Thursday, January 12, 2023
Where is the closest ghost town - where is the closest ghost town -
Malaysian Ghost Towns Series - Lembah Beringin - Where are you going?
The abandoned mines, mills, and one-time outposts dotting the U. They're the victims of time, yes, but also of greed, changing roadways and railways, and old-fashioned karmic retribution. Some are restored villages catering to tourists. Some have rich histories of fleeting prosperity. Here are the best ghost towns to seek out in each state. Spectre is perhaps the newest ghost town in America, and one of the weirder entries on this list.
They're locals. Elias National Park. Its iconic red mill on the hill spans 14 stories above a glacier and can be explored by visitors who take the official Kennecott Mill Town Tour. This once mineral-rich town near the southern border—where prospectors flocked for zinc, copper, silver, lead, and gold—was named after the wife of general store owner Julius Andrew. The Ruby Mercantile—site of the grisly crimes that give the book its name—still stands, along with a restored school, warehouse, and courthouse.
Rush was founded in the late s as a mining community along the banks of what is now the Buffalo National River in the Ozark Mountains. Zinc ore was in high demand, with production peaking during World War I. The leftover homes and mining ruins, maintained by the National Park Service, endure as a fascinating detour while camping in the park or floating the river.
The largest unreconstructed ghost town in America has a story that reads like Boom Town Founded in Red Light District. And by , all 2,!! That means the explorable city's saloons still have balls on the pool table as if abandoned mid-game, and the grocery remains stocked with extremely perished canned goods. Founded in , this highfalutin whistle-stop and mining town was home to 2, residents, mines, and enough hotels, brothels, saloons, and dance halls to keep everybody in town entertained.
Yet despite decades of abandonment and numerous fire threats, St. Several original structures are still intact, providing an unfiltered glimpse into life during the mining boom.
Here, stacked stone structures in the forest offer a look at a town, the chimneys and walls serving as skeletal remains of rotted-away buildings cloaked in moss.
This is, after all, a town where the blacksmith was rumored to have a thing for decapitation. Connecticut, it appears, is not messing around in the nefarious spirits department. The northeast is full of great Atlantic vacation towns, but Woodland Beach never quite took.
The secluded beachfront once had a resort and roller coaster that stretched over the water, yet a lack of interest and severe weather put an end to the fun.
Little remains today, although the beach is still revered by locals, especially those who like to fish from the pier. Look around and you may spot an abandoned lighthouse, small wooden shipwreck, and leftover ruins of an old dancehall. Located on Egmont Key near St. At its peak, it included residents with about 70 buildings, including a movie theater and bowling alley, not to mention electricity and telephones—fancy stuff for the era.
Fort Dade was deactivated in , and although the lighthouse is still in operation, the rest of the town is in ruins, with deteriorating brick roads and staircases leading to military batteries that no longer protect Tampa Bay. To visit, catch a ferry from Fort DeSoto Park.
This remote community started as a leper colony in , housing some 8, in quarantine until , when—two decades after Hansen's disease was cured—the state gave residents the option to live out their lives in Kalaupapa or reintegrate with society. Decades later, the peninsula is now a national historic park—one that requires advance planning to visit.
It rests at the base of some of the world's highest sea cliffs; there are no hospitals, stores, or overnight accommodations, and the dwindling community can only be reached by small aircraft, authorized boats, or on a strenuous hike by foot or on muleback.
The few who have visited encounter breathtaking views, plus a number of churches, more than 15 cemeteries, homes, and a post office that somehow hasn't closed yet. A mountain town then overflowing with silver, lead, and copper, this Salmon River city became a hot spot in , housing a blacksmith, general store, school, and church.
There was even a three-story stamp mill and a Wells Fargo outpost to help everybody manage their riches. However, freight costs were high, and the ride was over by Nowadays, you can safely see it from the sidewalk, which is tested for safety, but visitors aren't allowed inside the buildings due to contamination from the arsenic and mercury used to separate the metals.
Smaller ghost towns Bonanza and Custer in the neighboring Salmon-Challis National Forest are about an hour away from Bayhorse, in case you want to play ghost town bingo.
But it might as well be: There are 20 buildings within these forbidden walls just outside of Chicago, giving it a sinister, castle-like aurora.
Built by convict labor with limestone quarried on-site, the Joliet Correctional Center as it's officially named operated from to There were a few fires over the year, including at least one arson, and some areas were eventually deemed unsafe for prisoners. The prison was abandoned after closing but reopened for tours in Notorious murder clown John Wayne Gacy was probably the most notorious resident, but the facility raised its profile even higher as a Blues Brothers filming location.
Indiana is home to more than 50 ghost towns, though most of them are so ghostly that there are no structures remaining, only the wayward cemetery or traces of foundation buried in the ground. But Dunn—a tiny and extinct town in the northwestern corner of Hoosier Country that sported a post office and two general stores during its six-year lifespan —stands simply due to the fact that the only thing creepier than a cluster of century-old abandoned grain silos is those same silos casting a shadow over abandoned train tracks.
The acre park is beautiful but eerie, with woodlands, wetlands, and a prairie dotted with bright pink Sioux quartzite and at least 17 Native American burial mounds.
The ruins of a brick post office, now covered with an overwhelming amount of graffiti, was part of Gibraltar, an old settlement by the Big Sioux River crossing. The park's haunted reputation dates back to , when three brothers killed four teenagers before being sentenced to life in prison. Unrelated, there are ample campsites available to visitors. Elk Falls embraces its unremarkable loneliness, billing itself as the "largest living ghost town in America.
There's also an old one-room schoolhouse, cemetery, and pottery shop renovated from an abandoned farmstead formerly called the Rock Garden. However, the southeast Kansas settlement is most famous or infamous for its annual Outhouse Tour , a two-day mini-festival with decorated outhouses on display throughout the extremely tiny town. It was abandoned for years and rebuilt in the s to preserve its history. The "ghost structures" include a coal tipper, train depot, and school.
Exploring the old mines and creaky buildings with flashlights is fun, but the best way to visit is by taking the annual Ghost Tour Train , which happens just once a year every autumn.
Despite having a rich history, Louisiana is surprisingly low on ghost towns that haven't been completely lost to the elements. An exception is Longleaf, an old sawmill town that helped the south rebuild its economy following the Civil War. By , business stalled and workers were fired without warning on Valentine's Day, no less. The population dwindled, and the acre site fell into disrepair for decades. The leftover buildings are now enjoying a new life as the Southern Forest Heritage Museum, and the old mill is used for weddings and other events.
A trio of steam-powered locomotives no longer work, but you can ride two miles of track on a small railbus. Swan Island is the main feature of Perkins Township, a ghost town in the Kennebec River that's only accessible by kayak, canoe, or a five-minute ferry ride.
Once inhabited by Native Americans, later used by explorers for farming and ice harvesting, and eventually popularized as a summer getaway even visited by Aaron Burr and Benedict Arnold , Perkins underwent several phases before the 20th century. In the early s, the town was disincorporated, and following the Great Depression and increased pollution in the Kennebec River, its usefulness vanished, leaving the nature-rich island practically vacant by the s.
Nearly a century later, visitors can camp, hike, hunt, fish, see structures from the s, and look out for native wildlife like bald eagles and white-tailed deer. There's also an old cemetery, if you'd like to pay respects to the people left behind.
Originally founded in the s, the town was renamed after the C. Daniels company, which bought the land and took over the textile mill. Karma played out a few years later when Tropical Storm Agnes wiped out most of what was left. Although the mill is now out of sight on private property, you can still explore much of the land as part of Patapsco Valley State Park. The gothic Saint Stanislaus Kostka Catholic Church, struck by lightning in , is down to just a couple walls of stone and a cemetery.
You'll also spot a couple of railroad bridges, scattered foundations, and staircases that go nowhere. There's even a car left behind by flooding. Still, a dam for the mill remains in place, and the river is popular for canoeing and kayaking. Massachusetts is full of old abandoned places , but there's just something cool and creepy about Dogtown. At first glance, there's not much to see—just a thicket of woods and walking trails in a Cape Ann park. Take your time and you'll stumble across leftover stones and cellar holes from an old colonial-era town known for its population of witches, prostitutes, and other hoodlums.
In case you're wondering, the name comes from the wild dogs that roamed the streets. The reservoir view is a nice bonus. Large boulders with inscriptions like "If work stops, values decay" and "Help mother" were meant to be inspirational during the Great Depression, but come across as oddly Orwellian today. Despite being home to one of the best road trips in the U. But Fayette was an early settlement that actually beamed with life. Established in , it was a hub of the iron rush along the limestone bluffs of the southern Garden Peninsula.
The ruins of Fayette now reside in a state park, with nearly 20 remarkably sturdy buildings still standing, including a hotel, opera house, and a definitely-not-creepy industrial furnace complex whose towering brick frontage serves as a brutal contrast to the deep blues of the shore from which it rises. Forestville was doing pretty well for a while in the mids. The southeastern town had hotels, shops, and a couple of mills.
Then it all fell apart when a new railroad bypassed the town in As population centers developed elsewhere in Southeast Minnesota, businesses closed and the area descended into ghost town status. Fortunately, it's been preserved and restored in Forestville State Park with a farm, bridge, and fully stocked general store.
Feel free to also tour the mile Mystery Cave , the longest known cave in the state. Built on the cotton trade and slave labor in nearby plantations, Rodney was a thriving port town on the Mississippi River in the mids and saw its share of Civil War gunfire.
Before all that, it was actually three votes away from being named the state capital. Eventually, the river shifted course away from the town and the population dwindled. Prone to flooding, much of Rodney has been washed away over the years, leaving behind a haunting, historic ghost town. A few buildings remain, including the Zion Baptist Church and a dilapidated cemetery. The most notable structure is the two-story Presbyterian church, which still has much of its interior in place behind broken windows.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment