Road-trip index
Ghost Towns near San Diego
The survey records 283 vanished or historical sites within 100 miles of San Diego, CA. Here's what's closest — and which places have full records worth planning a day around.
Charted towns within range
Verified Ghost Town
Kaiser Steel's model desert town — 4,000 people, gone with American steel.
Vanished Place
A socialist utopia in the Mojave — its stone ruins still argue with Los Angeles.
Near-Abandoned
Roy's Motel and Cafe and its rocket-age sign, marooned on old Route 66.
Historic Townsite
A Mojave silver boomtown rebuilt by the founder of Knott's Berry Farm.
Historic Townsite
A radio evangelist's mineral-springs resort, named to be the last word in the dictionary.
Near-Abandoned
A 'living ghost town' with a working soda fountain from 1904.
Closest surveyed sites — records pending
Every one of these is on the national atlas map — zoom into the San Diego area to see them in place.