Ghost Towns (50s, Lincoln, biggest, viking)

[jtur88]

There is a site with detailed information about hundreds of ghost towns:

Ghost Towns and History of the American West

Turn your speakers down to avoid the hokey music that plays over the portal.

[skinem]

Originally Posted by j_k_k

There are one or two on the Hanford site (eastern WA) with some fairly good preservation because the residents got thirty days to pack, after which access was controlled by people with automatic weapons, armored fighting vehicles and air support and remains so to this day. That means no accidental fires from kids fooling around, no looting and no vandalism.

Yup, such as White Bluff, Hanford. Wasn't Richland originally located on the site? I understand that there is some limited access now, but may be wrong.

Another neat side effect of the nuclear site and your point about controlled access is that it may be the largest area left of native, original untouched grassland left in Eastern Washington.

Historically speaking, these and Centralia, PA are more modern day ghost towns!

Eastern Oregon has quite a few scattered throughout it as does Nevada and New Mexico. Much of the west does due to mining and the mistaken notion of "rain following the plow"...and the idea that you could successfully farm over 4000' elevation.

[j_k_k]

Originally Posted by skinem

Yup, such as White Bluff, Hanford. Wasn't Richland originally located on the site? I understand that there is some limited access now, but may be wrong.

Another neat side effect of the nuclear site and your point about controlled access is that it may be the largest area left of native, original untouched grassland left in Eastern Washington.

My info (which came from Wikipedia, so all the usual caveats apply) suggests that the original Richland site was the north bank of the Yakima and Snake, and that the residents did get kicked out like the Hanford and White Bluffs people, but that ancestral Richland wasn't on what is now the Hanford site. You are right that there is limited access, in the form of a very few tours which fill up within seconds of open signup. I'd love to take one.

It's too bad that invasive foreign species like Russian thistle have gotten in, or it really would be a great stretch of straight native grassland. Even so, when we had the big fire about ten years back (I was driving back from Wally that evening and I'll sure never forget that sky ahead of me) that burned a couple hundred thousand acres of the site in addition to damage in north Benton City, I didn't understand why environmentalists (which whom I generally sympathize) were bleating about the damage to the environment from the fire. Fires convert all sorts of dead waste matter to carbon (especially tumbleweeds) and prepare the ground for new growth. Just as with Mt. St. Helens, it was sure to grow back soon. It's a lot less fragile than tundra, for example. Back in my homeland of Kansas we burn pasture every spring. Kills bugs small and large, destroys non-grass plants, combusts cowpies, rejuvenates the land. We learned it from the Indians and we do it to this day.

I asked someone knowledgeable once what happens when oblivious boaters up along the White Bluffs decide to get out and picnic on the west bank of the river. I was told that as long as they stay below the high water line, basically on the sandbar, they are surveilled but not bothered. If they decide to go exploring, they meet guys with automatic weapons posing urgent questions and giving even more urgent instructions.

[catman]

There are several in New Mexico. I've been to White Oaks near Carrizozo several times. I plan to visit Shakespeare in the SW part of the state.

[South Jersey Styx]

We have several dozen ghost towns in NJ. I believe that most of them are towns from the earliest/colonial industries that were eventually abandoned, among them -- glass, steel, oyster farming, and agricultural. Some are super-creepy, still having plates and utensils laid out on tables as if people just left in a hurry.

We also have a repertoire of haunted places whether they are ghost towns, buildings, trees, swamps, military shelters, former prisons, trees, mansions, etc. The list grows as residents share these stories with each other.

Alot of this stuff was made famous in the "Weird New Jersey" books and publications.

Anyone interested can take a look at:

Ghost Towns of New Jersery
Ghost Towns of New Jersey

These are just two websites but there's plenty more in books, recordings, and internet resources.

[hamellr]

I maintain a list of Ghost Towns (and other historical sites and information) specific to Oregon in a Google Earth file. You can download it off my site: PNW Photoblog » Historic Oregon presented in Google Earth

A good portion of them are completely gone, not even existing on modern maps. But if you know where to look there are tons of signs of towns. Keep in mind that towns popped up where it was convenient or close to something important. A lot of State Highways are built along old Stage Coach and Train tracks which had towns every so often, sometimes as close as a mile together.

[Summerz]

Am also a fan of Ghost towns, thanks for all the info.

[j_k_k]

Here is a link to a great photojournal of ghost towns around the world. Only one mentioned in this thread, Bodie, is on the list. Very melancholy.

[CelticViking]

Originally Posted by South Jersey Styx

We have several dozen ghost towns in NJ. I believe that most of them are towns from the earliest/colonial industries that were eventually abandoned, among them -- glass, steel, oyster farming, and agricultural. Some are super-creepy, still having plates and utensils laid out on tables as if people just left in a hurry.

We also have a repertoire of haunted places whether they are ghost towns, buildings, trees, swamps, military shelters, former prisons, trees, mansions, etc. The list grows as residents share these stories with each other.

Alot of this stuff was made famous in the "Weird New Jersey" books and publications.

Anyone interested can take a look at:

Ghost Towns of New Jersery
Ghost Towns of New Jersey

These are just two websites but there's plenty more in books, recordings, and internet resources.

A lot of people dont realize for how densely populated and populated new jersey is...it has extremely rural and farmland areas....not even mentioning the pine barrens.

[jtur88]

As a baseball fan, one of my favorite ghost towns is Santa Rita, New Mexico, the birthplace of Hall of Fame ballplayer Ralph Kiner. The "site" of Santa Rita now hangs a thousand feet in the air, above the excavation of an open pit mine that was dug under the original town site. It's in the Bayard area, east of Silver City.