Abandoned 
Town type
Lead, iron, mercury and oil ghost towns
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.
Town guides
47 other mining and oil town guides
Our complete guides, most-read first: history, what's left, current access, photos, maps and directions.
GuidePicher
36.98, -94.83Ottawa County, Oklahoma
The richest field in the Tri-State lead and zinc district built a town of more than 14,000 people. Mining left the ground undermined and the water…
GuideEagle Mountain
33.86, -115.49Riverside County, California
Kaiser Steel built this town for its iron mine in 1948, and about 4,000 people lived in it. The mine closed in 1983, and the streets of postwar…
GuideTerlingua
29.32, -103.62Brewster County, Texas
The camp of the Chisos Mining Company, once the source of much of the nation's quicksilver. It emptied after the company failed in 1942, and now its…
GuideGoodsprings
35.83, -115.44Clark County, Nevada
A lead, zinc and silver camp in the Spring Mountains foothills that held about 1,000 people in 1915. It's quiet now, but the Pioneer Saloon has…
GuideCalico
34.95, -116.86San Bernardino County, California
A silver camp of the 1880s in the striped Calico Mountains. Walter Knott bought it in 1951 and rebuilt it, and it has been a county park since 1966…
GuideCerro Gordo
36.54, -117.80Inyo County, California
In 1869 this camp high in the Inyo Mountains led the country in silver and lead, and its bullion helped build early Los Angeles. It's privately owned…
GuideDarwin
36.27, -117.59Inyo County, California
A silver and lead camp of 1874 that a new highway bypassed in 1937. About 30 people still live here, and they'd like you to know it isn't a ghost…
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…
GuidePithole
41.52, -79.58Venango County, Pennsylvania
An oil boomtown laid out in May 1865 that held 15,000 people by fall and was nearly empty by 1870. Pennsylvania keeps the mowed street grid as a…
GuideTreece
37.00, -94.84Cherokee County, Kansas
A lead and zinc town beside Picher, Oklahoma, surrounded by chat piles. A federal buyout emptied it, and Kansas dissolved the city in 2012.
GuideJeffrey City
42.49, -107.83Fremont County, Wyoming
A uranium boomtown on the high plains that grew to more than 4,000 people in the late 1970s and lost nearly all of them after the mine closed in…
GuideCardin
36.98, -94.85Ottawa County, Oklahoma
A lead and zinc town on the southwest edge of Picher. It held 2,640 people in 1920, and like its neighbor it was bought out and emptied. The newest…
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