A ghost town is an abandoned village, town or city, usually one which contains substantial visible remains. A town often becomes a ghost town because the economic activity that supported it has failed, or due to natural or human-caused disasters such as floods, government actions, uncontrolled lawlessness, war, or nuclear disasters. The term is sometimes used to refer to cities, towns, and neighborhoods which are still populated, but significantly less so than in years past; for example those affected by high levels of unemployment and dereliction.
Some ghost towns, especially those that preserve period-specific architecture, have become tourist attractions. Some examples are Bannack, Montana, Calico, California, and Oatman, Arizona in the United States, Barkerville in Canada, Elizabeth Bay and Kolmanskop in Namibia, and Prypiat in Ukraine. Visiting, writing about, and photographing ghost towns is a minor industry. A recent modern day example is Ōkuma, Fukushima which was abandoned due to the 2011 Japan earthquake and tsunami incident.
Read more about Ghost Town: Definition of A Ghost Town, Reasons For Abandonment, Revived Ghost Towns
Famous quotes containing the words ghost and/or town:
“A fig for
The seal of fire,
Death hairy-heeled, and the tapped ghost in wood,
We make me mystic as the arm of air,
The two-a-vein, the foreskin, and the cloud.”
—Dylan Thomas (1914–1953)
“A township where one primitive forest waves above while another primitive forest rots below,—such a town is fitted to raise not only corn and potatoes, but poets and philosophers for the coming ages. In such a soil grew Homer and Confucius and the rest, and out of such a wilderness comes the Reformer eating locusts and wild honey.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)