Saturday, March 2, 2013

List of ghost towns by country


List of ghost towns by country

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The following is a list of ghost towns.
This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.

Contents

  [hide] 

[edit]Africa

[edit]Angola

  • The settlement of Tigres, situated on a peninsula now known as the Ilha dos Tigres ("Island of the Tigers"), was once a small but well-established fishing village. It was supplied with water from the nearby town of Foz do Cunene, at the mouth of the Cunene River. In the 1970s, Tigres was cut off from the mainland by the rising sea level, and its water supply line was severed; both Tigres and Foz do Cunene were subsequently abandoned.[1][2]The island, bound by the South Atlantic ocean and Baia dos Tigres, lies in a zone which is ideally suited for ecological projects.[3] The island was mentioned in the BBC documentary "Unknown Africa: Angola".

[edit]Central African Republic

  • Goroumo, Beogombo Deux, and Paoua are among the many deserted villages created by the actions of government forces and killings by armed gangs from the years 2005 to 2008.[4][5]

[edit]Ethiopia

  • Dallol is a former mining town located in the Dallol crater, where the temperature can rise as high as 104° Fahrenheit (40 °C).

[edit]Ivory Coast

  • Grand Bassam was the French Colonial capital of Côte d'Ivoire until 1896, when it was abandoned by the French Colonial Government. Commercial activity gradually weakened until the city became a virtual ghost town in 1960, the same year Côte d'Ivoire became independent. Today the city has revived somewhat as a tourist center, but it still has the aura of a ghost town.

[edit]Mauritania

[edit]Namibia

From 1884 to 1915, Namibia was under the rule of the German Empire, and was known as German South-West Africa. When diamonds were discovered in 1908, German miners flocked to the area, and several new settlements were established, only to be abandoned once the supply of diamonds dried up. The ghost towns that were left behind include:

[edit]Sudan

[edit]South Sudan

[edit]The Americas

[edit]Brazil

  • The small village of Caraíbas, in the municipality of Itacarambi, suffered a rare earthquake in the early morning of December 9, 2007. It measured 4.9 on the Richter scale. Located over a geological fault, the village of 76 families was evacuated and has been abandoned ever since.[7]
  • Fordlândia was established by American industrialist Henry Ford in 1928 near Santarém. This was done to mass-produce natural rubber. Built in inadequate terrain, designed with no knowledge of tropical agriculture, and managed with little regard for local culture, the enterprise was an absolute failure; in 1934, the Ford factory was relocated to Belterra, but ultimately closed down in 1945.

[edit]Canada

Main article: List of ghost towns in Canada

[edit]Chile

[edit]Colombia

  • Armero was left in ruins by a volcanic eruption in 1985 that killed over 20,000 inhabitants. Survivors of the tragedy left for other towns, and Armero is currently unpopulated.
  • Bojayá is a small town in the Chocó department, that was attacked by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) on May 2, 2002. Most of the inhabitants hid in the church; A FARC mortar bomb landed in the building, killing approximately 140 people, including 40 children. Today, Bojayá is a ghost town and though plans have been made to rebuild it, it will not be on the exact location of the massacre.

[edit]Costa Rica

  • Cinchona (Sarapiquí, Alajuela) was destroyed by a 6.2 earthquake on January 8, 2009, which left 25 people dead, and five missing.

[edit]Guyana

  • Jonestown was established in the 1970s by members of the People's Temple, led by Jim Jones. On November 18, 1978, Jones orchestrated a mass suicide, resulting in the death of 913 of Jonestown's 1,110 inhabitants. The town now stands in ruins, and is being slowly reclaimed by the jungle.

[edit]México

  • San Juan Parangaricutiro is a village in Michoacán that was buried by ash and lava in 1943, during the formative eruption of Parícutin.
  • Ojuela, a mining town near Durango, was abandoned when the area's ore supply was exhausted.
  • Real de Catorce was once a flourishing silver mining town in northern Mexico. Its dramatic landscapes and buildings have been used by Hollywood for movies such as The Mexican (2001) withBrad Pitt and Julia Roberts. Recent efforts to adapt the town to tourism have created a mixture of ghost town and heritage tourist site adapted to visitors in search of interesting history in the country.
  • San Antonio de la Iguana, Nuevo León
  • Thompson's Landing was a port at the mouth of the Colorado River. During the early settlement of Arizona, shallow-draft steamboats plied the lower reaches of the river.[citation needed]

[edit]Montserrat

[edit]Saint Pierre and Miquelon

  • Île aux Marins ("Sailor's Island") is a ghost town/island located a few miles away from the island of Saint-Pierre. Once inhabited by over 600 fishermen, families and tradesmen, the island was progressively abandoned until the last inhabitant left in 1965. The island is now a tourist attraction.

[edit]United States

Main article: List of ghost towns in the United States

[edit]Antarctica and sub-Antarctic islands


The ghost town of Grytviken, South Georgia Island
The islands of Antarctica, particularly South Georgia, were popular with whalers during the first half of the 20th century, and many of the settlements on these islands are former whaling stations. Most of them were closed down during the Great Depression, when whaling became unprofitable, and are now abandoned. These settlements include:

[edit]Deception Island

  • Whaler's Bay

[edit]South Georgia

[edit]Asia


Agdam, Azerbaijan

[edit]Azerbaijan

  • Agdam, the capital of Agdam Rayon, is a ghost town in the southwestern part of Azerbaijan. In July 1993, after heavy fighting, Agdam was capturedby the forces of the Nagorno Karabakh Republic during its 1993 summer offensives. As the town fell, its entire population were forced to flee eastwards. Many Azerbaijanis were killed by Armenian soldiers, and many Armenians were killed by Azerbaijani soldiers. In the immediate aftermath of the fighting, the Armenian forces decided to destroy parts of Agdam to prevent its recapture by Azerbaijan.[8] More damage occurred in the following decades when the deserted town was looted for building materials. Agdam is currently a ruinous, uninhabited ghost town.[9] The town's large mosque also survives in bad condition.[10]

[edit]Cambodia

[edit]China


Thames Town in Songjiang imitates a typical English town
  • Kangbashi New Area, a district of Ordos City, was intended to house one million people,[11] but soaring property prices and lack of infrastructure deterred residents of Ordos from relocating to the newly built-up area, and it now stands largely deserted.[12] In 2010, the population of Kangbashi was around 20,000 to 30,000, a fraction of its total capacity.[13]
  • Niya, in the Tarim Basin, was once a major commercial centre dating back to around 500-1000 AD.
  • Thames Town in Songjiang District was constructed in 2005 for 5 billion yuan. Like many new towns in China, Thames Town was built with a European theme. In this case, it was named for the UK's Thames River. The stores sometimes take the name of the English store they were copied from. The empty storefronts match the surrounding, unoccupied villa compounds.[14] Thames Town is otherwise notable as a desirable backdrop for wedding photography.[15]

[edit]Cyprus


The ghost town of Varosha, Cyprus

[edit]Georgia

[edit]India

  • Dhanushkodi, on Pamban Island, was a flourishing tourist town until it was wiped out by the 1964 Dhanushkodi cyclone.
  • Fatehpur Sikri was briefly the capital of the Mughal Empire, but was abandoned soon after its completion, and is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
  • Lakhpat is an ancient fort town which still had a thriving agricultural industry until the 1819 Rann of Kutch earthquake changed the course of the Sidhu River. It is now a sparsely populated town of fewer than 400 inhabitants.
  • Mandu is a fortress town in Madhya Pradesh, dating back at least as far as 555 AD.
  • Old Goa was once the centre of Christianization in the east, but it became largely abandoned in the 17th century, due to an outbreak of malaria and cholera.
  • Ross Island was the administrative centre of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands until an earthquake struck in 1941, leaving the settlement in ruins.
  • Vijaynagara was possibly the second-largest city in the world in 1500, with around 500,000 inhabitants.[16] It was captured and destroyed by Muslim armies in 1565, and has been abandoned ever since.

[edit]Iran

  • Soltaniyeh was the 14th century capital of the Mongol Ilkhanid rulers of Persia, but is now "a deserted, crumbling spread of ruins".[17]

[edit]Japan


Hashima Island, Japan
  • Hashima Island was a Japanese mining town from 1887 to 1974. Once known for having the world's highest population density (in 1959 at 83,500 people per square kilometer), the island was abandoned when the coal mines were closed down.[18]
  • Tomioka in Fukushima was evacuated in 2011, along with many other towns in the area, following the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster.

[edit]Malaysia

  • Bukit Besi is a former mining town in Terengganu, Malaysia. The population dropped drastically after 1971 when the Eastern Mining and Metal Corporation (EMMCO) closed their operation due to the iron ore there being exhausted.
  • Kampung Kepayang, in Perak, is almost uninhabited, with only two or three shophouses being in use. This is a result of the widening of the main road, which made it difficult to park a vehicle, and resulted in the shops losing business. However, there are still Malays who reside in the village houses behind the shop houses, and the addresses in Simpang Pulai are still written as "Kampung Kepayang".

[edit]Oman

  • Sap Bani Khamis is an abandoned village halfway up a canyon, accessible only by a narrow path.[19]

[edit]Qatar

  • Al Arish is an old fishing village on the Northern coast of Qatar in the Middle East. Situated on the Persian Gulf, it was abandoned in the early 1970s and has since become a ghost town.[20]

[edit]Philippines

  • The Palace in the Sky was built at Tagaytay City as a vacation mansion for President Ferdinand Marcos, but construction was abandoned when he lost the 1986 election. The site was renamed "People's Park in the Sky", and is now a popular tourist spot.

[edit]Russia

[edit]Saudi Arabia

  • Al-Ula, or al-Deera as it is locally called, is now all but a ghost town. It consists of a walled village of about 800 dwellings around the perimeter of the more ancient castle with narrow winding alleys, many of which are covered to shield the people from the heat of the sun. Most of the foundations of the buildings are stone, but the upper floors are made from mud bricks, while palm leaves and wood are used for the ceilings. Although many of these houses were probably rebuilt over time, their foundation is likely to be from the original construction of the town in the 13th century AD. 45 metres above historic al-Ula, the town's Castle commands strategic views over the entire valley. It is sometimes referred to as the Castle of Musa bin Nusayr, the Umayyad-era army general who ruled over North Africa and was involved in conquering Andalusia in the early 8th century AD. He is said to have died in this castle on his way from Damascus to a pilgrimage in Mecca in 715 AD. Although the castle was rebuilt more than once during its long history, its origins date back to the 6th century BC. In fact, some of the foundation stones are from the original 2,600 year-old construction (according to signs posted). The castle is currently more of a bastion or watchtower once used to protect the town.
  • Albaten
  • Tharmida

[edit]Singapore

  • A few blocks of HDB flats (apartment flats) located in the Lim Chu Kang area of the island is known to be the only ghost town in Singapore. Named the Neo Tiew estate (or officially the Lim Chu Kang Rural Centre), it used to house residents before they were moved out of the vicinity in 2002 as part of an En-bloc scheme. Since then the Singapore government has declared itstate land and nothing was done to demolish or renovate the flats. The area was used by the Singapore Army as a training facility from 2005-2009 until a newer training facility was built nearby in 2008. Its current fate is unknown.

[edit]Syria

  • The city of Quneitra became a ghost town after the 1967 Six Day War and subsequent Yom Kippur war in 1973. The ruins were left in place, and a museum has been built to memorialize the destruction. Billboards are maintained at the ruins of many buildings and the town is effectively preserved in the condition that the wars left it in.

[edit]Taiwan

  • The Sanzhi UFO houses a set of abandoned pod-shaped buildings built in New Taipei as a vacation resort. They stood abandoned for thirty years before being demolished.

[edit]Turkey

  • Ani in northeast Turkey was inhabited by Armenians until the middle of the eighteenth century, and is now abandoned. It is now an archaeological site, with ruined houses and churches.
  • Çökene in Büyükorhan district was a village until 2008. It is a site of empty houses after immigration to big cities due to money shortage and unemployment.[21]
  • Kayaköy was abandoned as a result of the 1923 population exchange between Turkey and Greece, and is now preserved as a museum village.
  • Sazak near Karaburun, a district of İzmir Province on the Aegean (western) coast of Turkey, was also inhabited by Greeks, which left the area according to the population exchange treaty. Nowadays Sazak is a total ghost town.

[edit]Europe

[edit]Belgium

[edit]Bulgaria

[edit]Croatia

[edit]Estonia

  • Viivikonna and Sirgala are former mining towns that started to lose their population after local oil shale reserves were depleted and the industry moved eastwards. By the 21st century, both towns had only a handful of people left, struggling to find a new place to live.[24]

[edit]Faroe Islands

[edit]Finland

  • Jussarö is an old village near the Jussarö mines.

[edit]France


Main street of Oradour-sur-Glane, France, unchanged since the German massacre.
  • Oradour-sur-Glane was destroyed by a Waffen-SS battalion during World War II and its population massacred. The village was subsequently rebuilt nearby, but the ruins of the old village have been preserved.

[edit]Germany

  • Bardowiek was a village in Selmsdorf that was demolished from 1977 to 1989, in order to clear a strip of land beside the Inner German border. The site is now part of a National Park.

[edit]Greece

  • The island of Spinalonga is considered by some to be a ghost town. Serving as a leper colony for the first half of the 20th century, the island was abandoned when all its inhabitants were cured. By 1962 there were no permanent residents left. In recent years Spinalonga has become a tourist attraction as one of the last leper colonies to be closed down in Europe.

[edit]Hungary

  • Derenk, in north-east Hungary, was depopulated between 1938-1943, so that the surrounding area could be used as hunting grounds for Admiral Miklós Horthy, regent of Hungary.
Most of the ghost towns left by the Soviet Union in Hungary. These abandoned cities with storey houses are pillaged since the departure of the Soviets, but still preserved in some town. Like Nagyvázsony - Kis-Moszkva, Tab, Szentkirályszabadja, Kiskunlacháza, Kunmadaras.

[edit]Ireland

  • Killary, a village on the Dingle Peninsula, was created for the film Ryan's Daughter. The village in the film was built by the production company from stone so that it could withstand the storms. The empty village remained for some time until the buildings were demolished; only the road that went through the town is still visible.
  • Slievemore is a deserted village on Achill Island.[25]
  • Scattery Island is the site of a former village and monastery, and was once the home of Saint Senan.

[edit]Iceland

  • Suðavik (Old)

[edit]Italy


Craco, Italy

[edit]Latvia

  • Skrunda-1, the site of a former Soviet Hen House radar installation, is a ghost town that was auctioned off in its entirety in early 2010.

[edit]Norway

  • Pyramiden ("The Pyramid") was a Russian settlement and coal mining community on the archipelago of Svalbard. It was founded by Sweden in 1910, and sold to the Soviet Union in 1927. The settlement, with a one time population of 1,000 inhabitants, was abandoned in the late 1990s by its owner, the state-owned Soviet company Trust Artikugol, and is now a ghost town.

[edit]Poland

  • Czerwona Woda ("Red Water") in Kłodzko Valley was established by German immigrants before WWII. Most of the abandoned houses are found in the mountains of Klodzko Valley.
  • Kłomino, near Borne Sulinowo in the northwest part of the country, was established as a place of residence for Soviet troops stationed in Poland with their families. The population was about 5,000. It was completely depopulated by 1992 after the collapse of the USSR. Only a few families live there now, but there are plans to repopulate the city.

[edit]Spain


Belchite, Spain
  • Belchite, in the province of Zaragoza, Aragon, is one of the most well-known ghost towns in Spain. Before the 1930s, Belchite was a growing city, with many services. As a consequence of the Battle of Belchite, during the Spanish Civil War, the city was totally destroyed. Instead of a reconstruction, dictator Franco decided to keep the ruins of the old town of Belchite intact as a memorial of the battle. As of 1964, the town was totally deserted, the inhabitants having been removed to Belchite Nuevo, on the side of the old town. The ruins, which are not accommodated for tourism, are visited by more than 10,000 tourists annually. It is also a well-known meeting point for Francoist nostalgics, especially Falangists.
  • La Cornudilla, Valencia
  • Erillcastell, near El Pont de Suert, Catalonia
  • Esperan, near El Pont de Suert, Catalonia
  • Jánovas, Fiscal
  • Lacort, Fiscal
  • Llombai in the Vall de Gallinera, Alicante
  • Ochate, Condado de Treviño, Burgos, Castilla y León
  • Peranera, near El Pont de Suert, Catalonia
  • Pernui in Sort, Lleida, Cataluña
  • Viuet, near El Pont de Suert, Catalonia

[edit]Ukraine

After the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986, hundreds of settlements within the exclusion zone were evacuated. Some have remained abandoned ever since, including:

[edit]United Kingdom

In 1942 and 1943, in preparation for the Allied assault on Normandy, several villages were evacuated to be used as training grounds for the British Army. This was intended to be a temporary arrangement, but many of the villages remained abandoned, and are used for military training to this day. Some of these villages are listed below; most of them are located within the Stanford Battle Area in Norfolk.

[edit]Oceania

[edit]Australia

See also: Category:Ghost towns in Australia

[edit]New Zealand

  • Kelso was abandoned after severe and repeated flooding in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
  • Lyell was a gold mining town in the Buller Gorge in the South Island of New Zealand.
  • Macetown was a gold rush town in Central Otago that started to decline during the 20th century.
  • Te Wairoa, also called 'The Buried Village', was a small Māori village that was destroyed by The Eruption of Mount Tarawera.
  • Venture, a small beech bark processing settlement in the Awaroa Inlet of the Abel Tasman National Park, was abandoned as the value of the bark declined and the cost of transport increased into the remote area. The remains of the foundations of the school house and assorted buildings remain in the bush today, although fire, time and the encroachment of the bush has rendered the ruins little more than a collection of stones and bricks. The settlement can only be reached by walking up a rarely used and poorly maintained track at low tide. The settlement and track are on the estate administered by the Department of Conservation.
  • Waiuta was a gold mining town on the West Coast of the South Island of New Zealand until 1951.
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