Road-trip index
Ghost Towns near St. Louis
The survey records 446 vanished or historical sites within 100 miles of St. Louis, MO. Here's what's closest — and which places have full records worth planning a day around.
Charted towns within range
Vanished Place
The town the EPA erased — now a Route 66 state park that doesn't hide its story.
Vanished Place
One of Missouri's oldest lead diggings — French mines older than the United States.
Near-Abandoned
Illinois's first capital — stranded on the wrong side of the Mississippi by a single flood.
Vanished Place
A Frisco railroad resort on the Little Piney, cut off and killed by Interstate 44.
Near-Abandoned
The bank that (allegedly) refused Chicago — left behind when the town fled the river.
Vanished Place
Frontier Indiana's boomtown county seat, emptied by a single summer's epidemic.
Closest surveyed sites — records pending
Every one of these is on the national atlas map — zoom into the St. Louis area to see them in place.