Ghost Towns

[Qutluch]

Someone mentioned Calico is southern California. This is a great place to check out on President's Day because they hold a re-enactment there and all of the old stores are actually filled and you can take tours throught the mines, etc. Rhyolite, toward Death Valley, is also pretty cool, and if you are driving from Las Vegas north on the 395 you will go through some pretty interesting Ghost Towns. Take a look at UNLV's website: http://digital.library.unlv.edu/boomtown/ if you want the history on some of these places or to see the pictures of what they originally looked like!

 

[PsychoPere]

Does one have to pay for one, or can they simply lay claim to the place, roll into town and plant their flag so to speak.

Sometimes, yes, you can buy one.

 

[Spot's Meow]

The ghost town I'm most familiar with is Bodie, in the Sierra Nevada mountains in central California, just near the Nevada border. It was a mining boomtown that grew quickly in the 1880s and was already being described as a ghost town as early as 1915. It continued to rapidly decline and had only three residents by the 1940s. It is kept in a state of "arrested decay," as they put it, which means that it was left exactly as it was when it was abandoned (goods still on the store shelves for example). It's now considered a quintessential Wild West town; in its heyday, along the one-mile-long Main Street there were 65 saloons, the city had many shootouts, a flourishing red light district, and a Chinatown with opium dens. In 1962 it became a state historic park, and is now considered a National Historic Landmark.

Here are some great pictures:

Bodie 1

Bodie 2

Bodie 3

Interior of the saloon

Interior of the store

 

[Owain Taggart]

The ghost town I'm most familiar with is Bodie, in the Sierra Nevada mountains in central California, just near the Nevada border. It was a mining boomtown that grew quickly in the 1880s and was already being described as a ghost town as early as 1915. It continued to rapidly decline and had only three residents by the 1940s. It is kept in a state of "arrested decay," as they put it, which means that it was left exactly as it was when it was abandoned (goods still on the store shelves for example). It's now considered a quintessential Wild West town; in its heyday, along the one-mile-long Main Street there were 65 saloons, the city had many shootouts, a flourishing red light district, and a Chinatown with opium dens. In 1962 it became a state historic park, and is now considered a National Historic Landmark.

Here are some great pictures:

Bodie 1

Bodie 2

Bodie 3

Interior of the saloon

Interior of the store

That saloon interior looks quite eerie. Do you know what made people leave? Was it a bust? I'm surprised it hasn't rotted more than it has and fallen apart.

Here's the town I was talking about in the first post:

http://www.ontarioabandonedplaces.com/upload/wiki.asp?entry=694

 

[Blip]

^ I'm more amazed it hasn't been looted of all of that "cool old crap" lying about.

I'd seen the exterior shots before but those interior photos are downright disturbing - thanks for posting them.

 

[backstept]

Centralia Pennsylvania is one of the more interesting ghost towns. The ghosting began as a result of a 1962 fire in a nearby mine that's still burning. the whole town was a safety hazard with the fires of hell beneath it

also another that I want to visit is California City, California
it's not exactly a ghost town but it's got miles and miles of roadways with no buildings because the city didn't grow like the planners thought it would . . .

 

[Owain Taggart]

Still burning? How's that possible? Definitely sounds like an interesting circumstance.

 

[Miss Chicken]

Not at all unusual for fire burning underground. There is a coal seam fire in Australia that has been burning for an estimated 6000 years. From Wikipedia

Burning Mountain, the common name for Mount Wingen, is a hill near Wingen, New South Wales, Australia, approximately 224 kilometres (139 mi) north of Sydney just off the New England Highway.[2] It takes its name from a smouldering coal seam running underground through the sandstone. Burning Mountain is contained within the Burning Mountain Nature Reserve, which is administered by the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS).[3][4]
A trail runs from the Park carpark to the site where smoke emanates from the ground and includes information panels.
The scientific estimate is that the fire has burned for approximately 6,000 years and is the oldest known coal fire.[5] Original explorers and settlers to the area believed that the smoke coming from the ground was volcanic in origin. The fire is moving in a generally southerly direction at a rate of about one metre per year.

This wiki article gives details of other buring around the world including one in Germany that was ignited in 1668 and is still burning today.

 

[Captain_Nick]

Can someone buy one of these?

Probably, if you can track down the owner. But why would you waste your time and money doing that. Ghost towns are ghost towns because nobody lives there. Who will find out if you started squatting out there??? Occupy a town and if you can hang on to it for 15 years or 20 or whatever the number is, you can go to the courts and have the title transferred to yourself for nothing.

I wish there were ghost towns close to Melbourne for exactly that reason

 

[PlainSimpleJoel]

I remember when I lived at Nowra over 20 years ago. I'm quite sure there was a ghost down east of the town (around 15km), as one day we drove it. But checking wiki, there is one called Yalwal. I think I may have visited.

I'm quite sure when I visited Kakadu in 1991, would gone through Ballara on the way.

 

[Owain Taggart]

Not at all unusual for fire burning underground. There is a coal seam fire in Australia that has been burning for an estimated 6000 years. From Wikipedia

Burning Mountain, the common name for Mount Wingen, is a hill near Wingen, New South Wales, Australia, approximately 224 kilometres (139 mi) north of Sydney just off the New England Highway.[2] It takes its name from a smouldering coal seam running underground through the sandstone. Burning Mountain is contained within the Burning Mountain Nature Reserve, which is administered by the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS).[3][4]
A trail runs from the Park carpark to the site where smoke emanates from the ground and includes information panels.
The scientific estimate is that the fire has burned for approximately 6,000 years and is the oldest known coal fire.[5] Original explorers and settlers to the area believed that the smoke coming from the ground was volcanic in origin. The fire is moving in a generally southerly direction at a rate of about one metre per year.

This wiki article gives details of other buring around the world including one in Germany that was ignited in 1668 and is still burning today.

Interesting. You learn something new everyday. I never thought something like that was possible.

 

[Miss Chicken]

The only reason I know about the Burning Mountain is that I used to work as a ibrary technican in a Geology/Mining library and one day it was a topic of discussion between a couple of the geologists.

 

[Finn]

There is supposed to be a tiny ghost (dead, really) town somewhere in the hills of northwestern Connecticut that has been closed off to the public. I've read that there are foundations of houses, a general store, a mill and perhaps a church and post office. One would have to walk deep in the woods off the road without getting caught.

 

[Gov Kodos]

You might be thinking of Dudleytown. http://www.ghostvillage.com/legends/dudleytown.shtml

 

[Darth Duck]

Empire, Nevada was a company town that shut down in 2011. A brand new ghost town.

 

[Owain Taggart]

Empire, Nevada was a company town that shut down in 2011. A brand new ghost town.

Eerie. It kind of strikes you that everything could just disappear overnight if you live in a company town. We had one like that close by that I mentioned that closed down in the 80's. Similar situation where the company decided not to support the town anymore. Thanks for sharing.

 

[Thestral]

Centralia Pennsylvania is one of the more interesting ghost towns. The ghosting began as a result of a 1962 fire in a nearby mine that's still burning. the whole town was a safety hazard with the fires of hell beneath it

I've been to Centralia a couple times. It's fun to walk down the closed-off stretch of old highway with smoke coming out of the cracks and think that there's a raging inferno beneath you.

 

[SmoothieX]

I've been to a ghost town or two. The wildest one was not a town at all but in fact an old state hospital complex in Medfield, MA. They filmed parts of Shutter Island there if you've seen the flick - I have not. The lobotomy room is the one that really stands out.

 

[Spot's Meow]

That saloon interior looks quite eerie. Do you know what made people leave? Was it a bust? I'm surprised it hasn't rotted more than it has and fallen apart.

Here's the town I was talking about in the first post:

http://www.ontarioabandonedplaces.com/upload/wiki.asp?entry=694

I believe that there are three main reasons for the sudden decline. First, it was like many other gold rush boomtowns of the era; word of gold got out and miners flocked there in droves, but as soon as word got out of new and better mines elsewhere (in this case other states), they also left in droves. Second, the town is out in the middle of nowhere, requiring a drive of several miles even today (which might also explain why there hasn't been tons of looters). Third, the few families and mines that had been left behind were closed down for good during World War II, when an order was issued to close down all non-essential gold mines in the country.

As for why it hasn't completely fallen apart - the state park officials do keep it maintained, in the state that they found it. So I would assume there are repairs and maintenance done, just no changes or "improvements."

 

[Owain Taggart]

Ahh, I see. Thanks for the explanation. It does make sense. No big incentive to stay when that happens. Ahh well.

As for the state of the park, I guess it's similar to Harpers Ferry, which I visited a few years ago. I guess they just aren't allowed to dust