103-524: Times Beach is a ghost town in St. Louis County , Missouri , United States, 17 miles (27 km) southwest of St. Louis and 2 miles (3 km) east of Eureka . Once home to more than two thousand people, the town was completely evacuated early in 1983 due to TCDD (a type of dioxin ) contamination, formerly the largest civilian exposure to the compound in the history of the United States. In 1985,
206-420: 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
309-637: A common symptom of acute dioxin poisoning, were observed in Times Beach residents. By May 1991, Dr Vernon Houk, the director of the CDC's Center for Environmental Health, had come to the same conclusion as the AMA. Although he had made the official recommendation to permanently relocate Times Beach residents in 1982, by 1991, he no longer believed that evacuation had been necessary. Ghost town A ghost town , deserted city , extinct town , or abandoned city
412-559: A federal buyout commenced on January 7, 1983, when President Ronald Reagan created the Times Beach Dioxin Task Force, which consisted of representatives from the EPA, CDC, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and Army Corps of Engineers . During a press conference on February 22, 1983, the EPA announced that the federal government would pay $ 33.0 million of the estimated $ 36.7 million cost to buy out
515-514: 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
618-602: 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 the Canary Islands, Spain. During the 2021 Cumbre Vieja volcanic eruption ,
721-415: A period of four years. The release of the leaked EPA document in 1982 was the first time that Times Beach had learned of its contamination. Residents felt betrayed and publicly criticized the EPA for not informing them of the toxic hazards around their homes. Since Times Beach had the largest population out of the listed sites, Times Beach became the subject of national media and attention. With pressure from
824-444: 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
927-452: 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
1030-434: 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
1133-422: 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
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#17328023197151236-420: 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
1339-650: 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 ,
1442-468: 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
1545-447: A volume of 2,000 gallons, was uncharacteristically thick, and left a pungent, burning odor. Within a few days of the spraying, birds began to drop dead from the rafters of the barns, and horses began to develop sores and lose their hair. Piatt and Hampel blamed these occurrences on Bliss, who denied responsibility, claiming that the material he sprayed was nothing more than old motor oil. Acting on their suspicions, Piatt and Hampel removed
1648-991: 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. 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
1751-481: 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
1854-642: Is the debris of the demolished buildings of the former town. The EPA revisited and tested the soil at the Route 66 State Park in June 2012. On November 19, 2012, it was reported that "Soil samples from Route 66 State Park show no significant health risks for park visitors or workers." Several months after the evacuation, the American Medical Association (AMA) publicly criticized the news media for spreading unscientific information about dioxin and
1957-466: 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
2060-469: 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
2163-562: The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the CDC also further advised the removal and burial of contaminated soil from both properties. In the same document, however, the CDC reported that the half-life of dioxin was one year. Based on this estimate, which was later found to be incorrect, Missouri officials decided to forgo the recommended cleanup. Today, the half-life of dioxin is estimated to be seven to eleven years. The EPA did not become heavily involved with
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#17328023197152266-500: The Great Depression combined with gasoline rationing during World War II reduced the feasibility of summer homes . The town became a community of mostly low-income housing , and a small population (1,240) lived in Times Beach by 1970. In the years immediately before its evacuation, Times Beach had become a lower-middle-class town. Historically, there had always been a small grocery store and gas station on Route 66 to serve
2369-699: 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
2472-604: 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
2575-591: 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
2678-430: The nucleophilic aromatic substitution reaction with sodium hydroxide (NaOH). Unfortunately, instantaneous dimerization of the resulting phenol produces trace amounts of 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin (TCDD), an extremely toxic compound known to have both acute and chronic adverse effects. Beginning the process of production with 2,4,5-trichlorophenol that contained 3–5 parts per million (ppm) of dioxin, NEPACCO
2781-586: The 1970s, a number of laws were passed to regulate the generation and disposal of potentially hazardous products. In 1976, Congress passed the Toxic Substances Control Act , which required the testing of chemicals that could pose an unreasonable risk to the environment. In 1976, Congress also passed the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), which regulated the transportation and disposal of hazardous waste. In 1980,
2884-416: The 800 residential properties and 30 businesses of Times Beach. The remaining $ 3.7 million would be the responsibility of the state. By 1985, Times Beach's entire population of well over 2,000 residents had been relocated, and Governor John Ashcroft had issued an executive order for the town's dis-incorporation. Since it contained over 50 percent of the dioxin in the state of Missouri and because it
2987-557: The CDC advised for cleanups in locations where dioxin levels were as low as 0.001 ppm, the Environmental Defense Fund report suggested that new EPA protocols would only necessitate clean up in locations where dioxin concentrations were above 0.1 ppm. In 1972, Times Beach hired Bliss to oil its 23 miles of dirt roads (due to lack of funding, Times Beach was unable to pave its roads). For $ 2,400, Bliss sprayed approximately 160,000 gallons of waste oil in Times Beach over
3090-555: The EPA decided to revisit the Shenandoah, Timberline, and Bubbling Springs stables, as well as the Minker and Stout properties. New soil samples revealed that concentrations of dioxin had not decreased since the last test results obtained by the CDC several years earlier. Although eleven years had passed since the spraying, areas in the Shenandoah arena still contained as much as 1.8 ppm of dioxin. Regional EPA officials advised owners of
3193-462: The EPA removed Times Beach from its Superfund list. Times Beach was founded in 1925 on the flood plain of the Meramec River , southwest of the river, in a promotion by the now-defunct St. Louis Star-Times newspaper. A purchase of a 20 × 100 ft (6 by 30 m) lot for $ 67.50 included a six-month newspaper subscription. In its early years, the town was primarily a summer resort , but
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3296-535: The Missouri dioxin contaminations until 1979 when a former NEPACCO employee reported the burial of toxic waste on a farm located about seven miles from Verona. NEPACCO had paid James Denney, the owner of the farm, $ 150 for the use of his property. Under the investigations of the EPA, a total of 90 drums, all of which were corroded and leaky, were unearthed. Eleven of these drums contained still bottoms with dioxin concentrations as high as 2,000 ppm. In May and June 1982,
3399-475: The State of Missouri officially disincorporated the city of Times Beach. The site of Times Beach now houses a 419-acre (170 ha) state park which opened in 1999. The park commemorates U.S. Route 66 , as well as the history of the Times Beach area. The famous U.S. Route 66 highway that stretches from Chicago , Illinois , to Santa Monica , California passed though the community on its southern end. In 2001,
3502-847: 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
3605-545: 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 ,
3708-784: 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
3811-476: The Verona plant, the proper disposal of the leftover still bottoms would not be completed until 1979. With further investigation of contaminated locations, the CDC advised residents of the Minker and Stout properties to minimize contact with the soil. Soil samples had revealed a dioxin concentration of 0.85 ppm at Minker's property, and a concentration of 0.44 ppm at Stout's property. In a 1975 confidential report to
3914-406: 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
4017-426: The age of 18 living with them, 73.3% were married couples living together, 5.4% had a female householder with no husband present, 3.0% had a male householder with no wife present, and 18.2% were non-families. 16.1% of all households were made up of individuals, and 8.6% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.70 and the average family size was 3.03. The median age in
4120-483: The attention of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). In August 1971, the CDC completed an inspection of Shenandoah Stable, and collected human and animal blood samples, as well as soil samples. Although initial results revealed that the soil at Shenandoah Stable contained PCBs and chlorinated insecticides, the CDC was unable to identify a specific chemical culprit. It was not until 1973 that tests revealed
4223-667: The cases of Piatt and Hample, who in 1976 settled their suit against Bliss for $ 10,000 and against IPC for $ 100,000. In 1981, Piatt and Hample also settled for $ 65,000 from NEPACCO. IPC paid $ 1 million to each of Piatt's daughters in 1983. Although the decision for relocation in 1982 was made in the best interests and safety of the Times Beach residents, the evacuation was not an easy transition. Eight hundred families had to leave their lives completely behind. Initially, parents worried about what to do and where to go for financial assistance. As they began to settle into their new lives, their logistical and financial worries were soon replaced by
Times Beach, Missouri - Misplaced Pages Continue
4326-408: The city. The racial makeup of the city was 82.6% White (81.6% non-Hispanic White), 2.3% African American , 0.1% Native American , 9.3% Asian , 0.8% from other races , and 4.8% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 2.6% of the population. As of the census of 2010, there were 3,482 people, 1,267 households, and 1,036 families living in the city. The population density
4429-493: The contaminated stables to temporarily close and urged the national EPA office to begin cleanup operations at each of the contaminated locations. These cleanup requests were delayed when Rita Lavelle , an assistant administrator at EPA headquarters in Washington, announced that the EPA would be collecting and testing an additional 600 soil samples in order to better understand the extent of contamination. The EPA's handling of
4532-514: 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
4635-487: 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
4738-737: 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
4841-409: The dust for several months. Those who visited Bliss' property were impressed by how well the technique worked. It was not long before people began to hire him for his dust-suppressant services. On May 26, 1971, the owners of Shenandoah Stable, located near Moscow Mills, Missouri , Judy Piatt and Frank Hampel, paid Bliss $ 150 to spray the floor of their indoor arena. The waste oil sprayed, which totaled
4944-637: 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
5047-410: 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
5150-431: 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
5253-512: The events in Missouri caught national attention in late 1982 when the Environmental Defense Fund , a public interest group, published a leaked EPA document that listed a total of 14 confirmed and 41 possibly contaminated sites in the state of Missouri. The town of Times Beach was one of the locations listed. The Environmental Defense Fund also claimed that the EPA had decided to lower dioxin cleanup protocol standards. Although
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#17328023197155356-413: The fear that their children would be afflicted by sudden chronic illnesses. The psychological trauma caused by relocation was immeasurable. The land that was once Times Beach is now Route 66 State Park . One building from the town still exists: the park's visitor center was once a roadhouse from Times Beach's glory days and was the EPA's headquarters for the area. There is a large grass mound beneath which
5459-569: The federal government sued NEPACCO and its officers, Edwin Michaels and John W. Lee, in United States v. Northeastern Pharmaceutical and Chemical Co. . Under the provisions of CERCLA, NEPACCO was forced to repay the federal government for its cleanup efforts at the farm of James Denney, the site where NEPACCO had buried ninety drums of its chemical waste over a decade earlier. Because the RCRA
5562-510: 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
5665-499: The health hazards associated with it. The AMA stated that there was no evidence of adverse consequences from low-level dioxin exposure. [1] Subsequent studies of potentially exposed people from Times Beach and some other contaminated locations in Missouri have revealed no adverse health outcomes that can be directly linked to dioxin. In a study conducted by the CDC and the Missouri Division of Health, no cases of chloracne ,
5768-595: 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
5871-530: 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
5974-623: The locality was severely affected. Hundreds of buildings were destroyed, including the parish 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 remaining buildings that were still standing, leaving
6077-471: 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
6180-525: 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
6283-464: 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
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#17328023197156386-519: The official state silver rush ghost town. Frontenac, Missouri Frontenac is a city in St. Louis County , Missouri , United States. The population was 3,612 at the 2020 census. The community name is inspired by the New France governor Louis de Buade de Frontenac . Benjamin and Lora Wood, who laid out the community's core called Frontenac Estates, that consisted of 26 two-acre estates, had made frequent trips to Quebec . The community
6489-642: 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
6592-510: The passage of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) established a multibillion-dollar Superfund to investigate and clean up old, abandoned hazardous waste sites. The passage of CERCLA also defined the liability of a company and ensured that parties responsible for the release of toxic substances are held liable in the case of environmental damage or harm. In 1983,
6695-444: The presence of trichlorophenol . When trace amounts of the crude trichlorophenol contaminant were administered to the inner surfaces of rabbit ears, blisters developed, which was a characteristic result of trichlorophenol poisoning. The unexpected death of some of the affected rabbits however, led the CDC to run more complex tests. On July 30, 1974, the CDC found that, in addition to 5,000 ppm of trichlorophenol and 1,590 ppm of PCBs ,
6798-459: The public, the EPA soon began investigation in Times Beach. Soil sampling was fortuitously completed on December 3, 1982, a day before Times Beach suffered its worst flood in history when the Meramec River breached its banks and rose over 14 feet above flood stage . The residents of Times Beach were evacuated, and by the time the waters began to recede, the EPA had concluded its analysis. Results revealed dioxin concentrations as high as 0.3 ppm along
6901-530: 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
7004-573: 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
7107-562: 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,
7210-763: 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
7313-551: 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
7416-533: The residents. Prone to flooding throughout its history—its first buildings were built on stilts—the town experienced a devastating flood in December 1982. It happened just as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was confirming that dioxin contaminated the soil, leading to the town's evacuation by 1985 and complete demolition by 1992. The town was disincorporated by executive order of Missouri governor John Ashcroft on April 2, 1985. The story of Times Beach
7519-502: 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,
7622-458: 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,
7725-649: 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
7828-402: The soil samples collected from Shenandoah contained over 30 ppm of dioxin. Although little was known about the effects of dioxin on humans, the lethality of small doses in animals was alarming. As a result, the CDC immediately set out to locate other possible sites of contamination. When confronted by the CDC, Bliss stated that he did not know where the dioxin could have come from. Because dioxin
7931-455: The spraying at Shenandoah, Bliss was hired to spray the arena at Timberline Stables, near Jefferson City, Missouri . Twelve horses died, and children exposed to the arena were diagnosed with chloracne , a skin condition associated with dioxin poisoning. Suspecting that Bliss' oil was the source of their problems, the owners of Timberline removed the top layer of soil from their property. A third arena, at Bubbling Springs Ranch, near St. Louis,
8034-681: The still bottoms to his storage facility near Frontenac, Missouri , where the contaminated NEPACCO waste was unloaded and mixed into tanks containing used motor oils. Subsequently, some of the contaminated oil was sold to MT Richards, a fuel company in Illinois, and to the Midwest Oil Refining Company in Overland, Missouri . In addition to his waste oil business, Bliss owned a horse arena and farm, where he sprayed waste oils to control nuisance dust. One application controlled
8137-420: The time NEPACCO ceased its operations in 1972, Hoffman-Taff had been taken over by Syntex Agribusiness . From 1970 to 1972, NEPACCO was primarily involved in the production of hexachlorophene (3) , an antibacterial agent used in soap, toothpaste, and common household disinfectants, from 2,4,5-trichlorophenol (1) and formaldehyde (2) . 2,4,5-trichlorophenol is synthesized from 1,2,4,5-tetrachlorobenzene by
8240-429: The top six inches of soil from the entire arena and disposed of it in a landfill. Despite the removal of another 12 inches of soil a few months later, horses that came to the arena became ill. After several months, 62 horses died or became so emaciated that they had to be euthanized. Hampel, Piatt, and Piatt's two young daughters also became ill, developing headaches, nosebleeds, abdominal pain, and diarrhea. A month after
8343-580: 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
8446-538: The town practically erased from 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
8549-558: 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"
8652-439: The town's entire network of roads. On December 23, 1982, the CDC publicly recommended that Times Beach not be re-inhabited. Officials were uncertain about the health effects of extensive dioxin exposure and even more uncertain of how to rid an entire town of dioxin. Because the town was situated on a flood plain, officials were further concerned that subsequent flooding would spread the contamination beyond control. Discussions of
8755-406: 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
8858-460: 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
8961-442: Was 1,209.0 inhabitants per square mile (466.8/km ). There were 1,357 housing units at an average density of 471.2 per square mile (181.9/km ). The racial makeup of the city was 90.1% White , 2.6% African American , 0.1% Native American , 5.6% Asian , 0.3% from other races , and 1.2% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 1.5% of the population. There were 1,267 households, of which 34.6% had children under
9064-468: Was a by-product of only a handful of chemicals, trichlorophenol being the most common, the CDC narrowed their search to companies in Missouri using or producing trichlorophenol. NEPACCO was the only company on the search list that had come into contact with Bliss. NEPACCO went out of business in 1972, after the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had issued a ban that limited the use of hexachlorophene. The ban
9167-487: 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 ,
9270-595: 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
9373-527: 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
9476-474: Was able to reduce the concentration of dioxin in hexachlorophene to 0.1 ppm. The result of this purification process led to the storage and accumulation of heavily concentrated dioxin still bottoms, or thick, oily residues, in a storage tank located near the facility in Verona. When NEPACCO first began operations, the still bottoms were sent to a waste facility in Louisiana for incineration. Although incineration
9579-519: Was also sprayed around the same time as Timberline and faced similar problems. As at Shenandoah and Timberline, the owners decided to remove the top layer of soil from their arena. Vernon Stout, a road-grading contractor, completed the removal in March 1973. Instead of bringing the soil to a landfill, Stout unloaded the soil onto one of his properties and at the nearby home of Harold Minker. The unexplained deaths and illnesses at Shenandoah immediately caught
9682-595: 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
9785-608: Was featured on History Channel's Modern Marvels , in the episode "Engineering Disasters 20". During the late 1960s, the Northeastern Pharmaceutical and Chemical Company, Inc . (NEPACCO) began operating out of a facility located near Verona , in southwestern Missouri. This facility was owned by Hoffman-Taff, a company that produced the Agent Orange herbicide for use during the Vietnam War . By
9888-579: 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 ,
9991-501: Was incorporated as 217 acres (88 ha) in 1947 and annexed another 967 acres (391 ha) in 1948. The community still consists mostly of houses on one-acre lots. French architecture is encouraged in design. According to the United States Census Bureau , the city has a total area of 2.88 square miles (7.46 km ), all land. As of the 2020 census, there were 3,612 people and 1,305 households living in
10094-468: Was motivated by the death of thirty-two infants in France who were exposed to high levels of hexachlorophene in baby powder. During an inspection of the old NEPACCO facility in Verona, which was now entirely owned by Syntex Agribusiness, the CDC discovered an old tank filled with 4,300 gallons of NEPACCO still bottoms at a dioxin concentration of more than 340 ppm. Due to a lack of incinerators in proximity to
10197-406: Was no longer inhabited, Times Beach was the logical choice for the placement of a new incinerator. The construction of the incinerator began in June 1995. Once built, it burned more than 265,000 tons of dioxin-contaminated materials from across the state. The cleanup of Missouri was completed in 1997 and had cost close to $ 200 million. In response to the events that transpired in Missouri during
10300-500: Was not implemented until 1976, Bliss was not legally required to keep records of the chemical wastes he had collected from NEPACCO. During investigations surrounding the dioxin contamination in Missouri, Bliss maintained that he had no knowledge of the presence of dioxin in the chemical waste he collected from NEPACCO. Still, Bliss was the object of many legal pursuits. Over 14,000 citizens' suits were filed against NEPACCO and its officers, Syntex Agribusiness, IPC, and Bliss. Among these were
10403-688: 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
10506-561: 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
10609-818: Was the best method to destroy dioxins at the time, it was also very expensive. Looking for less costly alternatives, NEPACCO contracted the services of the Independent Petrochemical Corporation (IPC). However, IPC, a chemical supplier company, knew very little about waste disposal, and subcontracted the NEPACCO job to Russell Martin Bliss, the owner of a small, local waste oil business. Charging NEPACCO $ 3000 per load, IPC paid Bliss $ 125 per load. Between February and October 1971, Bliss collected six truckloads (nearly 18,500 gallons) of chemical waste heavily contaminated with dioxin. Bliss took most of
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