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91-630: Quindaro Townsite was once a settlement, then a ghost town , and later an archaeological site. It is around North 27th Street and the Missouri Pacific Railroad tracks in Kansas City, Kansas . It was placed on the National Register of Historic Places on May 22, 2002. The townsite was purchased and organized in 1856 from and by Wyandots for development as a port-of-entry for Free Staters settling further within

182-519: A Presbyterian , in 1862 started classes in his home for the children of former slaves. The Reverend Eben Blachly had been a farmer in Dane County, Wisconsin , one of the early pioneers who had migrated from Pennsylvania. According to Blachly family legend, he was nearly hung as a "Northern spy" while trying to find his oldest son, a Union soldier who had been captured by the Confederates. With

273-420: A "bust" (e.g., catastrophic resource price collapse). A gold rush often brought intensive but short-lived economic activity to a remote village, only to leave a ghost town once the resource was depleted. Boomtowns can often decrease in size as quickly as they grew. Sometimes, all, or nearly all, of the population can desert the town, resulting in a ghost town. The dismantling of a boomtown can often occur on

364-415: A building was added for teaching auto mechanics and repair. The university closed in 1943, and aside from its statue of abolitionist John Brown , nothing but cornerstones of some early buildings remains. Some buildings were lost to fire, others to demolition as sites were redeveloped. The last structures remaining were three faculty houses, which were demolished near the end of the 20th century. One houses

455-498: A dozen professors interviewed those among the nearby African-American community for their family accounts of Quindaro. The history and legends of the settlement lived in stories told by their descendants and friends. Because of the brief life of Quindaro, it was little documented in written records. Public history projects have identified some new sources. In December 2007, the Kansas Humanities Council awarded

546-518: A free territory. The decision was left to the vote of the territory's residents. Abolitionists and Free-Staters approached the Wyandot town, Wyandotte City , to establish a town company to create a Free-State port to counter the pro-slavery ports of Leavenworth , Atchison , and Kansas City, Missouri . However, just such a town company had already been founded within Wyandotte City, with

637-657: A grant to the Concerned Citizens of Old Quindaro, Kansas City, for In Unity There is Strength: The African American Experience , an exhibit to interpret the history of former slaves who escaped to Quindaro from across the Missouri River in the mid-19th century. The exhibit was to cover religious, educational, and business elements of the community they created. In 2018, Quindaro community stakeholders including historians, archeologists, scholars, and activists began resolving decades of struggle over how to manage

728-473: A group of men chartered Quindaro Freedman's School (later Western University ), the first black school west of the Mississippi River . Former slaves continued to gather in the residential community, which became mostly African American by the late 19th century. The area was incorporated into Kansas City in the early 20th century. Western University closed in 1943. The town sharply declined during

819-703: A host ore deposit exhausted by mining ). The town may have also declined because of natural or human-caused disasters such as floods , prolonged droughts, extreme heat or extreme cold, government actions, uncontrolled lawlessness, war, pollution, or nuclear and radiation-related accidents and incidents . The term can sometimes refer to cities, towns, and neighborhoods that, though still populated, are significantly less so than in past years; for example, those affected by high levels of unemployment and dereliction. Some ghost towns, especially those that preserve period-specific architecture, have become tourist attractions. Some examples are Bannack, Montana and Oatman, Arizona in

910-645: A nationwide economic depression and the American Civil War . The lower commercial townsite was abandoned and became overgrown. It was rediscovered during archaeological study in the late 1980s, which revealed many parts of the 1850s town. The only structure surviving from Western University and Quindaro is a full-size statue of abolitionist John Brown . In 1978 the John Brown Memorial Plaza was dedicated. The John D. Dingell Jr. Conservation, Management, and Recreation Act designated it

1001-514: A one-room schoolhouse. Another example of infrastructure remaining is the former town of Weston, Illinois , that voted itself out of existence and turned the land over for construction of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory . Many houses and even a few barns remain, used for housing visiting scientists and storing maintenance equipment, while roads that used to cross through the site have been blocked off at

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1092-487: A park to incorporate the ruins and archaeology of Quindaro. Their 13 proposals were presented at a major public meeting, displayed at the state capitol rotunda, and presented at numerous venues around the state. While no consensus formed on how to develop a park, the plans were successful in engaging the public and teaching history. In 1996, the University of Kansas sponsored an oral history project, in which more than

1183-570: A part in the abandonment of settlements within Europe. Two examples are Pripyat and Chernobyl . After the Chernobyl disaster of 1986, Both cities were evacuated due to dangerous radiation levels within the area. As of today, Pripyat remains completely abandoned, and Chernobyl has around 500 remaining inhabitants. Another example is Todoque in Spain. During the 2021 Cumbre Vieja volcanic eruption ,

1274-604: A part of Quindaro. John Morgan Walden was one of many young men attracted to Quindaro, where he founded a Free-Soil paper called Quindaro Chindowan . The name Chindowan was a Wyandot word for "leader". Walden also was a missionary to freedmen and later became a bishop in the Methodist Church . After the Kansas–Nebraska Act was passed in 1854, a western branch of the Underground Railroad

1365-444: A planned basis. Mining companies nowadays will create a temporary company town to service a mine site, building all the accommodations, shops and services required, and then remove them once the resource has been extracted. Modular buildings can be used to facilitate the process. In some cases, multiple factors may remove the economic basis for a community; some former mining towns on U.S. Route 66 suffered both mine closures when

1456-452: A recent economic and holiday population surge. Another town, Sungai Lembing , Malaysia, was almost deserted due to closure of a tin mine in 1986 was revived in 2001 and has become a tourist destination since then. Foncebadón , a village in León , Spain, that was mostly abandoned and only inhabited by a mother and son, is slowly being revived owing to the ever-increasing stream of pilgrims on

1547-434: A result of a natural or human-made disaster or other causes; they restrict the term to settlements that were deserted because they were no longer economically viable. Some believe that any settlement with visible tangible remains should not be called a ghost town; others say, conversely, that a ghost town should contain the tangible remains of buildings. Whether or not the settlement must be completely deserted, or may contain

1638-422: A shift towards fly-in fly-out arrangements over building a company town , in order to avoid the development of ghost towns once a mining resource has been fully extracted. The Middle East has many ghost towns and ruins that were created when the shifting of politics or the fall of empires caused capital cities to be socially or economically unviable, such as Ctesiphon . The rise of real-estate speculation and

1729-420: A small population, is also a matter for debate. Generally, though, the term is used in a looser sense, encompassing any and all of these definitions. American author Lambert Florin defined a ghost town as "a shadowy semblance of a former self." Factors leading to the abandonment of towns include depleted natural resources, economic activity shifting elsewhere, railroads and roads bypassing or no longer accessing

1820-650: A string of ghost towns in areas such as the Solana Valley . Traditional agricultural practices such as sheep and goat rearing, on which the mountain village economy was based, were not taken over by the local youth, especially after the lifestyle changes that swept over rural Spain during the second half of the 20th century. Examples for ghost towns in Italy include the medieval village of Fabbriche di Careggine near Lago di Vagli , in province of Lucca , in Tuscany ,

1911-684: A time. John returned again to Ohio, where on September 8, 1858, he was admitted on trial to the Cincinnati Annual Conference of the M.E. Church . His first two years of ministry were spent on various circuits. In 1860 he was admitted to the Conference in full connection and sent to the York Street Church in Cincinnati. While he was there the American Civil War began. Rev. Walden became very active in

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2002-468: A town's life. In 1944, occupying German Waffen-SS troops murdered almost the entire population of the French village Oradour-sur-Glane . A new settlement was built nearby after the war, but the old town was left depopulated on the orders of President Charles de Gaulle , as a permanent memorial. In Germany, numerous smaller towns and villages in the former eastern territories were completely destroyed in

2093-481: Is now home to more than four million people. Wars and rebellions in some African countries have left many towns and villages deserted. Since 2003, when President François Bozizé came to power, thousands of citizens of the Central African Republic have been forced to flee their homes as a result of the escalating conflict between armed rebels and government troops. Villages accused of supporting

2184-466: The Sperrgebiet ("forbidden zone"), effectively criminalizing new settlement. The small mining towns of this area, among them Pomona , Elizabeth Bay and Kolmanskop , were exempt from this ban, but the denial of new land claims soon rendered all of them ghost towns. The town of Dhanushkodi , India is a ghost town. It was destroyed during the 1964 Rameswaram cyclone and remains uninhabited in

2275-592: The Black Music Journal , states that "Western University at Quindaro, Kansas, was probably the earliest black school west of the Mississippi and the best black musical training center in the Midwest for almost thirty years during the 1900s through the 1920s." In the early 1900s, Western University added a full industrial curriculum , with buildings to house livestock and another for a laundry. Later

2366-469: The Chernobyl disaster of 1986, dangerously high levels of nuclear contamination escaped into the surrounding area, and nearly 200 towns and villages in Ukraine and neighbouring Belarus were evacuated, including the cities of Pripyat and Chernobyl . The area was so contaminated that many of the evacuees were never permitted to return to their homes. Pripyat is the most famous of these abandoned towns; it

2457-718: The Independent Press. In his editorials he opposed the liquor traffic and so-called "squatter sovereignty." Illinoisans starved him out by refusing to support his paper, and in 1855 he returned to Ohio, where he became a reporter with the Cincinnati Commercial . John became deeply interested in the Kansas troubles while reporting from the Democratic National Convention of 1856. Indeed, he went to Kansas, where he established

2548-699: The Interstate highway system replaced the railroads as the favored means of transportation. Ghost towns are common in mining or mill towns in all the western states, and many eastern and southern states as well. Residents are compelled to leave in search of more productive areas when the resources that had created an employment boom in these towns were eventually exhausted. Sometimes a ghost town consists of many abandoned buildings as in Bodie, California , or standing ruins as in Rhyolite, Nevada , while elsewhere only

2639-615: The Kansas Territory , with construction starting in 1857. The boomtown population peaked at 600, rapidly settled by migrants. They were supported by the New England Emigrant Aid Company , who were trying to help secure Kansas as a free territory. One of several villages hugging the narrow bank of the Missouri River under the bluffs, the town was established as part of the resistance to stop

2730-551: The Missouri River . Planners seeking to establish a Free-State port noted the site's advantages: At a point six miles above the mouth of the Kansas river, on Wyandotte Indian land, they found a fine natural rock ledge where the river ran along the bank six to twelve feet deep, making a convenient landing. Plenty of wood and rock were at hand for building purposes and fertile land was adjacent. Construction started in January 1857, and

2821-537: The National Register of Historic Places . Starting in 2002, an attempt to declare an official ghost town in California stalled when the adherents of the town of Bodie and those of Calico , in Southern California , could not agree on the most deserving settlement for the recognition. A compromise was eventually reached—Bodie became the official state gold rush ghost town, while Calico was named

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2912-943: The Quindaro Chindowan, a Free-Soil paper in the Free State port-of-entry town of Quindaro . He was a delegate to five Free-State conventions, including the Leavenworth Constitutional Convention of 1858. That same year he campaigned over half the Territory, opposing the Lecompton Constitution . John Morgan Walden served in the Kansas Territorial Legislature in 1857. He also was the State Superintendent of Education for

3003-544: The Quindaro Chindowan, a friend of Susan B. Anthony , and fellow crusader for the rights of women and children. She was an important Conductor and "Station Master" of the Underground Railroad in Quindaro. She left a letter about a time when a freedom seeker named Caroline was brought to her house. Fourteen slave hunters, including her slave master, were camped on the edge of town and looking for her. Caroline

3094-753: The Quindaro Townsite National Commemorative Site in 2019, allowing the National Park Service to provide technical and financial assistance for preservation and education. With the Kansas–Nebraska Act , the Kansas Territory was opened for settlement with the promise that the settlers would vote to decide whether the state would enter the Union as a Slave State or a Free State. The New England Emigrant Aid Company (NEEAC) had already aided more than 1,200 settlers in their migration, hoping to secure Kansas as

3185-591: The Stanford Battle Area , were commandeered by the War Office for use as training grounds for British and US troops. Although this was intended to be a temporary measure, the residents were never allowed to return, and the villages have been used for military training ever since. Three miles or 5 km southeast of Imber is Copehill Down , a deserted village purpose-built for training in urban warfare . Disasters & natural disasters have played

3276-826: The Methodist Episcopal Church. During his service he presided at some time or other over every Conference in the U.S.A. He also inspected missions in Mexico, South America, Europe, China and Japan. He did much to shape the missionary policy of his Church. Walden was a delegate to the Ecumenical Conferences in London in 1881, in Washington in 1891 and in Toronto in 1911. With respect to church organization, he insisted on strict adherence to

3367-605: The Old Quindaro Museum. The Quindaro Underground Railroad Museum is located nearby in the Vernon Multipurpose Center, the former Quindaro Colored School. An archaeological study in 1987–1988 for a public project revealed the remains of the 1850s townsite. The foundations of 20 main buildings, two outbuildings, three wells, and one cistern were found. From original maps, newspapers, and letters, researchers know other structures existed. Because of

3458-787: The U.S. when NASA acquired land to construct the John C. Stennis Space Center (SSC), a rocket testing facility in Hancock County, Mississippi (on the Mississippi side of the Pearl River , which is the Mississippi – Louisiana state line). This required NASA to acquire a large (approximately 34-square-mile or 88-square-kilometre) buffer zone because of the loud noise and potential dangers associated with testing such rockets. Five thinly populated rural Mississippi communities (Gainesville, Logtown, Napoleon, Santa Rosa, and Westonia), plus

3549-608: The United States, and Canada, where housing is often used as an investment rather than for habitation. Railroads and roads bypassing or no longer reaching a town can also create a ghost town. This was the case in many of the ghost towns along Ontario's historic Opeongo Line , and along U.S. Route 66 after motorists bypassed the latter on the faster moving highways I-44 and I-40 . Some ghost towns were founded along railways where steam trains would stop at periodic intervals for repairs or to take on water. Amboy, California ,

3640-784: The United States; Barkerville, British Columbia in Canada; Craco and Pompeii in Italy; Aghdam in Azerbaijan; Kolmanskop in Namibia; Pripyat and Chernobyl in Ukraine; Dhanushkodi in India; Fordlândia in Brazil and Villa Epecuén in Argentina. T. Lindsey Baker, author of Ghost Towns of Texas , defines a ghost town as "a town for which the reason for being no longer exists." Some writers discount settlements that were abandoned as

3731-406: The aftermath. Many abandoned towns and settlements in the former Soviet Union were established near Gulag labour camps to supply necessary services. Since most of these camps were abandoned in the 1950s, the towns were abandoned as well. One such town is located near the former Gulag camp called Butugychag (also called Lower Butugychag). Other towns were deserted due to deindustrialisation and

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3822-514: The country, were wiped out due to the Great Famine in the latter half of the 19th century, and the years of economic decline that followed. Catastrophic environmental damage caused by long-term contamination can also create a ghost town. Some notable examples are Times Beach, Missouri , whose residents were exposed to a high level of dioxins , and Wittenoom, Western Australia , which was once Australia's largest source of blue asbestos , but

3913-513: The death of his mother in 1833. John went to live with relatives near Cincinnati. John married Martha Young of Cheviot, Ohio July 3, 1859. They had five children. Walden attended a local school in Cincinnati until 1844, when he went to work. Becoming a wandering laborer, he found employment as a carpenter . He became interested in the writings of Thomas Paine , whereby Walden became a skeptic. He read Sir Walter Scott and Oliver Goldsmith . His own early romantic stories were published under

4004-487: The deserted mountain village Craco located in Basilicata , which has served as a filming location, and the ghost village Roveraia, in the municipality of Loro Ciuffenna , in province of Arezzo , situated near Pratovalle . 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

4095-737: The development of ghost towns. Tyneham , in Dorset , was requisitioned for military exercises during the Second World War , and remains unpopulated, being littered with unexploded munitions from regular shelling. A few ghost towns have managed to get a second life, and this happens through a variety of reasons. One of these reasons is heritage tourism generating a new economy able to support residents. For example, Walhalla, Victoria , Australia, became almost deserted after its gold mine ceased operation in 1914, but owing to its accessibility and proximity to other attractive locations, it has had

4186-637: The economic crises of the early 1990s attributed to post-Soviet conflicts – one example being Tkvarcheli in Georgia, a coal mining town that suffered a drastic population decline as a result of the War in Abkhazia in the early 1990s. Although in 2010s Chinese ghost cities became a frequent feature of discourse regarding China's economy and urbanization , under-occupied cities filled up. Writing in 2023, academic and former UK diplomat Kerry Brown described

4277-410: The edges of the property, with gatehouses or barricades to prevent unsupervised access. Construction of dams has produced ghost towns that have been left underwater. Examples include: Some towns become deserted when their populations were massacred , deported, or expelled. Examples include Kayaköy, an ancient Greek city abandoned in 1923 as result of population exchange between Greece and Turkey and

4368-431: The entire population to flee. Upon seizing the city, Armenian forces destroyed much of the town to discourage Azerbaijanis from returning. More damage occurred in the following decades when locals looted the abandoned town for building materials. It is currently almost entirely ruined and uninhabited. Natural and human-made disasters can create ghost towns. For example, after being flooded more than 30 times since their town

4459-646: The following persons representing the Quindaro Town Company: In 1855, the land of the Wyandot Reservation had been divided among the families. The Quindaro Town Company was so named because it bought Nancy Quindaro's land allotment for the townsite. A common female name within the Wyandot, Quindaro means "bundle of sticks" or "strength through numbers", in the Wyandot language . Quindaro was one of several competing small ports on

4550-510: The foundations of former buildings remain as in Graysonia, Arkansas . Old mining camps that have lost most of their population at some stage of their history such as Aspen , Deadwood , Oatman , Tombstone and Virginia City are sometimes referred to as ghost towns although they are presently active towns and cities. Many U.S. ghost towns, such as South Pass City in Wyoming are listed on

4641-400: The historical site. Ghost town A ghost town , deserted city , extinct town , or abandoned city is an abandoned settlement, usually one that contains substantial visible remaining buildings and infrastructure such as roads. A town often becomes a ghost town because the economic activity that supported it (usually industrial or agricultural) has failed or ended for any reason (e.g.

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4732-595: The idea of Chinese ghost cities as a popular bandwagon which was shown to be a myth. The town of Namie , along with several other towns in Fukushima Prefecture , Japan, was temporarily evacuated as a result of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster following the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami . Following ongoing decontamination works, several portions of Namie have been fully reopened to residents, allowing reconstruction and renovation of

4823-530: The last two years of the war. These territories later became part of Poland and the Soviet Union , and many of the smaller settlements were never rebuilt or repopulated, for example Kłomino ( Westfalenhof ), Pstrąże ( Pstransse ), and Janowa Góra ( Johannesberg ). Some villages in England were also abandoned during the war, but for different reasons. Imber , on Salisbury Plain , and several villages in

4914-629: The locality was severely affected. Hundreds of buildings which also includes Church of Saint Pius X, the health center, the headquarters of the neighborhood association, the School of Early Childhood Education, and Los Campitos Elementary School and 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

5005-457: The map. An example in the UK of a ghost village which was abandoned before it was ever occupied is at Polphail , Argyll and Bute . The planned development of an oil rig construction facility nearby never materialised, and a village built to house the workers and their families became deserted the moment the building contractors finished their work. War activities, displacements and complete destruction of cities as result of intense fighting were

5096-471: The most notable are Anyox , Kitsault , and Ocean Falls . Some ghost towns have revived their economies and populations due to historical and eco-tourism, such as Barkerville ; once the largest town north of Kamloops , it is now a year-round provincial museum. In Quebec, Val-Jalbert is a well-known tourist ghost town; founded in 1901 around a mechanical pulp mill that became obsolete when paper mills began to break down wood fibre by chemical means, it

5187-410: The nation's second-largest city with 1 million people, was a village of only a few thousand people before colonization. Alexandria , the second-largest city of Egypt, was a flourishing city in the Ancient era, but declined during the Middle Ages. It underwent a dramatic revival during the 19th century; from a population of 5,000 in 1806, it grew into a city of more than 200,000 inhabitants by 1882, and

5278-440: The noose around his neck he asked to say some final words, a wish that was granted by the rebels. After praying out loud for the welfare of their souls (the rebels were about to hang an innocent man), they took the noose off his neck and sent him home to Wisconsin. This traumatic experience, apparently, led him to dedicate his life to helping former slaves by organizing the Quindaro Freedman's School (later Western University ), which

5369-464: The northern portion of a sixth ( Pearlington ), along with 700 families in residence, had to be completely relocated away from the facility. Sometimes the town might cease to officially exist, but the physical infrastructure remains. For example, the five Mississippi communities that had to be abandoned to build SSC still have remnants of those communities within the facility itself. These include city streets, now overgrown with forest flora and fauna, and

5460-415: The official state silver rush ghost town. John Morgan Walden John Morgan Walden was born in Lebanon, Ohio , the son of Jesse and Matilda ( née Morgan) Walden. The family moved to Hamilton County, Ohio in 1832. John was of Virginian ancestry, his great-grandfather Walden having moved from Culpeper County, Virginia to Kentucky in 1770, and his grandfather Benjamin to Ohio in 1802. After

5551-454: The original French village at Oradour-sur-Glane which was destroyed on 10 June 1944 when 642 of its 663 inhabitants were killed by a German Waffen-SS company. A new village was built after the war on a nearby site, and the ruins of the original have been maintained as a memorial. Another example is Aghdam , a city in Azerbaijan . Armenian forces occupied Aghdam in July 1993 during the First Nagorno-Karabakh War . The heavy fighting forced

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5642-445: The pen name "Ned Law" in the Hamilton, Ohio Telegraph from 1849 until 1853. After attending Farmers' College in College Hill, Ohio in 1849, Walden taught school for a year in Miami County, Ohio . It was there that he was converted by a Methodist Circuit Rider . Returning to Farmers' College, Walden graduated in 1852. He then continued to teach there for two years. In 1854 John went to Fairfield, Illinois , where he published

5733-463: The reason for abandonment can arise from a town's intended economic function shifting to another, nearby place. This happened to Collingwood, Queensland , in Outback Australia when nearby Winton outperformed Collingwood as a regional centre for the livestock-raising industry. The railway reached Winton in 1899, linking it with the rest of Queensland , and Collingwood was a ghost town by the following year. More broadly across Australia, there has been

5824-467: The reason for their complete abandonment. Examples are Marinka and Soledar in Donbas in Ukraine . Canada has several ghost towns in parts of British Columbia , Alberta , Ontario , Saskatchewan , Newfoundland and Labrador , and Quebec . Some were logging towns or dual mining and logging sites, often developed at the behest of the company . In Alberta and Saskatchewan, most ghost towns were once farming communities that have since died off due to

5915-449: The rebels, such as Beogombo Deux near Paoua , are ransacked by government soldiers. Those who are not killed have no choice but to escape to refugee camps. The instability in the region also leaves organized and well-equipped bandits free to terrorize the populace, often leaving villages abandoned in their wake. Elsewhere in Africa, the town of Lukangol was burnt to the ground during tribal clashes in South Sudan . Before its destruction,

6006-699: The recovery of the village: in 2011 the proposal of Movimento Libero Perseo "Roveraia eco - lab", based on sustainability, and in 2019 there was a proposal aiming to recover the village with a mix of functions called "Ecomuseum of Pratomagno". In the United Kingdom, thousands of villages were abandoned during the Middle Ages, as a result of Black Death , revolts, and enclosure , the process by which vast amounts of farmland became privately owned. Since there are rarely any visible remains of these settlements, they are not generally considered ghost towns; instead, they are referred to in archaeological circles as deserted medieval villages . Sometimes, wars and genocide end

6097-420: The removal of the railway through the town or the bypass of a highway. The ghost towns in British Columbia were predominantly mining towns and prospecting camps as well as canneries and, in one or two cases, large smelter and pulp mill towns. British Columbia has more ghost towns than any other jurisdiction on the North American continent, with more than 1,500 abandoned or semi-abandoned towns and localities. Among

6188-502: The resources were depleted and loss of highway traffic as US 66 was diverted from places like Oatman, Arizona , onto a more direct path. Mine and pulp mill closures have led to many ghost towns in British Columbia, Canada, including several relatively recent ones: Ocean Falls , which closed in 1973 after the pulp mill was decommissioned; Kitsault , whose molybdenum mine shut down after only 18 months in 1982; and Cassiar , whose asbestos mine operated from 1952 to 1992. In other cases,

6279-458: The resulting possibility of real-estate bubbles (sometimes due to outright overbuilding by land developers) may also trigger the appearance of certain elements of a ghost town, as real-estate prices initially rise (whereupon affordable housing becomes less available) and then later fall for a variety of reasons that are often tied to economic cycles and/or marketing hubris. This has been observed to occur in various countries, including Spain, China,

6370-414: The riverside was largely abandoned. Later African-American arrivals settled in the upper town on the bluff. The economy declined because of speculation in Kansas, and in 1862 the legislature withdrew the town charter, putting the town corporation out of business. Difficulties in reaching the interior from below the bluff hampered commerce, and changes after the war reduced the need for the port. In addition,

6461-537: The road to Santiago de Compostela . Some ghost towns (e.g. Riace , Muñotello ) are being repopulated by respectively refugees and homeless people . In Riace, this was accomplished by a scheme funded by the Italian government which offers the housing to refugees and in Muñotello it was accomplished through an NGO ( Madrina Foundation ). In Algeria, many cities became hamlets after the end of Late Antiquity . They were revived with shifts in population during and after French colonization of Algeria . Oran , currently

6552-595: The significance of the town, the townsite has been designated an archaeological district on the National Register of Historic Places . A number of public history projects have been undertaken to engage the public and share the discoveries. In 1993, Kansas State University , in cooperation with the Mayor's Underground Railroad Advisory Commission and the Quindaro Town Preservation Society, commissioned graduate students to develop proposals for

6643-436: The topography was difficult, surrounding Wyandot land limited expansion, and problems with land titles inhibited growth. After being abandoned, the early lower commercial townsite became overgrown, with some areas covered by earth falling from the bluffs. Historians recall it as a ghost town. In the early 20th century, all of the townsite was incorporated into Kansas City, Kansas. Even before the war ended, however, Eben Blachly,

6734-580: The town had a population of 20,000. The Libyan town of Tawergha had a population of around 25,000 before it was abandoned during the 2011 civil war , and it has remained empty since. Many of the ghost towns in mineral-rich Africa are former mining towns. Shortly after the start of the 1908 diamond rush in German South-West Africa , now known as Namibia , the German Imperial government claimed sole mining rights by creating

6825-489: The town soon contained numerous stone houses and starts of several businesses. Its sawmill was the largest in Kansas. The lower townsite near the river was the commercial core, and most residences were higher on the bluff, at the upper townsite. In the first year, there were 100 buildings completed, many of stone and brick, "including hotels, Dry Goods, Hardware and Grocery stores, a Church [two churches] and School house". Tribal natives living there were not dispossessed and became

6916-558: The town's buildings to be undertaken and resettlement of the area to take place. Urbanization – the migration of a country's rural population into the cities – has left many European towns and villages deserted. An increasing number of settlements in Bulgaria are becoming ghost towns for this reason; at the time of the 2011 census, the country had 181 uninhabited settlements. In Hungary, dozens of villages are also threatened with abandonment. The first village officially declared as "dead"

7007-406: The town, human intervention, disasters, massacres, wars, the shifting of politics or fall of empires, and volcanic eruptions. A town can also be abandoned when it is part of an exclusion zone due to natural or human-made causes . Ghost towns may result when the single activity or resource that created a boomtown (e.g., nearby mine, mill or resort) is depleted or the resource economy undergoes

7098-701: The war effort, raising two regiments to defend the city against threatening attacks. He joined the Union Army, where he achieved the rank of lieutenant colonel . Rev. Walden served with the Ladies' Home Mission in Cincinnati (1862–64). In the post-war years, he helped many African Americans through his work as corresponding secretary of the Western Freedman's Aid Commission and also with the Methodist Freedman's Aid Society. In 1867 Walden

7189-403: The westward spread of slavery. Quindaro's people also aided escaped slaves from Missouri as a "station" on the Underground Railroad . After Kansas was established as a free state, there was less need for the port and growth slowed in the commercial district. At the same time the economy in Kansas suffered from speculation. In 1862 classes were started for children of former slaves, and in 1865

7280-460: Was Gyűrűfű  [ hu ] in the late 1970s, but later it was repopulated as an eco-village . Some other depopulated villages were successfully saved as small rural resorts, such as Kán , Tornakápolna , Szanticska , Gorica , and Révfalu . In Spain, large zones of the mountainous Iberian System and the Pyrenees have undergone heavy depopulation since the early 20th century, leaving

7371-487: Was abandoned due to an uncontainable mine fire , which began in 1962 and still rages to this day; eventually the fire reached an abandoned mine underneath the nearby town of Byrnesville , which caused that mine to catch on fire too and forced the evacuation of that town as well. Ghost towns may also occasionally come into being due to an anticipated natural disaster – for example, the Canadian town of Lemieux, Ontario ,

7462-595: Was abandoned in 1991 after soil testing revealed that the community was built on an unstable bed of Leda clay . Two years after the last building in Lemieux was demolished, a landslide swept part of the former town-site into the South Nation River . Two decades earlier, the Canadian town of Saint-Jean-Vianney , Québec, also constructed on a Leda clay base, had been abandoned after a landslide on 4 May 1971, which swept away 41 homes, killing 31 people. Following

7553-527: Was abandoned when the mill closed in 1927 and re-opened as a park in 1960. Many ghost towns or abandoned communities exist in the American Great Plains , the rural areas of which have lost a third of their population since 1920. Thousands of communities in the northern plains states of Montana , Nebraska , North Dakota , and South Dakota became railroad ghost towns when a rail line failed to materialize. Hundreds of towns were abandoned as

7644-635: Was appointed Presiding Elder of the East Cincinnati District. In 1868 he was elected Publishing Agent of the Western Methodist Book Concern, also in Cincinnati. His penchant for statistics and organization, his business ability, and his sympathetic cooperation with the preachers made the Concern a financial success under his stewardship. John Morgan Walden was elected a Bishop by the 1884 General Conference of

7735-595: Was built for the workers of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant and had a population of almost 50,000 at the time of the disaster. Significant fatality rates from epidemics have produced ghost towns. Some places in eastern Arkansas were abandoned after more than 7,000 Arkansans died during the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918 and 1919. Several communities in Ireland, particularly in the west of

7826-558: Was chartered in 1867, and which he ran until his death in 1877. It was a historically black university (HBCU) started at the upper town site of Quindaro. Its principal in 1872, when the state legislature added a four-year normal school , was Charles Henry Langston , a leading black abolitionist and activist, educator, and politician in Ohio and Kansas . In the early 20th century, Western University became known for its outstanding music program. Music historian Helen Walker-Hill , writing in

7917-464: Was developed in Kansas. Quindaro was linked to this and the Lane Trail. It provided a new route of escape for slaves from Missouri . It was most important in the years before Kansas was established as a free state in 1861. Quindaro became a legendary port for fugitive slaves and, later, blacks arriving as contraband (escapees) during the American Civil War . Clarina Nichols was a writer for

8008-634: Was founded in 1845, residents of Pattonsburg, Missouri , decided to relocate after two floods in 1993. With government help, the whole town was rebuilt 3 miles or 5 km away. Craco , a medieval village in the Italian region of Basilicata , was evacuated after a landslide in 1963. Nowadays it is a filming location for many movies, including The Passion of The Christ by Mel Gibson , Christ Stopped at Eboli by Francesco Rosi , The Nativity Story by Catherine Hardwicke and Quantum of Solace by Marc Forster . In 1984, Centralia, Pennsylvania ,

8099-500: Was hidden in an empty and elaborately disguised cistern overnight, and then sent on the road north as soon as it was safe. Having reached a peak population of 600, the booming commercial townsite quickly went bust due to a nationwide economic depression, and a failed campaign to attract a railroad. With the American Civil War , the Union Army recruited away many young men, and only few farming families stayed. The lower town site at

8190-688: Was part of one such series of villages along the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad across the Mojave Desert . River re-routing is another factor, one example being the towns along the Aral Sea . Ghost towns may be created when land is expropriated by a government, and residents are required to relocate. One example is the village of Tyneham in Dorset, England, acquired during World War II to build an artillery range. A similar situation occurred in

8281-509: Was shut down in 1966 due to health concerns. Treece and Picher , twin communities straddling the Kansas – Oklahoma border, were once one of the United States' largest sources of zinc and lead , but over a century of unregulated disposal of mine tailings led to groundwater contamination and lead poisoning in the town's children, eventually resulting in a mandatory Environmental Protection Agency buyout and evacuation. Contamination due to ammunition caused by military use may also lead to

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