 | onedc
 SM Developer/Designer |
Photograph: Alamy
St Elmo, Colorado, US
One of Colorado’s best-preserved ghost towns
and another icon of the gold rush, St Elmo was
founded in 1880 and clung on until 1922, when,
legend has it, everyone who lived there took
the last train out of town. Now St Elmo
epitomises what we imagine when we think of
dust bowl communities: ramshackle wooden
houses neatly lined up on “Main Street” in the
middle of nowhere. The general store opens
for tourists during the summer and those
wanting to help boost the population (briefly)
can take up residency in a cabin for the night.
| onedc
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Photograph: Alamy
Mineral de Pozos, Mexico
You could say Mineral de Pozos is a ghost
town that’s dusting off the cobwebs. In 2012,
the former mining town, which has buildings
dating as far back as the 16th century, has
been declared a “Pueblo Magico”, or a magical
town of Mexico, in recognition of its cultural
and historic significance. In the 1990s artists
began to move to the town and over the last
decade it has become popular with visitors.
Among the sights you can visit are the former
mines and mining haciendas, as well as the
unfinished church, its old bullring and the
ruins of the train station.
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Photograph: Alamy
Spinalonga, Greece
This small rocky island off the Crete mainland
has a long history, originally as a Venetian
fortress but more recently as one of the last
active leper colonies in Europe. Patients lived
in a small community from 1903 to 1957,
running their own barber shop, church theatre
and cinema. In the 50s, when a cure for
leprosy was discovered, most of the patients
recovered and left the island. Today, visitors to
Spinalonga can still get a sense of the isolation
that must have been felt by those living there
while suffering from the disease.
| onedc
SM Developer/Designer |
Photograph: Alamy
Pyramiden, Svalbard, Norway
If you’re looking for the world’s most
northerly grand piano, then a trip to
Pyramiden, an abandoned Russian coal-mining
settlement in the Svalbard archipelago is in
order. The deserted town, which features a
big, steeple-shaped Soviet monument, a
children’s playground, a sports hall and, yes, a
couple of pianos, functioned as recently as
1998 when the last of the coal was extracted.
Now you can visit by boat or snowmobile and
Trust Arktikugol – the coal-mining company
that operates on the islands there - has been
renovating parts of the settlement to make the
desolate and icy place more accommodating
for tourists.
| onedc
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Original furniture in the drawing room in the Fordlândia museum. Photograph: Colin McPherson/Corbis
Fordlândia, Brazil
Named, rather modestly, after its founder
Henry Ford, Fordlândia was an attempt by the
car-maker and industrialist to create an
independent source of rubber for the tyres on
his vehicles, free from the existing
manufacturing monopolies. Ford bought a
huge swathe of land in the Amazon and began
building a strangely American-style town in
the jungle, including a golf course, a library
and a hospital, as well as shops and
restaurants to keep his relocated employees
happy. It was a grand failure and now all that
remains are the derelict buildings, which can
be visited by adventurous travellers.
| onedc
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The old-fashioned phonebox in the village of Tyneham. Photograph: Alamy
Tyneham, Dorset, UK
Dubbed “the village that died for England”,
Tyneham was a small fishing community on
the Dorset coast until 1943, when the area was
requisitioned by the government in
preparation for the D-day landings. Unlike
many other requisitioned villages, Tyneham’s
residents were not allowed to return after the
war and the area is now part of the Ministry
of Defence’s Lulworth range. As long as you
don’t visit during a military training exercise
(seriously, stick to the footpaths), you can take
a look at the village, which now consists of the
remains of the residents’ cottages, a 1929 K1
telephone kiosk, the church and the school –
where the displays are still intact. But, as the
website will inform you: “The village was last
inhabited in 1943 so there is no cafe or shop.”
| onedc
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Photograph: Michael S. Yamashita/Corbis
Hashima Island, Japan
Also known as Battleship Island (because of its
shape), this tiny former coal mining facility off
the Nagasaki peninsula is a haunting place
once populated by more than 5,000 people.
The facility, which has industrial and
residential sections, functioned from 1887 to
1974, when owner Mitsubishi officially closed
it as oil began to replace coal in Japan. It
remained closed for 35 years until the
government began to permit access again.
Among the looming concrete ruins are
deserted homes with dusty televisions and
telephones still in place. Two tour operators
now run boat trips to the island but you can
also explore from home thanks to a spooky
Google Street View project that mapped it last
year.
| onedc
SM Developer/Designer |
Photograph: Alamy
Missouri State Penitentiary, US
This murky institution, which opened in 1836
and only closed in 2004, has a notorious
history as the holding prison for Missouri’s
death row inmates. Now – once you’ve signed
a waiver in case you injure yourself while in
the derelict building – you can go on a history
tour looking at the prison’s dark past: the
women’s unit, death row cells and even the
gas chambers once used for executions. Brave
visitors can take part in an “overnight
investigation” into paranormal activity there.
| onedc
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Photograph: Alamy
Teufelsberg listening station, Berlin, Germany
Built by the American National Security
Agency in the 1960s, the listening towers on
Teufelsberg (Devil’s Mountain) in former West
Berlin were used to spy on Soviet and East
German military communications. Now the
tattered towers with their golf ball-like radar
domes can be visited on a tour that offers a
peek into the paranoia of the cold war. You’ll
find you’re being supervised, rather than
guided, but it’s an amazing experience to
explore at your own pace the anarchic graffiti
and street art that emblazon the interior. The
way in which sounds are amplified and then
resonate within the gigantic domes is as
creepy as it is intriguing. The view at sunset,
from what is the highest point in Berlin, is
spectacular.
| onedc
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Photograph: Mitch Diamond/Getty
Bodie, California, US
A gen-u-ine Californian gold-mining ghost
town, Bodie is a deserted locale preserved in a
spooky state of “arrested decay”. The town,
which once had a population of 10,000, was
created during the gold-rush era when W S
Bodey (after whom the town is named, albeit
with a different spelling) stumbled across the
deposits of the valuable metal nearby. Mining
went into decline from around 1913, eventually
shutting down in 1942. Now, over 100 deserted
buildings remain and visitors can peek inside
dusty interiors still preserved as they were
left all those years ago.
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