Saint Martin of the Tigers (in Portuguese: São Martinho dos Tigres), a settlement situated on a peninsula now known as the Tigres Island (in Portuguese: Ilha dos Tigres), was originally a small but well-established fishing village. It was supplied with water from the nearby town of Foz do Cunene, at the mouth of the Cunene River. In the 1970s, Saint Martin of the Tigers was cut off from the mainland by the rising sea levels, and its water supply line was severed; both Tigres and Foz do Cunene were subsequently abandoned.[1][2] The island, bound by the South Atlantic Ocean and the Tigres Strait, lies in a zone that is ideally suited for ecological projects.[3] The island was mentioned in the BBC documentary "Unknown Africa: Angola".
Foz do Cunene, located near Saint Martin of the Tigers and similarly abandoned due to rising sea levels.
Goroumo, Beogombo Deux, and Paoua are among the many deserted villages created by the actions of government forces and killings by armed gangs from the years 2005 to 2008.[6][7]
Grand-Bassam was the French Colonial capital of Côte d'Ivoire until 1896 when it was abandoned by the French Colonial Government. Commercial activity gradually weakened until the city became a virtual ghost town in 1960, the same year Côte d'Ivoire became independent. Today the city has revived somewhat as a tourist center, but it still has the aura of a ghost town.
From 1884 to 1915, Namibia was under the rule of the German Empire and was known as German South West Africa. When diamonds were discovered in 1908, German miners flocked to the area, and several new settlements were established, only to be abandoned once the supply of diamonds dried up. The ghost towns that were left behind include:
In the northeast of Sudan lies the old city of Sawakin. It is now in ruins. It is said to be in restoration now and will reopen as a tourist attraction.[13]
La Güera is a ghost town on the Atlantic coast at the southern tip of Western Sahara. It is Western Sahara's southernmost town. It has been uninhabited and partly buried by drifting sand since 2002.
The islands of Antarctica, particularly South Georgia, were popular with whalers during the first half of the 20th century, and many of the settlements on these islands are former whaling stations. Most of them were closed down during the Great Depression, when whaling became unprofitable, and are now abandoned. These settlements include:
Aghdam, the capital of Agdam Rayon. In July 1993, after heavy fighting, Agdam was captured by Armenian forces during their 1993 summer offensives. As the town fell, its entire population was forced to flee eastwards. Many Azerbaijanis were killed by Armenian soldiers. In the immediate aftermath of the fighting, the Armenian forces decided to destroy parts of Agdam to prevent its recapture by Azerbaijan.[15] More damage occurred in the following decades when the deserted town was looted for building materials. Agdam is currently a ruinous, uninhabited ghost town.[16] The town's large mosque survives in poor condition.[17] However, Aghdam has been undergoing reconstruction since May 2021, with 19 residents registered as of November 2023 and is predicted to have new residents by 2026.[18][19]
Fuzuli, Azerbaijani citizens were expelled by Armenia in 1993. The city was recaptured by Azerbaijan in 2020, and it is slowly being settled again.
Jabrayil, the city was inhabited and seemingly abandoned by Armenians in the 1600s. In 1993, Armenia expelled the Azerbaijani population.
Shusha, over a period of over 100 years the city has been subject to multiple ethnic cleansing attempts resulting in the city becoming a ghost town, imposed by both Azerbaijan and Armenia starting with the Shusha massacre against Armenians in 1920. The Azerbaijani population was removed in 1993 when forces from Stepanakert burnt houses in an attempt to destroy the Azerbaijani stronghold responsible for constant bombing of their city. In 2020 the Armenian population was expelled again in the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War.[20]
Stepanakert, in 2023 Azerbaijan led an offensive against the unrecognised Republic of Artsakh. The capital, Stepanakert, was captured and the Armenian population was forced to flee to Armenia. Reportedly over 100,000 people fled the county before its dissolution.[21]
Panam City in Sonargaon was established in the late 19th century as a trading center of cotton fabrics during British rule. Here the Hindu cloth merchants built their residential houses. After the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965 and the Muslim-Hindu riot, Panam City has reduced into a vacant community. Today this area is protected under the department of archaeology of Bangladesh. Panam city area was linked with the main city area by three brick bridges – Panam Bridge, Dalalpur Bridge, and Panam Nagar Bridge – during the Mughal period. The bridges are still in use.
East Point was a settlement in the atoll of Diego Garcia, and it has been abandoned after the depopulation of the territory, it is restricted to visitors.
The Kangbashi District of Ordos City, was intended to house one million people,[22] but soaring property prices and lack of infrastructure deterred residents of Ordos from relocating to the newly built-up area, and it now stands largely deserted.[23] In 2010, the population of Kangbashi was around 20,000 to 30,000, a fraction of its total capacity.[24]
Niya, in the Tarim Basin, was once a major commercial center dating back to around 500–1000 AD.
Houtouwan, a depopulated fishing village, now a major tourist attraction.
The town of Akarmara in Abkhazia, Georgia, was abandoned in the early 1990s.
Armazi, the original capital of the country, was destroyed in AD 736 by the Arab invader Marwan ibn Muhammad and never rebuilt, apart from a church, built in the 12th century but later abandoned. The ruins are now protected.
Mandu is a fortress town in Madhya Pradesh, dating back at least as far as 555 AD.
Old Goa was once the center of Christianization in the east, but it became largely abandoned in the 17th century, due to an outbreak of malaria and cholera.
Vijayanagara was possibly the second-largest city in the world in 1500, with around 500,000 inhabitants.[25] It was captured and destroyed by Muslim armies in 1565, and has been abandoned ever since. Hampi is a World Heritage Site within this town.
Lakhpat was once a bustling port town at the mouth of Kori creek of Kutch. After the earthquake of 1819, the Indus river changed its course of flow resulting in the abandonment of the port by people. The town surrounded by a 7-kilometre-long (4.3 mi) fort wall now houses only a few hundred people and a large number of ruined buildings.
Bhangarh Fort, a 17th-century fort built by King Sawai Madho Singh in Rajasthan was abandoned following a curse, according to legends.
Hashima Island was a Japanese mining town from 1887 to 1974. Once known for having the world's highest population density (in 1959 at 83,500 inhabitants per square kilometre or 216,000 inhabitants per square mile), the island was abandoned when the coal mines were closed down.[28]
Ikeshima Island was a mining town in Nagasaki Prefecture. The town had an estimated population of over 10,000, but after the coal mines closure in 2001 thousands left. In 2018 it had a population of 130.
Bjerrine, in the Byblos District, was a town with a silk factory that was abandoned during the great famine under Ottoman control during World War I. Urban legends say that all of the villagers were on the same boat to America when it sank, taking the town's history with it.[34][35]
Ain el-Halazoun, a Christian village that was destroyed during the Lebanese Civil War. The village's sole inhabitant was a former resident who returned to his decimated hometown, shown in the 2008 documentary "The One Man Village".[36][37]
Bukit Besi is a former mining town in Terengganu, Malaysia. The population dropped drastically after 1971 when the Eastern Mining and Metal Corporation (EMMCO) closed their operation because the iron ore there was exhausted.
Kampung Kepayang, in Perak, is almost uninhabited, with only two or three shophouses being in use. This is a result of the widening of the main road, which made it difficult to park a vehicle and resulted in the shops losing business. However, there are still Malays who reside in the village houses behind the shophouses, and the addresses in Simpang Pulai are still written as "Kampung Kepayang".
Kumgang, a South Korean tourist complex in North Korea where families separated by the border would meet each other. After political tensions prevented families from using Kumgang to meet, it rapidly lost visitors.[38]
Al-ʽArish is an old fishing village on the Northern coast of Qatar in the Middle East. Situated on the Persian Gulf, it was abandoned in the early 1970s and has since become a ghost town.[41]
Butugychag is a former Gulag forced labor camp, and one of the few camps in which prisoners mined uranium.
Gamsutl, one of the oldest settlements in Dagestan, abandoned in 2015.
Khalmer-Yu is a former urban-type settlement in the Komi Republic, disestablished in 1995. In 1993 it was decided to shut down mining operations and to liquidate the settlement by 1995.
Old Town, Al-Ula, or al-Deera as it is locally called, is now all but a ghost town. It consists of a walled village of about 800 dwellings around the perimeter of the more ancient castle with narrow winding alleys, many of which are covered to shield the people from the heat of the sun. Most of the foundations of the buildings are stone, but the upper floors are made from mud bricks, while palm leaves and wood are used for the ceilings. Although many of these houses were probably rebuilt over time, their foundation is likely to be from the original construction of the town in the 13th century AD. 45 m (148 feet) above historic al-Ula, the town's Castle commands strategic views over the entire valley. It is sometimes referred to as the Castle of Musa bin Nusayr, the Umayyad-era army general who ruled over North Africa and was involved in conquering Andalusia in the early 8th century AD. He is said to have died in this castle on his way from Damascus to a pilgrimage in Mecca in 715 AD. Although the castle was rebuilt more than once during its long history, its origins date back to the 6th century BC. In fact, some of the foundation stones are from the original 2,600-year-old construction (according to signs posted). The castle is currently more of a bastion or watchtower once used to protect the town.
A few blocks of HDB flats (apartment flats) located in the Lim Chu Kang area of the island is known to be the only ghost town in Singapore. Named the Neo Tiew Estate (or officially the Lim Chu Kang Rural Centre), it used to house residents before they were moved out of the vicinity in 2002 as part of an En-bloc scheme. Since then the Singapore government has declared it state land and nothing was done to demolish or renovate the flats. The area was used by the Singapore Army as a training facility from 2005–2009 until a newer training facility was built nearby in 2008. The facility was used most recently in 2012 when it was used to shoot scenes for the film Ah Boys to Men. As of today, its fate remains unknown.
The city of Quneitra became a ghost town after the 1967 Six-Day War and subsequent Yom Kippur War in 1973. The ruins were left in place, and a museum has been built to memorialize the destruction. Billboards are maintained at the ruins of many buildings and the town is effectively preserved in the condition that the wars left it in.
Two of the colorful pod-style buildings in New Taipei
The Sanzhi UFO houses in Taiwan were a set of abandoned pod-shaped buildings built in New Taipei City as a vacation resort. They stood abandoned for thirty years before being demolished in 2010.
The city of Old Ayutthaya was the capital of the country from its foundation in 1350 until it was sacked and destroyed by the Burmese in 1767. The site is now Ayutthaya Historical Park.
Ani, in Kars Province, was once the capital of the Armenian Bagratuni kingdom. It has been abandoned since the eighteenth century and is now a museum town.
Çökene in Büyükorhan district was a village until 2008. It is a site of empty houses after immigration to big cities due to money shortage and unemployment.[42]
Kayaköy was abandoned as a result of the 1923 population exchange between Turkey and Greece and is now preserved as a museum village.
Sazak near Karaburun, a district of İzmir Province on the Aegean (western) coast of Turkey, was also inhabited by Greeks, which left the area according to the population exchange treaty. Nowadays Sazak is a total ghost town.
Kantubek used to have a population of around 1,500 and housed scientists and employees for Aralsk-7, a biological weapons test site. It was abandoned in 1992 following the collapse of the Soviet Union.[43]
According to the Institute for Research of Population and People at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (BAS), Bulgaria has over 500 ghost towns. Rapid rural decay since the fall of communism[48] has seen a sharp decline in village populations, which the BAS says that without intervention, will lead to no more villages in Bulgaria by 2060.[49]
Chamla is an abandoned village in the Smolyan municipality
Ledići, an almost abandoned village with only two people, Obren Miovćić, and his wife Dragana. The village had a similar fate as Vranduk and Baljci.[56]
Milovice-Mlada, sometimes referred to as Boží Dar, is an abandoned military town in the territory of Milovice, northeast of Prague. It was abandoned following the Velvet Revolution in 1989, and ownership of the town transferred to the Czech government in 1992. It remained uninhabited until March 2014 when work was started to demolish it.[58]
Varosha was once the modern tourist area of the city of Famagusta. It was fenced off by the Turkish army following the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974 and is now under TRNC rule. United Nations Security Council Resolution 550 forbids any attempt "to settle any part of Varosha by people other than its inhabitants", so the area had remained abandoned since 1974, but the Turkish government reopened the city to visitors.
Viivikonna, near Kohtla-Järve, similar to Sirgala, is a former mining towns that started to lose its population after local oil shale reserves were depleted and the industry moved eastwards. By the 21st century, both towns had only a handful of people left, struggling to find a new place to live.[60]
Blankskáli, Kalsoy, after an avalanche hit the village in 1809, the entire village resettled in the new settlement Syðradalur on the same island. The village was finally abandoned cca. 1815.
Le Poil, in Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, which was slowly depopulated due to being too remote and was a ghost town by 1930.[62]
Oradour-sur-Glane was destroyed by a Waffen-SS battalion during World War II and its population massacred. The village was subsequently rebuilt nearby, but the ruins of the old village have been preserved.
Open-pit coal mining in several areas of Germany creates ghost towns in preparation for the coal mining. Towns are evacuated several years in advance and turned into ghost towns. When the pit reaches the towns they are finally torn down.[citation needed]
Bonnland, Gruorn, Lopau, Wollseifen and others are ghost towns created as part of the creation of military training areas.[citation needed]
The island of Spinalonga is considered by some to be a ghost town. Serving as a leper colony for the first half of the 20th century, the island was abandoned when all its inhabitants were cured. By 1962 there were no permanent residents left. In recent years Spinalonga has become a tourist attraction as one of the last leper colonies to be closed down in Europe.
Gavros, Kranionas and Ano Kraniounas are all abandoned villages located near Kastoria and Lake Prespa.
The castle of Kato Chora is located near the village of Mylopotamos, Kythera.
Old Perithia (or Palea Perithia) is a ghost village on the northern side of Corfu on the slopes of Mount Pantokrator. The village was originally established in the 14th century, during Byzantine times due to the need of people to move from the coastal side and protect themselves from pirate and enemy attacks. Moreover, the diseases caused by mosquitoes on the coast drove residents to the mountain. When piracy was confronted from the Mediterranean Sea in the late 19th century, some inhabitants started to gradually move to the coasts where tourism had also started to develop.
Ropoto, a more recent ghost town created 2012 by a landslide.
Derenk was destroyed by the government in 1943, so that the area could be used for hunting.[64]
Gyertyánvölgy was one of the four settlements created by the workers of the glass huts founded in the 18th century. The other three settlements were Óhuta (today Bükkszentlászló), Újhuta (today Bükkszentkereszt) and Répáshuta (which still exists). The last glass hut operated here until 1897; the village was still inhabited at the beginning of the 20th century. In its cemetery, the first burial was in 1843, and the last in 1926.
Gyűrűfű was repopulated in the form of an eco-village.
Hertelendyújhely
Iharkút: its fate was sealed by the discovery of the bauxite wealth below. The extraction started in 1979. The village's last inhabitants were moved to Bakonyjákó, Németbánya, Herend and Pápa.
Jásztelekpuszta: its fate is similar to Kápolnapuszta.
Kakpuszta: the inhabitants were moved because of the lack of road construction and electrification.
Kápolnapuszta: the 2nd Ukrainian Reconnaissance Front of the Red Army exterminated nearly the entire population on March 16, 1945.
Márcadópuszta
Mónosokor
Nagyecsér, the most famous ghost town in Hungary. It was abandoned following school closure, an aging population, and the population leaving; the road to Mezőnagymihály was never built.
Nagygéc, was totally destroyed by the 1970s Szamos flooding; there is now a memorial park for the town.
Révfalu, an isolated village, nowadays a popular tourist destination.
Somogyszentimre
Szentkirályszabadja, although the village is still populated, a small city sized Soviet military base is totally abandoned next to it. The settlement also has an airport, as well as panel buildings, shops, cinema, theater, kindergarten, and school for the families of the soldiers. The area was left when the soviet soldiers were withdrawn from Hungary in 1990. The airport operates to this day. This base is often called the Hungarian Chernobyl.[65]
Vágotpuszta
Zelemér, the Tatars ravaged whole of Northern Hungary including this village, which failed to revive.
Zsörk, the second-most famous ghost town in the country.
The former village of Súðavík, in the Westfjords, a remote region of NW Iceland. In 1995, an avalanche fell on the small village, resulting in 14 fatalities. It was later decided that the location of the town was unsafe for year-round occupation. It has been forbidden ever since to live in the old town permanently. A new village was built from the ground up a few miles away from the old site in a safer location.
Miners' Village, Glendalough, County Wicklow was a small village based around a galena mine. The village was largely inhabited from 1825 to 1957 when the mine closed permanently.
Great Blasket Island, County Kerry, was evacuated in 1953 after being repeatedly cut off from the mainland due to poor weather. Its 160 residents were relocated to the mainland by the government.
Roveraia, ghost village situated near Pratovalle, in the municipality of Loro Ciuffenna, in province of Arezzo, in Tuscany. During World War II it was an important partisan base and it was definitively abandoned in the 1980s, when the last family who lived here, left the village. Two projects have been proposed for the recovery of the village: in 2011 the proposal of Movimento Libero Perseo Roveraia eco - lab, based on sustainability [75][76][77] and in 2019 there was a proposal aiming to recover the village with a mix of functions called Ecomuseum of Pratomagno.[78][79][80][81]
Ghost village of Roveraia
San Martino Monteneve in the province of Bolzano was a mining town at 2,355 m (7,726 feet) above sea level between the Ridanna Valley and the Passirio Valley. It sits atop of mining tunnels running from one valley to the other. It is now part of the Monteneve mining museum.
Leri Cavour is an abandoned village in Piedmont, situated next to a defunct nuclear reactor. Its most impressive building is the mansion of Camillo Cavour, who is famous for his efforts in creating a united Italy.
Schokland, this was a very large island in the Middle Ages, but due to the rising sea level in the Zuiderzee, the island became smaller and smaller until the island was demolished by a storm in 1825. The three villages on the island: Emmeloord, Molenbuurt and Middelbuurt were abandoned. When the Noordoostpolder was created, this piece of land became visible again. Emmeloord was rebuilt on a different location in the Noordoostpolder.
Waterdunen, this town was lost to the North Sea in 1357. Later when the land was reclaimed the town was rebuilt, only to be lost again a century later. One of many Dutch villages to be lost to the North Sea, list of flooded villages in Zeeland.
Bommenede, the village was flooded on January 26, 1682. The destruction was so great, that the Estates of Holland decided not to rebuild the village, and the last inhabitants left in 1684. Some remains of the village (now sometimes referred to as Oud-Bommenede) still remain visible. Nowadays, there is still some overgrown debris in the waters of the Grevelingen.
Pyramiden ("The Pyramid") was a Russian settlement and coal mining community on the archipelago of Svalbard. It was founded by Sweden in 1910, and sold to the Soviet Union in 1927. The settlement, with a onetime population of 1,000 inhabitants, was abandoned in the late 1990s by its owner, the state-owned Soviet company Trust Artikugol, and is now a ghost town.
Czerwona Woda ("Red Water") in Kłodzko Valley was established by German immigrants before WWII. Most of the abandoned houses are found in the mountains of Klodzko Valley.
Kłomino, near Borne Sulinowo in the northwest part of the country, was established as a place of residence for Soviet troops stationed in Poland with their families. The population was about 5,000. It was completely depopulated by 1992 after the collapse of the USSR. Only a few families live there now, but there are plans to repopulate the city.
Pstrąże, near Bolesławiec in Lower Silesian Voivodeship, a Soviet Army garrison, deserted following the fall of the Soviet Union. Dubbed the "Polish Chernobyl" due to its ghost town status and alleged nuclear history.[82]
Vilarinho da Furna, Terras de Bouro, at Braga District was a village with unique rules and way of life. It was abandoned and submerged in 1972 due to the building of Vilarinho das Furnas hydroelectric dam. When the lagoon water level is low the remains of the buildings can be seen.
Aldeia de Broas , at Mafra Municipality, was officially considered abandoned when the last inhabitant died in late 1960 after being populated for centuries.
126 localities in Romania are "fictitious".[84] They either have no inhabitants according to the last census, or they are actually in the bottom of an accumulation lake or have completely disappeared from the face of the earth. Some villages have no construction, no access roads, but they continue to remain in the official data bases of the Romanian state.[84] Some of the localities that did not have any inhabitants at the 2011 census are:
Belchite, in the province of Zaragoza, Aragon, is one of the best-known ghost towns in Spain. Before the 1930s, Belchite was a growing city, with many services. As a consequence of the Battle of Belchite, during the Spanish Civil War, the city was totally destroyed. Instead of a reconstruction, Franco decided to keep the ruins of the old town of Belchite intact as a memorial of the battle. As of 1964, the town was totally deserted, the inhabitants having been removed to Belchite Nuevo, on the side of the old town. The ruins, which are not accommodated for tourism, are visited by more than 10,000 tourists annually. It is also a well-known meeting point for Francoist nostalgics, especially Falangists.
Ochate, Condado de Treviño, Burgos, Castille and Leon
Peranera, near El Pont de Suert, Catalonia
Pernui in Sort, Lleida, Catalonia
Todoque in La Palma, Canary Islands. During the 2021 Cumbre Vieja volcanic eruption, the locality was severely affected. Hundreds of buildings, including the Church of Saint Pius X, the health center, the headquarters of the neighborhood association, the School of Early Childhood Education, Los Campitos Elementary School, the Todoque Elementary and the Infant Education School, and by October 10, new lava flows destroyed the buildings that were still standing, leaving the town practically erased from the map.
After the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986, hundreds of settlements within the exclusion zone were evacuated. Some have remained abandoned ever since, including:
Cuddington was a hamlet in Surrey that was demolished in the sixteenth century so that Nonsuch Palace (itself later demolished) could be built.
Dunwich, a once-thriving town on the Suffolk coast, began to decline in 1286 when a storm swept much of it into the sea. Subsequent storms and coastal erosion have since claimed all but a few of the remaining buildings.
Ewden Village in the Civil Parish of Stocksbridge was a timber-built village, completed in 1929 to house workers working on the Morehall and Broomhead reservoirs.
Hallsands is a coastal village in Devon that was destroyed by a storm in 1917.
Hambleton, in Rutland, is a civil parish that once included the settlements of Middle Hambleton and Nether Hambleton, which were both flooded in 1975 to create Rutland Water.
Ravenspurn, also on the coast of the East Riding of Yorkshire, south of Ravenser Odd, and near Spurn Head, was abandoned in the 19th century and was swept into the North Sea.
In 1942 and 1943, in preparation for the Allied assault on Normandy, several villages were evacuated to be used as training grounds for the British Army and U.S. forces. This was intended to be a temporary arrangement, but many of the villages remained abandoned, and are used for military training to this day. Some of these villages are listed below; most of them are located within the Stanford Battle Area in Norfolk.
Mingulay, an island at the southern end of the Outer Hebrides, depopulated as part of the ongoing effects of the Highland Clearances, the village on the island finally abandoned in 1912.
The Monach Islands, also known as Heisker, in the Outer Hebrides; the village abandoned in 1932 and depopulated in 1942 with the closure of the lighthouse.
North Rona is a remote Scottish island that has been deserted since 1844.
Llangaffo in Anglesey, north of Dwyran, south of Gaerwen and northwest of Llanidan where the school had closed down and has a ghost town status in 2023.
Nant Gwrtheyrn in Gwynedd is a former quarry town that became abandoned during World War II, but is now the site of a Welsh language learning centre.
Petite Savanne was destroyed when Tropical Storm Erika unleashed a series of deadly mudslides in 2015; the government ordered a mandatory and permanent evacuation of all residents.
Church of San Juan ParangaricutiroFigurines from the now flooded surroundings of ChupícuaroTownscape of El TriunfoOld school of PadillaStreet at Cerro de San Pedro
Ojuela, a mining town near Durango City, was abandoned when the area's ore supply was exhausted.
Real de Catorce was once a flourishing silver mining town in northern Mexico. Its dramatic landscapes and buildings have been used by Hollywood for movies such as The Mexican (2001) with Brad Pitt and Julia Roberts. Recent efforts to adapt the town to tourism have created a mixture of ghost town and heritage tourist site adapted to visitors in search of interesting history in the country.
Thompson's Landing was a port at the mouth of the Colorado River. During the early settlement of Arizona, shallow-draft steamboats plied the lower reaches of the river.[citation needed]
Jalapa del Marqués, Oaxaca was an important town under precolonial times and after the Spanish conquest. It was flooded in 1961 in order to make way for a dam. The town was relocated south. Only the former Dominican convent remains.[92]
Santo Tomás de los Plátanos, Mexico was a small town in the former frontier between the Purépecha Empire and the Aztec Empire, but was flooded in 1956 in order to make way for a dam. A solemn procession with the church's icons was made to the new location, uphill. Only the belltower of the church remains.[93]
Padilla, Tamaulipas was stablished in 1749 by José de Escandón, served as capital of Tamaulipas between 1824 and 1825, was the place where Agustín de Iturbide was executed and Manuel Mier y Terán took his life. However, the town was flooded in 1971 to make way to a dam, and was relocated upstream. Only ruins remain from the original town, among them the church, the school and the monument marking the place of Iturbide's execution.
Ciudad Guerrero, Tamaulipas was stablished in 1749 by José de Escandón, served as capital of the Republic of the Rio Grande in 1840. It was abandoned in 1953 in order to make way for the Falcón Dam. When the waters recede, most of the town's stone houses and church are visitable and in decent conditions.
Santiago Tlaltepoxco, Hidalgo. The town was cleared since the 19th century in order to make way to the railroad from Mexico to Paso del Norte. Only a very ruined church and an old bridge from the old royal road remains.
Chupícuaro, Guanajuato was one of the oldest settlements in the northern limits of Mesoamerica, where several ancient objects have been found defined as of a particular culture, identified by its name. However, it was flooded in 1949 in order to make way for a dam, and its inhabitants relocated north to a new settlement called Nuevo Chupícuaro. Some intensive excavations were done to salvage as much prehispanic artifacts as possible before the flood took over. It's been almost always covered by water ever since, and the ruined remains of the church rarely surface. In 2013, after a prolongated drought that lowered the lake's levels, the municipality was able to recover the top piece of the belltower, which was installed in the atrium of the new town's church.[94]
San Luis Taxhimay, Mexico, also known as San Luis de las Peras, was a town in the municipality of Villa del Carbón. It was flooded in 1934 in order to make way for a dam. Only the belltower of the main church and the façade of a chapel remain.[95]
San Francisco Bojay, Hidalgo was a town in the municipality of Tula flooded in 1949 in order to make way for the Endhó dam. The suburbs were cut in two, becoming separate villages, while its church remained in the middle, often flooded but with its belltower still standing.[96][97]
San Antonio Corrales, Hidalgo was a town in the municipality of Alfajayucan flooded in 1950 in order to make way to a dam. The town was relocated to the south, while the small church complex, only remaining building in the original location, has an excellent conservation status.[98]
La Pupa, Nayarit was a mining town that rose around an old hacienda. With the mine's closure, the town was progressively abandoned. The ruins are still in relatively good condition.[99]
El Triunfo, Baja California Sur was stablished as a mining town in the late 18th century, was mostly abandoned in 1926 after the mines were shut. Not entirely deserted, it is however barely inhabited. Some buildings have since been restored in order to house touristic facilities.
San Antonio, Baja California Sur was stablished as a mining town in the late 18th century, and became capital of the territory of Baja California in 1829, losing a while later that privilege to La Paz. It was mostly abandoned in 20th century after the mines were shut. Not entirely deserted, it is however barely inhabitted.[100]
Cerro de San Pedro, San Luis Potosí is a depopulated mining town. During the 20th century a sour work relationship between the mine operators and the workers closed the mine in 1948, causing its almost total depopulation. The mineral hasn't been drained, but the operation of an open pit mine started in 1998. The pit is directly behind the town. This and the disappearence of the namesake hill (Cerro de San Pedro means "St. Peter's Hill") has threatened the townsite, considered an area of colonial monuments.
San Pedro de los Pozos, Guanajuato. Not completely abandoned yet and with a second life oriented to tourism, it was a mining town that was abandoned when the mines flooded.
Bolaños, Jalisco. Former important mining town, it has been reduced to being barely more than a village with less than 1000 inhabitants. Its ruins (the main church, the mint, palaces, etc.) still persist as the reminder of a time past.
Amersham in the Saint Anthony Parish was abandoned in the wake of the Soufrière Hills eruption in 1997.
Plymouth was once the seat of government in Montserrat, and home to around 4,000 people, until it was almost completely destroyed by the Soufrière Hills volcano in 1997. The entire southern half of the island is now off-limits, leaving over 30 villages and towns abandoned.
L'Île-aux-Marins ("Sailor's Island") is a ghost town/island located a few miles away from the island of Saint-Pierre. Once inhabited by over 600 fishermen, families and tradesmen, the island was progressively abandoned until the last inhabitant left in 1965. The island is now a tourist attraction.
Boydtown, in New South Wales, was originally settled and then abandoned in the 1840s. It remained abandoned until the 1930s. It is now a growing town with commercial and residential developments.
Cassilis was a gold rush town in Victoria that declined during the First World War.
Collingwood in Queensland was established in 1878, but abandoned about 1900 when it was outcompeted as a regional centre by nearby Winton. There is a commemorative marker at the old graveyard listing eight persons known to be buried there.
Cook is an isolated town in South Australia built around a railway station, which was closed down in 1997.
Cossack in Western Australia was a flourishing port town in the 1800s, and profited greatly from the pearling industry. It began to decline during the 20th century.
Cudgegong was a small town in central western New South Wales. Windamere dam now exists where the town once stood, but ruins can be seen in times of drought when the dam dries up.
Moliagul is a former gold mining town in Victoria; it was here that the world's largest gold nugget, known as the "Welcome Stranger", was discovered in 1869.
Old Tallangatta, in Victoria, was abandoned when most of the township was moved 8 km (5 miles) west due to the enlargement of Lake Hume. The current township of Tallangatta has approximately 1,000 residents.
Whilst not a town, Parramatta Road in Sydney has over 100 abandoned and boarded-up stores on its 23-kilometre-long (14 mi) strip.[101] The most affected suburbs on the road are Concord and Leichhardt, which would feature empty and derelict shops here and there.[102][103][104]
Pillinger was a port town established in Tasmania to ship ore from the nearby mines.
Ravenswood in north-eastern Queensland was a ghost town for many years, due to the declining gold rushes, but new gold discoveries in the area and improved mineral processing technologies have boosted the economy of the area and revived the town.Sign outside Wittenoom, in Australia, which warns of lingering asbestos danger in the town.
Selwyn in the Shire of Cloncurry, Queensland, is a former copper mining town.
Shay Gap in Western Australia's Pilbara region was a company town that existed for roughly 20 years until the iron ore mining ceased in 1993.
Silverton is a former silver mining town in New South Wales that was deserted when more lucrative silver-lead-zinc ore was discovered at nearby Broken Hill.
Wittenoom in Western Australia was the country's only source of blue asbestos (crocidolite) in the 1950s and 60s. The mine was shut down in 1966, and the residents of the town were gradually relocated, due to concerns that the asbestos in the air posed a danger to their health.
Denniston was a coal mining town in the West Coast Region of the South Island of New Zealand. Formerly with a population of around 1400, it now has about ten residents.
Hardwicke was the sole European settlement in the Auckland Islands, founded in 1849 but abandoned in 1851.
Kelso was abandoned after severe and repeated flooding in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Lyell was a gold mining town in the Buller Gorge in the South Island.
Macetown was a gold rush town in Central Otago that started to decline during the 20th century.
Nenthorn was an Otago gold mining town from 1888 until the 1890s, abandoned when its mining efforts collapsed. Only two ruined buildings and the remains of a battery remain.
Port Craig is a former logging township on the southwest coast of the South Island.
Port Molyneux was a port at the mouth of the Clutha River in Otago. After a flood caused the river mouth to move, the town was abandoned.
Rotowaro, a coal mining town, was removed in the 1980s to make way for an opencast mine. It is the site of the now abandoned Rotowaro Carbonisation Plant.
Te Hutewai was a very small farming community located around 10 km south of Raglan, in the Waikato District. A school was built but was burnt down in the 1960s and the area today is now farmland.
Venture, a small beech bark processing settlement in the Awaroa Inlet of the Abel Tasman National Park, was abandoned as the value of the bark declined and the cost of transport increased into the remote area. The remains of the foundations of the school house and assorted buildings remain in the bush today, although fire, time and the encroachment of the bush has rendered the ruins little more than a collection of stones and bricks. The settlement can only be reached by walking up a rarely used and poorly maintained track at low tide. The settlement and track are on the estate administered by the Department of Conservation.
Waiuta was a gold mining town in the West Coast Region of the South Island of New Zealand until 1951.
The small lakeside resort town of Villa Epecuén was abandoned on 10 November 1985, after a series of heavy rains caused the lake water levels to rise and flood the town. The remains of the town re-emerged on 11 May 2013, when the waters of the lake receded.[107]
The small village of Caraíbas, in the municipality of Itacarambi, suffered a rare earthquake in the early morning of 9 December 2007. It measured 4.9 on the Richter scale. Located over a geological fault, the village of 76 families was evacuated and has been abandoned ever since.[108]
Fordlândia was established by American industrialist Henry Ford in 1928 near Santarém. This was done to mass-produce natural rubber. Built in inadequate terrain, designed with no knowledge of tropical agriculture, and managed with little regard for local culture, the enterprise was an absolute failure; in 1934, the Ford factory was relocated to Belterra, but ultimately closed down in 1945.
Port Famine (Spanish: Puerto Hambre) is possibly Chile's oldest ghost town. It was founded in the Strait of Magellan in 1584 by Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa. Starvation and the cold climate killed all of the inhabitants. The English navigator Sir Thomas Cavendish landed at the site in 1587. He found only ruins of the settlement, and renamed the place "Port Famine".
Sewell is a former mining town that was once home to at least 14,000 people.
Armero was left in ruins by a volcanic eruption in 1985 that killed over 20,000 inhabitants. Survivors of the tragedy left for other towns, and Armero is currently unpopulated.
Bojayá is a small town in the Chocó department, that was attacked by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) on May 2, 2002. Most of the inhabitants hid in the church; A FARC mortar bomb landed in the building, killing approximately 140 people, including 40 children. Today, Bojayá is a ghost town and though plans have been made to rebuild it, it will not be on the exact location of the massacre.
Guisanbourg was the former administrative centre of what is now Régina. The discovery of gold in 1855, lead to its demise, and in the mid-1980s, the last citizen left the town.[110]
Ituni, a former bauxite mining town in decline since the mines closed.[111]
Jonestown was established in the 1970s by members of the Peoples Temple, led by Jim Jones. On November 18, 1978, Jones orchestrated a mass suicide, resulting in the death of 913 of Jonestown's 1,110 inhabitants. The town now stands in ruins, and is being slowly reclaimed by the jungle.
Mango Landing, a periodically waning gold mining town in the contested Essequibo region.[112]
Maracaibo, once a thriving city in Zulia. Though retaining a substantial population, the city's infrastructure has collapsed in economic ruination.[116][117]
Potosí was a Venezuelan town in the western state of Táchira. The town was deliberately flooded by the Venezuelan government in 1985 to build a hydroelectric dam. In 2010, the town was uncovered for the first time since its flooding due to a drought caused by the weather phenomenon called El Niño.
See also
Deadwood, South Dakota – an example of a historic town that almost became a ghost town in the 1960s, but revived as a tourist attraction.
^Burke-Gaffney, Brian (Summer 1996), "Hashima: The Ghost Island", Crossroads: A Journal of Nagasaki History and Culture (4), University of Wisconsin: 33–52, ISSN0919-6102, archived from the original on 5 March 2013, retrieved 14 September 2012
^Page 263, Geotechnical Engineering for the Preservation of Monuments and Historic Sites, edited by Emilio Bilotta, Alessandro Flora, Stefania Lirer, Carlo Viggiani
^Page 145, Hydrogeological Instability in Cohesive Soils: Techniques for Prediction ... By Luigi Coppola
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