Thematic index
Farming & Colony Ghost Towns
Settlements built on the promise of water and soil that the land eventually withdrew — flooded river towns, failed irrigation colonies, and homestead communities the drought took.
Hanton City, RI
1680–1820Vanished Place
Rhode Island's 'Lost City' — colonial cellar holes no road quite reaches.
Dogtown, MA
1693–1830Vanished Place
New England's eeriest commons — cellar holes, legends, and boulders that give orders.
Swan Island, ME
1730–1945Historic Townsite
A disincorporated island town in the Kennebec, now a state wildlife refuge.
Dudleytown, CT
1747–1899Vanished Place
Connecticut's most infamous 'cursed' hamlet — closed to all visitors, full stop.
Doodletown, NY
1762–1965Vanished Place
A 350-person hamlet the state emptied for a ski resort that never came.
Gilboa, NY
1764–1926Vanished Place
New York City drowned this Catskill village — and uncovered the world's oldest forest.
Flagstaff, ME
1782–1950Vanished Place
Maine's drowned village — church bells moved, cellars still under the lake.
Rocky Springs, MS
1790–1930Vanished Place
A whole cotton town on the Natchez Trace, gone but for one church.
Loyston, TN
1801–1936Vanished Place
A farm town under the widest part of Norris Lake — the 'Loyston Sea.'
Dana, MA
1801–1938Vanished Place
One of the four towns Boston drowned for the Quabbin — its common still mowed.
Frick's Lock, PA
1824–1985Verified Ghost Town
A Schuylkill Canal hamlet emptied in the shadow of a cooling tower.
Grand Gulf, MS
1833–1890Historic Townsite
A cotton port erased by fever, a tornado, the river, and Grant's gunboats.
Ulao, WI
1847–1860Vanished Place
A cordwood pier that fueled Lake Michigan's steamers — gone but for a few pilings.
Walpack Center, NJ
1850–1965Historic Townsite
A Delaware Valley farm village emptied for a dam that was never built.
Preparation, IA
1853–1900Vanished Place
A Mormon splinter colony ruled by a prophet and his spirit 'Baneemy' — now a state park.
Forestville, MN
1853–1910Historic Townsite
A crossroads village the railroad passed by — now frozen at the year 1899.
St. Deroin, NE
1854–1920Vanished Place
A Missouri River ferry town founded by a Métis trader, now living history in a state park.
Grafton, UT
1859–1944Verified Ghost Town
An adobe schoolhouse under Zion's cliffs — the most filmed ghost town in the West.
Lost Cove, NC
1864–1957Verified Ghost Town
A mountain hollow reachable only on foot — abandoned when the trains stopped.
St. Thomas, NV
1865–1938Vanished Place
The town Hoover Dam drowned — and the drought gave back.
Boggsville, CO
1866–1880Historic Townsite
Kit Carson's last home — a Santa Fe Trail settlement the railroad orphaned.
Cabezon, NM
1870–1947Verified Ghost Town
An adobe ranching village beneath a volcanic neck, on the flood-cut Rio Puerco.
Antelope, OR
1871–1980Near-Abandoned
A shrinking ranch town best known for the four years it was called Rajneesh.
Belle Plain, TX
1876–1905Vanished Place
A county seat with a college and twenty grand pianos — gone in thirty years.
Chesterfield, ID
1881–1940Historic Townsite
A restored Mormon farm village of brick and log, laid out on the old plat grid.
Hardman, OR
1881–1900Near-Abandoned
A high-desert stage-and-wheat town that the railroad simply passed by.
Sherwood, TX
1886–1936Near-Abandoned
A lost county seat whose 1901 stone courthouse still stands empty in the grass.
Iosepa, UT
1889–1917Vanished Place
A Hawaiian village in Utah's Skull Valley — vanished, but never unvisited.
Ingalls, OK
1889–1907Vanished Place
The town that sheltered the Doolin gang — and paid for it in one famous gunfight.
Govan, WA
1889–1950Vanished Place
A wheat-country ghost on US-2, remembered for its schoolhouse and its murders.
Molson, WA
1900–1930Historic Townsite
An outdoor-museum ghost town in the Okanogan Highlands, near the Canadian line.
Widtsoe, UT
1902–1938Vanished Place
The town the New Deal formally dissolved — Utah's dry-farming parable.
Arena, ND
1906–1970Vanished Place
The Dakota homestead town whose church still faces the wheat alone.
Lobo, TX
1907–1991Verified Ghost Town
A whole West Texas town for sale — abandoned in 1991, later bought by Germans.
Allensworth, CA
1908–1966Historic Townsite
California's first Black-founded town — betrayed by water, preserved by will.
Medicine Mound, TX
1908–1966Near-Abandoned
A farm town named for four sacred hills the Comanche held holy.
Dearfield, CO
1910–1946Vanished Place
Colorado's Black homesteading colony — a dream the Dust Bowl took.
Metropolis, NV
1911–1947Vanished Place
A prairie metropolis planned on paper. The desert had other plans.
Llano del Rio, CA
1914–1918Vanished Place
A socialist utopia in the Mojave — its stone ruins still argue with Los Angeles.