How we check
Every fact on this site comes from a public dataset, and we link to it. Where a source is silent we leave the block out instead of filling it with a guess. Below is where each layer comes from and how we match it to a town, with its limits.
The towns
The list starts with Wikidata: every item that is a ghost town, or a subtype of one, located in the United States. That gave us 2,675 towns with coordinates. Wikidata is released under CC0, so names, coordinates, dates and census counts can be reused freely.
Wikidata misses some towns that Wikipedia's state lists of ghost towns include. From those lists we take one fact only, that a linked place is on the list, and then pull the place's own coordinates from Wikidata. We keep unincorporated communities, former settlements and similar places that sit inside the right state. Living cities and towns stay out unless fewer than a thousand people live there and people search for them as ghost towns. That added 1,204 towns. 2 more, Nelson in Nevada and Jerome in Arizona, are searched as ghost towns but appear on neither list, so we added them by hand. No text from Wikipedia is copied here.
The total is 3,881 towns in 50 states. Pages with almost no facts behind them, no article, photo, date or elevation, stay off search engines until we know more.
Who owns the land
For each town we ask PAD-US, the Protected Areas Database of the United States kept by the USGS Gap Analysis Project, which parcel the town's point falls in. We use the fee ownership layer of PAD-US 3.0 through the USGS service, so the answer names the agency that manages the ground: the Bureau of Land Management, the Forest Service, the National Park Service, a state agency, a city, a tribe and so on. We got an answer for 3,881 towns.
PAD-US also records public access for each parcel: open, restricted (permit, fee or season), closed, or unknown. We repeat it as is. When the point falls outside every parcel, the town is most likely on private land, and we say so with that hedge. We also check a quarter-mile circle around the point, because ruins rarely sit inside one neat boundary.
Limits worth knowing. The point is one spot, usually the old town center, and buildings can stand on the next parcel. PAD-US lags behind land sales and transfers. Open public land can still close for fire or a mine hazard. When in doubt, call the field office or ranger district.
Weather by month
Monthly average highs, lows, precipitation and snowfall come from the NOAA U.S. Climate Normals for 1991 to 2020, by station. For each town we take the closest station within 40 miles and give a small penalty for a big difference in elevation, because a valley airport says little about a mining camp two thousand feet higher. The station, its distance and the height difference are printed under every chart. 3,868 towns have a station close enough.
A month counts as mild when the average high is between 55 and 88°F and the average low stays above 28°F. That rule is ours, and it is only a starting point.
Nearest town and neighbors
Places with more than 1,000 people come from the Census Bureau: Gazetteer coordinates, 2025 population estimates for incorporated places and the 2019 to 2023 American Community Survey for census-designated places. Distances are straight lines on the globe. Neighboring ghost towns come from the same coordinates. Pages for 50 cities list every ghost town within 100 miles.
Photos and illustrations
Photos come from Wikimedia Commons, through the image linked on each town's Wikidata item. We only use files whose license allows commercial reuse: public domain, CC0, CC BY and CC BY-SA. Each photo shows its author, license and a link to the file page. Files under non-commercial or no-derivatives terms are skipped. 812 towns have a photo.
Towns without a photo get an illustration of a landscape type, such as desert, mountains or prairie, chosen from the town's elevation, rainfall and state. These pictures were made for this site and are labeled as illustrations. They do not show the town.
Sources and licenses
| Towns, coordinates, dates, census counts | Wikidata, CC0 |
|---|---|
| List membership | Wikipedia, "List of ghost towns in" each state (facts only) |
| Land manager and access | USGS PAD-US 3.0, public domain |
| Climate | NOAA U.S. Climate Normals 1991–2020, public domain |
| Towns and population | U.S. Census Bureau Gazetteer, population estimates and ACS, public domain |
| State and county outlines | Census Cartographic Boundary Files 2024, public domain |
| Photos | Wikimedia Commons, license per photo |
| Live map | OpenFreeMap, OpenMapTiles, OpenStreetMap contributors |
Our combined table is free to reuse under CC BY 4.0 with a link back. Found a wrong spot or a town we missed? Tell us.