Hawaii's ghost towns were not mining camps. They were emptied by sugar, by the sea, by lava and by law. Sugar came first: Ladd & Company started the first commercially successful plantation at Koloa on Kauai in 1835, and the stone chimney of its mill, built from 1839 to 1841, still stands. On Lanai, Keomuku grew with the Maunalei Sugar Company, which opened in 1899 and closed its mill in 1901; the last residents had gone by the 1950s. Waialua, the last sugar mill on Oahu, closed in 1996.
Tsunamis took coastal villages. One after the 1868 earthquake destroyed Apua on the Puna coast, and the April 1, 1946 tsunami wrecked the landing at Honuapo and killed 24 people at Laupahoehoe. Lava took more: Kapoho was buried in 1960, rebuilt, and buried again with Kapoho Bay in 2018, and the 1990 flows covered most of Kalapana and Kaimu.
From 1866 the kingdom sent people with Hansen's disease to the Kalaupapa peninsula on Molokai. The first settlement, Kalawao, was abandoned for Kalaupapa after 1913. Both are now in Kalaupapa National Historical Park, where public visits were paused in July 2026. Most of what survives is churches, chimneys, foundations and new black lava.
Abandoned 
