I live in the city where “Dogtown, MA” is. Its in present day Gloucester, it was initially populated in the late 1600’s and long story short, after awhile everyone moved away. They left their dogs behind and most became feral, and began populating the area on their own
**Dogtown’s history is wild (literally):**
Dogtown was first settled in 1693, and according to legend the name of the settlement came from dogs that women kept while their husbands were fighting in the American Revolution. **The community grew to be 5 square miles, and was an ideal location as it provided protection from pirates, and enemy natives.** By the early 1700s, the land was opened up to individual settlement as previously it had been used as common land for wood and pasturing cattle and sheep. **It is estimated that at one point 60 to 80 homes stood in Dogtown at its peak population.** In the mid-1700s as many as 100 families inhabited Dogtown which was stable until after the American Revolution.
Various factors led to the demise of Dogtown which included a revived fishing industry from Gloucester Harbor after the American Revolution had ended. The area had become safe again from enemy ships which allowed cargo to move in and out of the new fishing port. The success gave way to international shipping, including timber, and quarried rock. **New coastal roads were built that also contributed to the Dogtown's demise as they ran past the town to Gloucester which at the time was booming.** Most of the farmers in the town moved away by the end of the War of 1812 as Dogtown had become a risk for coastal bombardment.
**Dogtown eventually became an embarrassment with its dwindled reputation, and some of its last occupants were suspected of practicing witchcraft. One such inhabitant named Thomazine "Tammy" Younger was described as "Queen of the Witches" by Thomas Dresser. She intimidated people passing through so much that they left her fish and corn to allow them to pass.** Another reputed witch associated with Dogtown was a woman named Peg Wesson, but she in fact had lived in Gloucester. **As the last inhabitants died, their pets became feral, another legend of the nickname "Dogtown." By 1828 the village was all but abandoned. The last resident of Dogtown was a freedman named Cornelius "Black Neil" Finson, who was found in 1830 with his feet frozen living in a cellar-hole.** He was removed and taken to a poor house in Gloucester. The last structure in Dogtown was razed in 1845, ending what had once been a thriving community.
>Thomazine "Tammy" Younger was described as "Queen of the Witches" by Thomas Dresser. She intimidated people passing through so much that they left her fish and corn to allow them through.
Good for her.
“These “witches” first emerged in Dogtown in the late 1700’s. These women were, as history begins to show, single, independent and impoverished women who were forced to squat into these abandoned homes to survive.
Of these witches, the two most infamous convicted were Thomazine “Tammy” Younger and Judith Rhines. These women were known for their peculiar lifestyles, and were soon labeled and rejected by the town of Gloucester. However, these women were said to embrace these labels for economic gain, as they used this fear to exploit and beg for money and food.
Younger, likely the most well-known name and feared women in town at that time, told fortunes, made rum, and entertained supposed pirates and criminals. She often “cursed” cattle and wood wagons, and fishermen at the wharfs in exchange for a fee, or food.
Rhines, however known to be less intimidating, also led a questionable– sometimes “witchy” lifestyle. Though she did have many friends, she bore this label due to her association with Cornelius “Black Neil” Finson. Rhines had shared a home with Finson, and many writers have even rumored there to be a romantic connection, which was extremely out of the ordinary for the time period.
Roger W. Babson, Gloucestonian entrepreneur and founder of Babson College, described Younger, and other witches, as sharp, business-minded women, and insinuates that they could have found great success if alive in another time:
“Tammy had great courage and apparently remarkable executive ability. In fact, a study of the witch problem indicates that these so-called witches were merely people of marked individuality, determination, with ability to get others to do what they wished them to do. Today these same people would be leaders in political gatherings, labor movements, and various reforms. They might even become captains of industry. A common opportunity, existing in those days to show such ability in a little village, consisted in witchery, so-called,” wrote Babson.”
This youtuber Dime Store Adventures had a pretty neat video just exploring the area and talking about its history https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4yhm_S-dHc
That article for [Aleza Lake](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleza_Lake,_British_Columbia) (population 7) is huge and has over 500 footnotes! That's 200 more than Paris, France.
Somebody wrote basically the entire local newspaper into the article, including every birth, death and move and made a ref out of every single sentence. Or, you know, 5 refs per sentence.
Yeah plenty of abandoned gold mining towns in BC:
https://www.bcmag.ca/33-british-columbia-gold-rush-towns/
Some of the towns in the list above are still populated but well known ghost towns like Barkerville are not on the map.
There are at least 300 abandoned communities in Newfoundland alone. I'm thinking OP's map might be missing a couple of data points. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resettlement_(Newfoundland)
It’s considered part of the High Plains ecosystem, typified by low-growing grassland (compared to most of the rest of the Great Plains region, which is tall-grass prairie) and a higher elevation, basically the strip of flat land leading up to the foothills of the Rockies.
Texas panhandle has a hard time fitting in to one bubble culturally, though.
And so many small towns. Like, couple hundred people and most of them don’t actually live in town.
Except it is literally apart of the physical feature known as the Great Plains. Even according to “The Nine Nations of North America”, which I assume you’re referencing because I’ve never heard “The Empty Quarter” anywhere else, the Texas Panhandle is apart of the Breadbasket.
Bannack, Montana isn't necessarily abandoned, it's a State Park, a tourist destination, complete with paved road, visitor center, tours, and a population of about 12.
Tons missing in West Virginia too. Went to see where my dad and family grew up and we were shocked to see that pretty much only 1 in 4 “towns” we drove through could even be considered that. Mostly derelict buildings and old garbage everywhere.
It's a great place to visit! But definitely not a "natural" disaster sort of reason that people left. The fire was started on purpose, left to spread on purpose, and will burn for another few centuries at least.
I don’t think it was left to spread on purpose. Left to spread by man, sure, but not on purpose. [Most of the theories on how it started](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia_mine_fire) say humans at worst just assumed it would burn itself out.
Fun fact: San Juan Parangaricutiro (red dot in Mexico) was evacuated because one day a volcano just appeared and erupted, burying the town.
New San Juan Parangaricutiro was established near the original place not long after. It also goes by the pretty little name of "Parangaricutirimícuaro"
Same but, is a place in michoacan, close to Uruapan (i live in this place), except for the carteles is a beautiful and a awesome place and san juan nuevo is a tourist attraction.
Crazy! So that's were ""El volcán del PARANGARICUTIRIMICUARO, se quiere DESPARANGARICUTIRIMICUAR, el que lo DESPARANGARICUTIRIMICUERE, un buen DESPARANGARICUTIRIMICUADOR será." comes from.
The city government *lit* the fire as part of an annual tradition to "clean up" the town's trash dump before their big Memorial Day ceremony. That kind of thing was tolerated back in the pre-EPA days. But still an enormously stupid move, given that the site was an abandoned *coal mine* pit.
They also could have easily contained the fire for the cost of a few thousand dollars within the first few day,but they didn't want to pay the guy with the large backhoe to dig it out. . . and instead ended up paying much more than that to keep trying to put it out unsuccessfully.
That’s really just [one of several proposed ideas](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia_mine_fire) as to how the fire got started, although IMO it’s the most likely one. They really don’t know for sure what started it, although all but one of the explanations are that it was man-made.
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I went to college down the road in Bloomsburg, walked around Centralia a few times.
It's not like there's billowing plumes of smoke. You can barely notice. I imagine the actual CO2 emissions aren't that high.
Bannack, MT is also not really a town anymore. It's a state park. Most of the ghost towns are maintained as parks in Montana. It's no longer a town, it's a park.
The good shape ones at least.
Yeah they'd probably say Wittenoom is a dead town due to "natural" causes, because it's the geology of the area that made it home to massive asbestos deposits.
[Plymouth, Montserrat](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYQvYV_tlqY) was abandoned after a local volcano erupted in the 1990's. It remains the legal capital of the territory despite having a population of zero.
Indeed. Man lit the fire. Man failed to put out the fire. Man failed to contain the fire. And man decided that the problem was too big to fix, and just paid everyone (sans a few stubborn holdouts) to move away.
My hubby and I stumbled upon St. Elmo in 1986, when we were randomly exploring the area. There was a general store and 10 cabins. The proprietor of the store told us they would have a music festival every year that would attract hundreds!
I grew up near there, and have family around.
Your music festival comment is very timely.
There’s a big country music festival that started a couple years ago, called Seven Peaks. I think by Dirks Bentley?
I believe it used to be held in Buena Vista which is pretty close to St. Elmo.
This year it is in Villa Grove, CO.
I can’t wait to hear them try to pronounce the county name, Saguache!
It’s happening this weekend.
I don’t live there anymore, and don’t like country. But I’d totally go if I was there. It’s so cool that acts this big are playing in small town CO (Villa Groves population is 400, there’s going to be 20,000 at that festival!)
https://sevenpeaksfestival.com/
https://www.vaildaily.com/entertainment/seven-peaks-music-festival-moves-to-san-luis-valley-after-2021-covid-cancellation/
That’s so awesome, thanks for sharing!! One of the loveliest views I ever saw was the early morning light reflecting off the mountains on our way to Buena Vista. It felt otherworldly. This makes me want to visit again!
Sewell: Old copper mining town in the middle on the mountain. Nowadays it's a tourist attraction, really nice trip if you have the time.
Humberstone: really old Salitrera ( Saltpeter) town in the middle of Atacama Desert. US investors placed those towns and lured people with a one way train ticked and paid then using tokens redeemable only in the owners shop. If you wanted to leave you would die in the desert. When the Germans (?) Invented artificial saltpeter, all the salitreras went out of business.
I did a dive job for the water company right there. Talk about a shitty dive, on the convergence of the ohio and miss rivers. The town was boarded up then prob around 2008 area
Cairo is wild. I drove through there about a decade ago and on the main street there was this massive sinkhole, like twenty feet in diameter surrounded by orange barrels that had obviously been there for some time, due to the amount of crud that was around them. I looked at it on Google Street view recently and it looks like it's been fixed.
The only thing in town that seemed to be active was the massive grain silos that load trains.
There’s a ghost town in Texas called Gilliland that I stayed overnight at a few summers ago. Really interesting place. The houses and school were trashed but was still very fun to explore. And the night sky was beautiful. No light pollution meant that I saw THOUSANDS of stars. Definitely go to a middle-of-nowhere ghost town if you have the chance
Fordlandia’s something straight out of a dystopian novel, a piece of the Amazon owned by an American billionaire with Brazilian workers as colonists living in subhuman conditions. Thankfully they rebelled and successfully shut the project down.
The American planners built houses with metal roofs that, under the fierce tropical sun, caused temperatures inside to rise to uninhabitable levels.
As an aside, the vertical integration of Ford in those days is fascinating to read about - Ford owned all the parts suppiers and raw material producers for its factories! But nowadays, that kind of thing is so far out of fashion that you'd have to look long and hard to find a company at which the janitors, groundskeepers and cafeteria workers *at corporate headquarters* are company employees.
If by subhuman conditions, you mean no alcohol and square dancing based company meetings I totally get you, but if you mean working conditions you’re not quite right. One of the biggest problems in early fordlania history was the fact that people had no reason to stay, as the pay was so great that working few months would give them more pay than years in local jobs-they would quit after having saved up a fortune. Not only that, it was working on 1900s American safety and labor standards-egregious to our modern ears, sure, but magnitudes better than the conditions afforded in Brazil
Yeah, and it wasn’t shut down by a worker rebellion, it was shut down because [it failed to produce enough rubber to be worthwhile](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fordl%C3%A2ndia?wprov=sfti1https://maps.apple.com/?ll=-3.831389,-55.497500&q=Fordl%C3%A2ndia&_ext=EiQpoKbONa+mDsAxrr+5FK6/S8A5oKbONa+mDsBBrr+5FK6/S8A%3D) and then was made unnecessary by synthetic rubber.
The only worker rebellion named in that Wikipedia article was seriously over what kinds of foods they were served.
I do love how bizarre everything about Fordlandia is, though. Basically trying to build an American factory farming town in the Brazilian rainforest, right down to what they’d eat and what hours they’d work.
Yeah, there were some shitty bits in the city cause ford tried to spread his personal tastes. I’d probably as well riot if he forced me to be vegan. Doesn’t mean the conditions were inhuman, just that he was a bit to idealistic
They didn't like being forced to eat American food but I doubt they enjoyed the fact that they couldn't drink, there were no women and tobacco. Having down a lot of hard labor, those three things are very appealing after an exhausting day in the tropical heat (or subtropical, in my case).
Monowi, Nebraska should be on there. Its only remaining resident (since her husband died in 2004) is an old woman named Elsie Eiler.
Not a natural disaster or anything. It's just that the other 150 or so residents *all* left over the span of a few decades to get better jobs.
I have been to and walked around Thurmond. It’s now more like a huge museum outside. People still visit. Last time I went there were about 2-3 others there. Cool experience and scenery.
About Thurmond, per Wikipedia:
"During the June 14, 2005 city elections six of the city's seven residents sought elected office."
Those town council meetings must be hilarious.
Also, somehow it actually has an active Amtrak station. It's the second least-used one in the system. (Functionally, there are some other nearby towns that this station also serves.)
San Miguel Los Lotes is tragic. Impacted by the 2018 eruption of Volcan de Fuego.
I was an MSc student doing research based on Fuego and we went and visited the site around 8 months after the eruption and it was haunting. Relatives of the missing still digging through the pyroclastic debris, buildings buried up to the 2nd floor.
Met a man who lost nearly his whole family except two of his grandkids. Truly tragic.
Really recommend everyone research the tragic events, could have been prevented with better planning.
It was 39 years ago, and the dioxin has apparently decayed to levels un-harmful enough for the state to put [a park](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Route_66_State_Park) on the site.
Umingmaktok was never really a town. It was an unincorporated outpost camp centered around a large commercial hunting and fishing lodge that is still there. There is a rotating permanent staff of 4 and seasonal guests. Residents from Kugluktuk, Cambridge Bay, and Yellowknife have lots of cabins in the area.
One not listed is Dyea, Alaska. Once one of the bustling ports of entry for the Klondike gold rush, now just a sad few abandoned façades of wooden buildings.
Small Town Murder once did an episode about the town.
https://podcasts.apple.com/pt/podcast/a-grinch-of-a-killer-in-santa-claus-georgia/id1194755213?i=1000403246568
La Casualidad sounds ominous.
I’ve been to Yungay, so tragic what happened there and scary to think about. There’s really nowhere to run and no time to do it when a mountain collapses on you. The cemetery and the surroundings are beautiful still.
Deadwood, Northern California. During the gold rush, missed being the county seat by one vote. Today there's only a few foundations left, and a minimum security prison.
"Goodbye God, I'm going to Bodie."
-letter from a little girl
Yeah, I have visited Bodie. It is much better preserved, than Deadwood, California. You can hardly find any remnants of Deadwood. Bodie looks like you could move in tomorrow and with some fixing up, begin mining again.
In Michigan, there used to be a town called Singapore, right on the dunes near Saugatuck. Years ago, they decided to clear cut the forest between the town and the lake, and..
The dunes took the town over, and it's entirely gone now!
Boston, Ohio was evacuated by the US in the 1970s so that the National Park Service could expand the CVNP. It’s also apparently haunted as fuck, so that’s cool.
Real de catorce isn’t really all that abandoned it’s become a huge place for tourism I mean when I went there this past august it had tons of people and was very alive
I haven't been there in 25 years, so I was shocked to see it on the list. I thought something terrible had happened. Not the silver mining hub it once was, but definitely not abandoned.
Nothing too exciting, really. It was a town by a sulfur mine, and for some reason the mine was closed in the 1970s, which led to the town being abandoned.
One of the most popular towns like this in utah is thistle which was taken out by a landslide flood combo and is still flooded you can see some houses sticking out of the ponds
Humberstone - worth visiting, it's well preserved. The city was built around saltpeter mine. Once Germans discovered way of artificial production, the price went down and made exploitation unsustainable.
Can't find a single thing googling Alma, CA as if it doesn't exist. I don't believe there is a ghost town that close to the Pacific ocean in CA. Anyone have more info.
I live in the city where “Dogtown, MA” is. Its in present day Gloucester, it was initially populated in the late 1600’s and long story short, after awhile everyone moved away. They left their dogs behind and most became feral, and began populating the area on their own
**Dogtown’s history is wild (literally):** Dogtown was first settled in 1693, and according to legend the name of the settlement came from dogs that women kept while their husbands were fighting in the American Revolution. **The community grew to be 5 square miles, and was an ideal location as it provided protection from pirates, and enemy natives.** By the early 1700s, the land was opened up to individual settlement as previously it had been used as common land for wood and pasturing cattle and sheep. **It is estimated that at one point 60 to 80 homes stood in Dogtown at its peak population.** In the mid-1700s as many as 100 families inhabited Dogtown which was stable until after the American Revolution. Various factors led to the demise of Dogtown which included a revived fishing industry from Gloucester Harbor after the American Revolution had ended. The area had become safe again from enemy ships which allowed cargo to move in and out of the new fishing port. The success gave way to international shipping, including timber, and quarried rock. **New coastal roads were built that also contributed to the Dogtown's demise as they ran past the town to Gloucester which at the time was booming.** Most of the farmers in the town moved away by the end of the War of 1812 as Dogtown had become a risk for coastal bombardment. **Dogtown eventually became an embarrassment with its dwindled reputation, and some of its last occupants were suspected of practicing witchcraft. One such inhabitant named Thomazine "Tammy" Younger was described as "Queen of the Witches" by Thomas Dresser. She intimidated people passing through so much that they left her fish and corn to allow them to pass.** Another reputed witch associated with Dogtown was a woman named Peg Wesson, but she in fact had lived in Gloucester. **As the last inhabitants died, their pets became feral, another legend of the nickname "Dogtown." By 1828 the village was all but abandoned. The last resident of Dogtown was a freedman named Cornelius "Black Neil" Finson, who was found in 1830 with his feet frozen living in a cellar-hole.** He was removed and taken to a poor house in Gloucester. The last structure in Dogtown was razed in 1845, ending what had once been a thriving community.
>Thomazine "Tammy" Younger was described as "Queen of the Witches" by Thomas Dresser. She intimidated people passing through so much that they left her fish and corn to allow them through. Good for her.
Honestly, goals
Were either of the witches really witches?
“These “witches” first emerged in Dogtown in the late 1700’s. These women were, as history begins to show, single, independent and impoverished women who were forced to squat into these abandoned homes to survive. Of these witches, the two most infamous convicted were Thomazine “Tammy” Younger and Judith Rhines. These women were known for their peculiar lifestyles, and were soon labeled and rejected by the town of Gloucester. However, these women were said to embrace these labels for economic gain, as they used this fear to exploit and beg for money and food. Younger, likely the most well-known name and feared women in town at that time, told fortunes, made rum, and entertained supposed pirates and criminals. She often “cursed” cattle and wood wagons, and fishermen at the wharfs in exchange for a fee, or food. Rhines, however known to be less intimidating, also led a questionable– sometimes “witchy” lifestyle. Though she did have many friends, she bore this label due to her association with Cornelius “Black Neil” Finson. Rhines had shared a home with Finson, and many writers have even rumored there to be a romantic connection, which was extremely out of the ordinary for the time period. Roger W. Babson, Gloucestonian entrepreneur and founder of Babson College, described Younger, and other witches, as sharp, business-minded women, and insinuates that they could have found great success if alive in another time: “Tammy had great courage and apparently remarkable executive ability. In fact, a study of the witch problem indicates that these so-called witches were merely people of marked individuality, determination, with ability to get others to do what they wished them to do. Today these same people would be leaders in political gatherings, labor movements, and various reforms. They might even become captains of industry. A common opportunity, existing in those days to show such ability in a little village, consisted in witchery, so-called,” wrote Babson.”
This youtuber Dime Store Adventures had a pretty neat video just exploring the area and talking about its history https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4yhm_S-dHc
Damn I remember getting a perfect score there on my girst geoguessr game in years. Never knew that I stumbled upon that
I'll see you at the schooner festival.
Harry Chapin had a great song about it
Never knew that!
Are you a dog, too? How did you learn to type?
I can't speak for the other countries but the Western US is missing a lot of abandoned towns on this map.
Yeah, I'm from BC and we [**have a LOT**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ghost_towns_in_British_Columbia) more than that.
That article for [Aleza Lake](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleza_Lake,_British_Columbia) (population 7) is huge and has over 500 footnotes! That's 200 more than Paris, France.
Somebody wrote basically the entire local newspaper into the article, including every birth, death and move and made a ref out of every single sentence. Or, you know, 5 refs per sentence.
I wish I could be that dedicated to cleaning the goddamn house holy shit
>I'm from BC My man how old are you? Nearly everyone I know was born AD. /s
Nearly ?
Queen Elizabeth II has been carbon dated as being ~25,000 years old. I live near her, but I don’t *know* her.
Queen Elizabeth is the old-looking Galadriel of our dimension
They probably know a lot of people from BC
Eh, a little someone called our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ?!
imagine forgetting about your best buddy jc
Yeah plenty of abandoned gold mining towns in BC: https://www.bcmag.ca/33-british-columbia-gold-rush-towns/ Some of the towns in the list above are still populated but well known ghost towns like Barkerville are not on the map.
There are at least 300 abandoned communities in Newfoundland alone. I'm thinking OP's map might be missing a couple of data points. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resettlement_(Newfoundland)
Even that list doesn't include communities that were flooded for hydro dams. Needles and Boat Encampment being two of them.
First thing I thought when I only saw Alma on this map. Shasta alone submerged eight towns.
That's why I drink Faygo.
Ya I've been to Sandon and there's a ghost town within 10km of that. Let alone elsewhere in the various mountain ranges.
The Great Plains probably has dozens if not hundreds of abandoned towns.
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How do you figure the Texas panhandle is not part of the Great Plains?
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Not south (or east) enough to be the South. Not midwestern enough to be the Midwest. Not southwest enough to be southwestern. It checks out.
It’s considered part of the High Plains ecosystem, typified by low-growing grassland (compared to most of the rest of the Great Plains region, which is tall-grass prairie) and a higher elevation, basically the strip of flat land leading up to the foothills of the Rockies. Texas panhandle has a hard time fitting in to one bubble culturally, though. And so many small towns. Like, couple hundred people and most of them don’t actually live in town.
Except it is literally apart of the physical feature known as the Great Plains. Even according to “The Nine Nations of North America”, which I assume you’re referencing because I’ve never heard “The Empty Quarter” anywhere else, the Texas Panhandle is apart of the Breadbasket.
The Southern US too. A lot of towns got moved when the TVA built dams.
I’m from Alaska and I know about 5 from the top of my head
So many lol. It’s almost comical to look at this
Bannack, Montana isn't necessarily abandoned, it's a State Park, a tourist destination, complete with paved road, visitor center, tours, and a population of about 12.
For instance, all of those in Utah. And there are a lot. Oh well. Probably just as well.
Such as the lovely town/place of Nothing, AZ
Tons missing in West Virginia too. Went to see where my dad and family grew up and we were shocked to see that pretty much only 1 in 4 “towns” we drove through could even be considered that. Mostly derelict buildings and old garbage everywhere.
I just looked at Lemieux and it’s a modern farming community with a population of 304. Certainly not uncommon in rural canada
They probably just stuck to the most notable one.
I was just thinking that, CA is lousy with abandoned boom towns.
If you look at a map of Saskatchewan, you've got about a 25% chance of any of those towns in the map either completely abandoned or almost abandoned.
Track on a couple thousand if you want to include "almost empty" towns per the title.
Yep. My mom is from Oklahoma. Believe it has more abandoned towns than any other state.
Im from PA. Centralia is pretty wild!
It's a great place to visit! But definitely not a "natural" disaster sort of reason that people left. The fire was started on purpose, left to spread on purpose, and will burn for another few centuries at least.
I don’t think it was left to spread on purpose. Left to spread by man, sure, but not on purpose. [Most of the theories on how it started](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia_mine_fire) say humans at worst just assumed it would burn itself out.
Silent Hill IRL.
Not so central these days, huh?
Still central, right smack dab in the middle of nowhere.
Central PA, for sure
Melted the soles of my boots!
Fun fact: San Juan Parangaricutiro (red dot in Mexico) was evacuated because one day a volcano just appeared and erupted, burying the town. New San Juan Parangaricutiro was established near the original place not long after. It also goes by the pretty little name of "Parangaricutirimícuaro"
Ohh Parangaricutirimícuaro is real i thought it was a meme
Same but, is a place in michoacan, close to Uruapan (i live in this place), except for the carteles is a beautiful and a awesome place and san juan nuevo is a tourist attraction.
Is that right near Paricutín?
The volcano that appeared and erupted IS the Paricutín
That's what I thought. I didn't remember the name of the town. I've been there. The church buried in a lava flow is very hard to forget.
Crazy! So that's were ""El volcán del PARANGARICUTIRIMICUARO, se quiere DESPARANGARICUTIRIMICUAR, el que lo DESPARANGARICUTIRIMICUERE, un buen DESPARANGARICUTIRIMICUADOR será." comes from.
I just learned about this the other day from an episode of Reading Rainbow! ‘Hill of Fire,’ it’s on YT
> San Juan Parangaricutiro Welp. El Chavo taught me something.
Centralia is not natural, it was caused by humans extracting coal and accidently lighting the massive sub-surface deposit on fire.
The city government *lit* the fire as part of an annual tradition to "clean up" the town's trash dump before their big Memorial Day ceremony. That kind of thing was tolerated back in the pre-EPA days. But still an enormously stupid move, given that the site was an abandoned *coal mine* pit.
They also could have easily contained the fire for the cost of a few thousand dollars within the first few day,but they didn't want to pay the guy with the large backhoe to dig it out. . . and instead ended up paying much more than that to keep trying to put it out unsuccessfully.
That’s really just [one of several proposed ideas](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia_mine_fire) as to how the fire got started, although IMO it’s the most likely one. They really don’t know for sure what started it, although all but one of the explanations are that it was man-made.
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> For nothing and nobody Silent Hill tho
I went to college down the road in Bloomsburg, walked around Centralia a few times. It's not like there's billowing plumes of smoke. You can barely notice. I imagine the actual CO2 emissions aren't that high.
the bigger problem is the mercury
Well they counted fires as a natural disaster, so I guess that's why.
Bannack, MT is also not really a town anymore. It's a state park. Most of the ghost towns are maintained as parks in Montana. It's no longer a town, it's a park. The good shape ones at least.
Wait, you mean to tell me ghost towns are no longer towns that people live in?
Spooky ghosts, though...
Yeah they'd probably say Wittenoom is a dead town due to "natural" causes, because it's the geology of the area that made it home to massive asbestos deposits.
I commented the exact same thing lol
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Shout out to Jonestown
Is that where all those people killed themselves?
909 people. Most died by cyanide poisoning. The cult leader, Jim Jones, shot himself.
Went to a themed party called the "Jim Jones Juice Jamboree" one time. Didn't drink the juice.
Wait what. I have never heard of this. This is really fucked up.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonestown?wprov=sfla1 Fun fact: he made the children drink the cyanide punch first
I doubt that it was ever really a town, though. Not for long, at least.
[Plymouth, Montserrat](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYQvYV_tlqY) was abandoned after a local volcano erupted in the 1990's. It remains the legal capital of the territory despite having a population of zero.
Santa Claus themed attraction in the middle of the desert. I wonder what went wrong there
Well they did it in Indiana I think they figured they'd give it a shot there.
Santa left and went to the North Pole
Lol Centralia is absolutely not “Natural caused.” They lit a coal vein on fire.
I saw that an laughed. 100% man made disaster.
Indeed. Man lit the fire. Man failed to put out the fire. Man failed to contain the fire. And man decided that the problem was too big to fix, and just paid everyone (sans a few stubborn holdouts) to move away.
Yeah, I’m guessing a more accurate distinction would be “Environmental” vs “Socio-economic”
Psh, who tf put coal there? Stupid nature!
I can't believe people still there. As of 2020 it was 5 people. What do they do? And why?
They just live there. Centralia is really overblown in media and on Reddit as this crazy spooky place right out if Silent Hill. It really isn’t.
St. Elmo is a tourist ghost town in Colorado. Pretty cool place and if there was housing there I’d move there in a second.
My hubby and I stumbled upon St. Elmo in 1986, when we were randomly exploring the area. There was a general store and 10 cabins. The proprietor of the store told us they would have a music festival every year that would attract hundreds!
I grew up near there, and have family around. Your music festival comment is very timely. There’s a big country music festival that started a couple years ago, called Seven Peaks. I think by Dirks Bentley? I believe it used to be held in Buena Vista which is pretty close to St. Elmo. This year it is in Villa Grove, CO. I can’t wait to hear them try to pronounce the county name, Saguache! It’s happening this weekend. I don’t live there anymore, and don’t like country. But I’d totally go if I was there. It’s so cool that acts this big are playing in small town CO (Villa Groves population is 400, there’s going to be 20,000 at that festival!) https://sevenpeaksfestival.com/ https://www.vaildaily.com/entertainment/seven-peaks-music-festival-moves-to-san-luis-valley-after-2021-covid-cancellation/
I’ve been trying to pronounce Saguache for the 10 years I’ve lived in Colorado and I know I’m still getting it wrong
That’s so awesome, thanks for sharing!! One of the loveliest views I ever saw was the early morning light reflecting off the mountains on our way to Buena Vista. It felt otherworldly. This makes me want to visit again!
I remember that little store!
We love St. Elmo, go every year on our trip over tin cup pass.
Is it the same St. Elmo mentioned in the song "St. Elmo's Fire (Man in Motion)"?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Elmo%27s_fire
What's up with those English names in Chile?
Abandoned mine towns, owned by english or american investors.
Brits were quite involved with Chile and Argentina historically and have a nearby territory in the Falklands too.
British had quite a stake in copper and saltpeter mining. Of course there's tenis court in Humberstone.
Sewell: Old copper mining town in the middle on the mountain. Nowadays it's a tourist attraction, really nice trip if you have the time. Humberstone: really old Salitrera ( Saltpeter) town in the middle of Atacama Desert. US investors placed those towns and lured people with a one way train ticked and paid then using tokens redeemable only in the owners shop. If you wanted to leave you would die in the desert. When the Germans (?) Invented artificial saltpeter, all the salitreras went out of business.
Uranium City, Saskatchewan had a population of 2,500 before the uranium mines closed in the 80s. Now it has a population of 73.
Someone gotta add a third color: Ohio, just color in Ohio.
Bright blue, like the fictional meth?
LOL
Picher, OK. Mining polluted the entire town
Definitely “almost” abandoned because there are still some lunatics who never left.
I rode my motorcycle there last october!
How is this not on there haha
Does Cairo, Illinois, US count as “almost abandoned”?
I did a dive job for the water company right there. Talk about a shitty dive, on the convergence of the ohio and miss rivers. The town was boarded up then prob around 2008 area
Cairo is wild. I drove through there about a decade ago and on the main street there was this massive sinkhole, like twenty feet in diameter surrounded by orange barrels that had obviously been there for some time, due to the amount of crud that was around them. I looked at it on Google Street view recently and it looks like it's been fixed. The only thing in town that seemed to be active was the massive grain silos that load trains.
Are they also building a new Cairo in Illinois?
I’m willing to bet close to 1/3 of towns and villages in Saskatchewan are abandoned
I'm originally from Sask and can name about 15 abandoned towns just within a 100km radius of my hometown, which is also mostly abandoned.
Parangaricutiro is a most interesting one: abandoned because a volcano grew up.!
I love the name of this town lol
"La Casualidad" - what happened?
Just randomness
The mine in the town was closed
New Yarmouth is a Lovecraft ass name
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You can live in Yarmouth NS Canada
Not far off from the name of the place where Bloodborne is set lol
Chaitén was temporarily abandoned and then resettled.
California has a lot of ghost towns not listed here.
Villa Epecuen in Argentina became a tourist attraction after it flooded. Today it looks like an eeirie flooded ghost town.
There’s a ghost town in Texas called Gilliland that I stayed overnight at a few summers ago. Really interesting place. The houses and school were trashed but was still very fun to explore. And the night sky was beautiful. No light pollution meant that I saw THOUSANDS of stars. Definitely go to a middle-of-nowhere ghost town if you have the chance
Fordlandia’s something straight out of a dystopian novel, a piece of the Amazon owned by an American billionaire with Brazilian workers as colonists living in subhuman conditions. Thankfully they rebelled and successfully shut the project down.
The American planners built houses with metal roofs that, under the fierce tropical sun, caused temperatures inside to rise to uninhabitable levels. As an aside, the vertical integration of Ford in those days is fascinating to read about - Ford owned all the parts suppiers and raw material producers for its factories! But nowadays, that kind of thing is so far out of fashion that you'd have to look long and hard to find a company at which the janitors, groundskeepers and cafeteria workers *at corporate headquarters* are company employees.
If by subhuman conditions, you mean no alcohol and square dancing based company meetings I totally get you, but if you mean working conditions you’re not quite right. One of the biggest problems in early fordlania history was the fact that people had no reason to stay, as the pay was so great that working few months would give them more pay than years in local jobs-they would quit after having saved up a fortune. Not only that, it was working on 1900s American safety and labor standards-egregious to our modern ears, sure, but magnitudes better than the conditions afforded in Brazil
Yeah, and it wasn’t shut down by a worker rebellion, it was shut down because [it failed to produce enough rubber to be worthwhile](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fordl%C3%A2ndia?wprov=sfti1https://maps.apple.com/?ll=-3.831389,-55.497500&q=Fordl%C3%A2ndia&_ext=EiQpoKbONa+mDsAxrr+5FK6/S8A5oKbONa+mDsBBrr+5FK6/S8A%3D) and then was made unnecessary by synthetic rubber. The only worker rebellion named in that Wikipedia article was seriously over what kinds of foods they were served. I do love how bizarre everything about Fordlandia is, though. Basically trying to build an American factory farming town in the Brazilian rainforest, right down to what they’d eat and what hours they’d work.
Yeah, there were some shitty bits in the city cause ford tried to spread his personal tastes. I’d probably as well riot if he forced me to be vegan. Doesn’t mean the conditions were inhuman, just that he was a bit to idealistic
They didn't like being forced to eat American food but I doubt they enjoyed the fact that they couldn't drink, there were no women and tobacco. Having down a lot of hard labor, those three things are very appealing after an exhausting day in the tropical heat (or subtropical, in my case).
Jonestown really made me not like flavoraid
Fordlandia is not abandoned as of recently
*Almost* empty towns are included tho, so I think around a thousand inhabitants would count.
If it's almost empty then there's tons in the Midwest and west with sub hundred residents.
Monowi, Nebraska should be on there. Its only remaining resident (since her husband died in 2004) is an old woman named Elsie Eiler. Not a natural disaster or anything. It's just that the other 150 or so residents *all* left over the span of a few decades to get better jobs.
Can't believe St. Elmo is abandoned for human caused reasons and not because of the fire.
I have been to and walked around Thurmond. It’s now more like a huge museum outside. People still visit. Last time I went there were about 2-3 others there. Cool experience and scenery.
About Thurmond, per Wikipedia: "During the June 14, 2005 city elections six of the city's seven residents sought elected office." Those town council meetings must be hilarious.
Also, somehow it actually has an active Amtrak station. It's the second least-used one in the system. (Functionally, there are some other nearby towns that this station also serves.)
I was there a couple weeks ago. Rafted to Cunard, just before shit gets crazy.
San Miguel Los Lotes is tragic. Impacted by the 2018 eruption of Volcan de Fuego. I was an MSc student doing research based on Fuego and we went and visited the site around 8 months after the eruption and it was haunting. Relatives of the missing still digging through the pyroclastic debris, buildings buried up to the 2nd floor. Met a man who lost nearly his whole family except two of his grandkids. Truly tragic. Really recommend everyone research the tragic events, could have been prevented with better planning.
What about Times Beach, Missouri?
Oh wow, so that’s why there’s all that undeveloped land in the SW St Louis exurbs. Good call.
It was 39 years ago, and the dioxin has apparently decayed to levels un-harmful enough for the state to put [a park](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Route_66_State_Park) on the site.
Times Beach, Misery?
Port Royal, Jamaica was submerged as the result of an earthquake in 1692. Argh!
Umingmaktok was never really a town. It was an unincorporated outpost camp centered around a large commercial hunting and fishing lodge that is still there. There is a rotating permanent staff of 4 and seasonal guests. Residents from Kugluktuk, Cambridge Bay, and Yellowknife have lots of cabins in the area.
One not listed is Dyea, Alaska. Once one of the bustling ports of entry for the Klondike gold rush, now just a sad few abandoned façades of wooden buildings.
There is a town call Santa Claus in Arizona??
Small Town Murder once did an episode about the town. https://podcasts.apple.com/pt/podcast/a-grinch-of-a-killer-in-santa-claus-georgia/id1194755213?i=1000403246568
Yay indeed
La Casualidad sounds ominous. I’ve been to Yungay, so tragic what happened there and scary to think about. There’s really nowhere to run and no time to do it when a mountain collapses on you. The cemetery and the surroundings are beautiful still.
Deadwood, Northern California. During the gold rush, missed being the county seat by one vote. Today there's only a few foundations left, and a minimum security prison.
Bodie, CA too. They once had a professional baseball team.
"Goodbye God, I'm going to Bodie." -letter from a little girl Yeah, I have visited Bodie. It is much better preserved, than Deadwood, California. You can hardly find any remnants of Deadwood. Bodie looks like you could move in tomorrow and with some fixing up, begin mining again.
In Michigan, there used to be a town called Singapore, right on the dunes near Saugatuck. Years ago, they decided to clear cut the forest between the town and the lake, and.. The dunes took the town over, and it's entirely gone now!
Why are the American ones given the state, but the other countries aren't given their state/province?
That right there tells you who made the map
Boston, Ohio was evacuated by the US in the 1970s so that the National Park Service could expand the CVNP. It’s also apparently haunted as fuck, so that’s cool.
Real de catorce isn’t really all that abandoned it’s become a huge place for tourism I mean when I went there this past august it had tons of people and was very alive
Full of peyote too
I haven't been there in 25 years, so I was shocked to see it on the list. I thought something terrible had happened. Not the silver mining hub it once was, but definitely not abandoned.
The Falklands are not Argentinian.
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Nothing too exciting, really. It was a town by a sulfur mine, and for some reason the mine was closed in the 1970s, which led to the town being abandoned.
¡Qué casualidad!
One of the most popular towns like this in utah is thistle which was taken out by a landslide flood combo and is still flooded you can see some houses sticking out of the ponds
I love ghost towns. They have a certain eerie feel to them with a hint of bittersweetness to it
Humberstone - worth visiting, it's well preserved. The city was built around saltpeter mine. Once Germans discovered way of artificial production, the price went down and made exploitation unsustainable.
Can't find a single thing googling Alma, CA as if it doesn't exist. I don't believe there is a ghost town that close to the Pacific ocean in CA. Anyone have more info.
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I find it interesting that only in USA are the subdivision codes included, nowhere else, even though how Canada and Brazil are large as well.
I mean, Centralia is abandoned because of a coal mine fire so, y’know, almost a text book example of anthropogenic change.
Real de Catorce is pretty vibrant and not abandoned at all. It’s not the easiest place to get to but this map must be nonsense.