Abandoned Near a city · New York, New York
6 Ghost Towns Near New York
The ghost towns near New York are old mill, mine and iron towns, not western mining camps. Feltville sits in a county park in Union County, New Jersey. Doodletown is a valley of foundations inside Bear Mountain State Park, up the Hudson. Waterloo Village was a stop on the Morris Canal in northwest New Jersey.
The rest are in the Pine Barrens of south Jersey, where bog iron and paper mills once ran. Atsion and Batsto are in Wharton State Forest, and Harrisville is a ruin nearby. Most of these places are now parks you can walk through.
Each one is within a three-hour drive of Lower Manhattan, by OSRM's estimate over OpenStreetMap roads. They're listed nearest first.
1.Feltville
A mill town David Felt built on Blue Brook in the 1840s. About 175 people lived there in 1850. It later became a summer resort called Glenside Park, then emptied again.
- What's left
- Eight houses, a church, a carriage house and a general store building. The mill, torn down in 1930, and the school are gone; archaeologists found the foundation of Felt's own house in 2004.
- Visiting
- Part of Union County's Watchung Reservation in Berkeley Heights, known locally as the Deserted Village. The grounds are open daily, dawn to dusk. Some houses are still lived in, so stay off their porches.
2.Doodletown
A hamlet in a valley near Bear Mountain, settled by 1762. At its height it had about 350 people and some 70 homes. The Palisades Interstate Park Commission bought it out, and the last homes were cleared in the late 1960s.
- What's left
- Foundations, stone walls, staircases, old mines and two cemeteries. Park signs show which family lived on each lot.
- Visiting
- Part of Bear Mountain State Park, reached only on foot. July 2023 storms wrecked the Doodletown trails. The Cornell Mine Trail along the valley's east edge reopened in October 2025, but in December 2025 NYS Parks said crews were still rebuilding roads and culverts through Doodletown before the last trails could be repaired, with the work slated for late 2026. Check with NYS Parks before you go.
3.Waterloo Village
A canal town about halfway along the Morris Canal, which opened in 1831 and ran some 102 miles from Jersey City to Phillipsburg. It had an inn, a general store, a church, a blacksmith shop and a watermill.
- What's left
- A restored 19th-century village, now an open-air museum. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1977.
- Visiting
- Part of Allamuchy Mountain State Park in Byram Township, open sunrise to sunset, with a self-guided tour of the village's perimeter. The Canal Society's museum and gristmill open on Saturdays in summer and fall; its posted dates are from 2025, so check before you go.
4.Atsion
An ironworks village in the Pine Barrens. Charles Read built a forge here in 1765 and 1766, and a furnace followed in 1774. By 1823 a visitor described the works as ruins.
- What's left
- The Samuel Richards Mansion of 1826 and other buildings of the Atsion Village historic district, which counts 7 contributing buildings.
- Visiting
- In Wharton State Forest, beside Atsion Lake and US 206. The grounds are open dawn to dusk, NJ State Parks runs guided mansion tours on most weekends, and the recreation area has a beach for summer swimming.
5.Batsto Village
An iron furnace town founded by Charles Read in 1766 that supplied the Continental Army with iron goods, including cannon and cannonballs. The Richards family ran it from 1784, later turning to glass, and its industry had ended by 1867. The state bought Joseph Wharton's lands in 1954 and 1955.
- What's left
- More than thirty 19th-century buildings, including the 36-room mansion, a working 1882 sawmill, a general store and the 1852 post office, which still operates.
- Visiting
- A state historic site on CR 542 in Wharton State Forest. The grounds are open daily, dawn to dusk, and guided mansion tours typically run Wednesday to Sunday. The state charges an entrance fee on summer weekends and holidays.
6.Harrisville
A mill site on the Oswego River in the Pine Barrens. A sawmill stood here by 1760 and a slitting mill by 1795. About 1815 it became a paper mill, and a town grew around the factory.
- What's left
- Ruins of the paper mill and a few foundations. A fire in 1914 destroyed what was left of the town.
- Visiting
- Beside CR 679 in Wharton State Forest, about 6 miles northwest of New Gretna; the Trail Conference notes room for several cars along the road. The Pinelands Alliance describes the mill ruins as fenced off, but we haven't confirmed current conditions.
How we picked them
- We started from every mapped site in our index of 6,591 US ghost town sites and routed to each one from Lower Manhattan, keeping those within 180 minutes.
- We preferred real towns over forts, stage stations and single mines; places you can legally visit or see from a public road; and sites with something left to see. We list at most nine.
- Status means what we could confirm from a recent source. Where we couldn't, the entry says "Not verified". Check before you go, and treat locked gates and posted signs as closed.
Sources
- Wikipedia articles (read October 19, 2026): Feltville Historic District; Doodletown, New York; Waterloo Village, New Jersey; Atsion, New Jersey; Batsto Village, New Jersey; Harrisville, New Jersey.
- NJ State Parks, "Wharton State Forest" (updated May 2026) and "Atsion Mansion Historic Site" (updated April 2026), read from Internet Archive copies of June and July 2026: Batsto history, buildings, hours, fees and tours; Atsion hours and tours. Batsto Citizens Committee, "Tours": Batsto mansion tour days.
- Union County, "The Deserted Village of Feltville/Glenside Park": history, hours and residents.
- New York-New Jersey Trail Conference, Bear Mountain trail alert (updated November 21, 2025), quoting New York State Parks and the Palisades Interstate Park Commission: Cornell Mine Trail reopened October 9, 2025; Doodletown trail work slated for late 2026. NYS Parks blog, December 26, 2025: road and culvert work under way in Doodletown before the remaining trails reopen.
- NJ State Parks, "Allamuchy Mountain State Park" and Canal Society of New Jersey: Waterloo Village access and museum days.
- Pinelands Alliance (undated) and New York-New Jersey Trail Conference, "Wharton State Forest": the fenced Harrisville mill ruins and roadside parking. Photos: Wikimedia Commons, credited on the page.
- Annual Estimates of the Resident Population for Incorporated Places of 20,000 or More, Ranked by July 1, 2025 Population: April 1, 2020 to July 1, 2025 (SUB-IP-EST2025-ANNRNK), U.S. Census Bureau, Population Division, Vintage 2025, released May 2026: New York city, New York ranks 1 among US cities, with 8,584,629 people on July 1, 2025.
- Drive times and distances: OSRM routing on © OpenStreetMap contributors data (ODbL), October 2026, from Lower Manhattan (40.7128, -74.0061) to each town's coordinates.
- Town list, counties and record pages: our index of ghosttowns.com state lists and Wikipedia's ghost town categories, October 2026.
- Map: US Census Bureau state and county boundaries via us-atlas (public domain).
Photo credits
- Feltville: Daniel Case, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
- Doodletown: Jim Harper (Pixel23), Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.5
- Waterloo Village: Zeete, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Atsion: JERRYE AND ROY KLOTZ MD, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
- Batsto Village: Travellers & Tinkers, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Harrisville: Rtsanderson, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0