypassed, and the forts and camps that guarded the routes.
Farm and ranch
114 guides
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.
River and lake
58 guides
River landings, ferry crossings, canal stops and lake ports, including towns now under reservoirs.
Mill, lumber and company
51 guides
Sawmill and logging towns, mill villages, resorts and other company towns built around a single employer.
Route 66
26 guides
Not a type but a road: towns on any alignment of U.S. Route 66, listed in road order.