Road-trip index
Ghost Towns near Memphis
The survey records 977 vanished or historical sites within 100 miles of Memphis, TN. Here's what's closest — and which places have full records worth planning a day around.
Charted towns within range
Historic Townsite
Arkansas's zinc boomtown — a smelter built to chase silver that never came.
Near-Abandoned
Illinois's first capital — stranded on the wrong side of the Mississippi by a single flood.
Vanished Place
One of Missouri's oldest lead diggings — French mines older than the United States.
Near-Abandoned
The bank that (allegedly) refused Chicago — left behind when the town fled the river.
Vanished Place
A whole cotton town on the Natchez Trace, gone but for one church.
Vanished Place
A Frisco railroad resort on the Little Piney, cut off and killed by Interstate 44.
Closest surveyed sites — records pending
Every one of these is on the national atlas map — zoom into the Memphis area to see them in place.