From century old mining towns and the rusting wrecks of industrial plants to tumbledown castles and ruinous forts; shuttered old prisons and empty schools to faded theatres and tattered amusement parks, the US abounds with abandoned spaces.
Read on as we reveal the states where you'll find some of the most fascinating and downright eerie empty places in all of the country...
The southern state is scattered with derelict structures, from old mines and industrial sites to decaying asylums and abandoned ante-bellum homes. In Birmingham, the rusting hulk of the Sloss Furnaces serve as a reminder of the city’s foundation. Now a National Historic Landmark, the vast pig iron-producing blast furnace was built after coal, iron ore and limestone – the ingredients needed for making iron and steel – were found beneath its soil in the late 19th century. It closed in 1971.
Cotton was a major industry for Alabama too and empty cotton mill gins can be found along with the plantation owners’ 19th-century piles, long since fallen into ruin. The haunting shell of Dicksonia Plantation in Lowndesboro, which featured in Tim Burton’s Big Fish, is one. The Old Cahawba Archaeological Park (pictured) is another remnant of the state’s past. The riverside community was the first state capital, built on an Native American village. Another notable spooky spot is the severely dilapidated Jemison Center in Tuscaloosa, which was built in 1939 and run by the Alabama State Hospital for the Insane.
America’s northern frontier rattles with the echoes of the country’s mining past, largely due to old structures perched on the edge of mountain sides along with the ramshackle remains of the communities that serviced them. One is the UNESCO-listed Kennecott, which dates back to 1903 when the area’s copper deposits were highly valuable. The settlement was home to 600 people at its peak but by 1938 the resource was depleted and copper prices dropped around the world, leaving the town to its eventual decline. Now a popular walking route, the Chilkoot Trail, created during the early Klondike Gold Rush, is peppered with abandoned artefacts too, including a rusting gas engine winch and boiler.
Other mechanised mining relics are strewn across the Alaskan wilderness, including a corroding 1930s-era gold dredge in Coal Creek within Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve. The state also has various vacated military posts with the stark Cold War-era Buckner Building (pictured) in Whittier being one of its most intriguing. This vast, self-contained military post was built to house 1,250 army personnel in the early 1950s but emptied by 1960. Site Summit near Anchorage is another, once home to a Nike Hercules missile battery. One of Alaska’s more whimsical abandoned structures is an igloo-shaped hotel, whose weather-worn shell sits by the highway near Cantwell.
Speckled with old mines and tumbleweed-strewn ghost towns, Arizona has plenty of interesting, abandoned structures to discover. Arguably its oldest is Wupatki Pueblo, the ruins of a large sandstone dwelling built in the early 1100s and abandoned in the mid-1200s due to a combination of drought and migration. In the 19th century, silver mining camps sprang up in the rugged region with copper mining going on to become the state’s biggest industry. Jerome (pictured), built on the slope of Cleopatra Hill in 1876, has one of the most picturesque settings and some of the state’s best preserved abandoned buildings. When its mine operations closed for good in 1953, the old copper town became the largest ghost town in the US before it was preserved as a historic district in 1967. It's now a popular tourist spot and home to around 450.
Another once prosperous boomtown was Vulture City, a settlement that sprung up around one of Arizona’s earliest gold mines (pictured) in 1863. Set in the sun-scorched Sonoran Desert, the mine was discontinued after the Second World War. Its empty buildings have since been restored as a tourist attraction. Another ambient abandoned attraction is Ruby, near the Mexican border, with its historic jail, old schoolhouse and other derelict buildings. Pearce, also in the state’s south, rattles with tales of the past too with its long-shuttered post office among its old structures listed in the National Register of Historic Places for their cultural significance.
Epicentre of the great Gold Rush, California’s hills and deserts are bursting with former boomtowns and decrepit mines that echo with tales of the state’s early lawless days. Its most infamous gold mining ghost town is Bodie, which boomed in the 1870s and housed 10,000 inhabitants at its peak. It emptied after the last mine closed in 1942. Calico (pictured) in San Bernardino County is another creaky Old West settlement, founded in 1881 when silver was discovered. It was at the centre of one of the state’s biggest silver rushes, but abandoned a little over a decade later.
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It wasn’t all about the precious metals, however. California's north coast has the remnants of logging communities that sprouted in the redwood forests, such as Falk in the Headwaters Forest Reserve. The state has a crop of abandoned attractions too including the cliffside ruins of Sutro Baths (pictured), an ambitious complex founded in 1894 by San Francisco millionaire Adolph Sutro, and Lake Dolores Waterpark. Built in the early Sixties, the once popular leisure centre now sits forlornly in the parched surrounds of the Mojave Desert, just off Interstate 15. Meanwhile in Los Angeles, the remnants of its old zoo are visible in Griffith Park, including various graffiti-covered animal enclosures.
Mining was at the root of the state’s economy and today some of the country’s most isolated abandoned old mining towns can be found in Colorado’s hostile high country. Animas Forks, set high in the San Juan Mountains, is one of the most picturesque. Now on the National Register of Historic Places, the hard-rock silver and gold mining town was established in 1874 and home to around 400 before its decline at the turn of the century. Many more communities popped up virtually overnight around the state in the mid 19th-century as fortune seekers made for its mountains. Old cabins, bunkhouses, stores and rusting mining structures are strewn around the state with St Elmo, Independence and Crystal Mill other standout ghost towns with crumbling buildings that hold a millennia-old history.
Dearfield is one of Colorado’s abandoned communities with a different back story. Founded in 1910 with the aim of becoming a self-sustaining farming settlement for African Americans, it was a success but a short lived one. Like many other rural settlements, Dearfield’s population dwindled during the severe dust storms of the 1930s. Only the remains of its old filling station and some houses survived. Other decaying structures of note are the old Great Western Sugar Mill in Longmont which shuttered in the 1970s. Its graffiti-strewn structure underwent a further blow as a fire engulfed it in August 2024. And Denver’s Lakeside Speedway – an overgrown racetrack that was fenced off after a tragic accident in 1988.
The Sunshine State has some seriously intriguing, abandoned places. Some long since deserted, others more recently vacated, whether damaged by hurricanes, victims of dwindling visitor numbers and poor governance or both. Miami’s Art Deco district was renowned for its derelict status, but was preserved and saved from demolition after decades of neglect. Not all of its buildings found a new lease of life, however. The Coconut Grove Playhouse, which was built in 1927 as a movie theatre, has been left to deteriorate since 2006 when it closed. The 1963-Miami Marine Stadium is another of the city’s iconic entertainment venues that was left to ruin after it closed. The fenced-off site is currently being restored.
The state also has a fair scattering of desolate settlements (more than 250 ghost towns can be found in Florida) including Pinecrest within Big Cypress National Preserve, with its rusting old cars and tumbledown structures, and 19th century-saw-mill town Ellaville in Suwannee River State Park. The park near Orlando also has remnants of a 19th-century steamship and an old cemetery. Among the state’s famous historic structures, long since reclaimed by nature, are Fort Dade at the mouth of Tampa Bay and Fort Jefferson (pictured), west of Key West. Built in 1846 to defend the coast from pirates, it is the largest brick structure in the US. It had various other functions until hurricane damage in 1906 made it structurally unsound.
Illinois has plenty of empty spaces to intrigue historians and urban explorers from decrepit towns left to dust, long-shuttered coal mines and eerie old prisons. One of its darkest wrecks is the Old Joliet Prison (pictured) which was built in 1858 and housed inmates until 2002, after which it was left to its demise. The historic penitentiary has since been preserved and the large complex can be visited on tours. Old Shawneetown, on the banks of the flood-prone Ohio River, is another of Illinois’ historic sites, home to some awesome empty buildings, including a grand mid-1800s bank. A devastating flood in 1937 saw most residents of the town flee and resettle three miles (4.8km) inland.
Cairo is another of the state’s virtually deserted riverside towns. Set at the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio rivers, it was once a hub for the steamboats that plied these waters. However, it was beset by problems including flooding as well as social tension and economic downturn. Pictured here is its old fire station. In Chicago, Damen Silos is a long deserted landmark that looms by the Chicago River. Built in 1906 at the zenith of the state’s booming grain industry, the vast storage site closed in 1977 after an explosion. Its now decaying and vandalised structure is under threat of demolition.
Like many southern states, Louisiana has its share of forlorn and forsaken buildings, many abandoned due to poverty or damage wreaked by devastating weather events. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans was rife with abandoned condemned buildings, from empty apartment complexes to schools and hotels. Many have still been left to deteriorate long after the devastating floods submerged them. Katrina was the reason why Six Flags New Orleans (pictured) closed in 2005 and still sits decrepit and alligator infested. The park is now more famous as a film location and urban exploration destination than the vibrant theme park it once was.
The Plaza Tower is one of New Orlean’s most visible vacant properties that’s been left to fester (and dangerously disintegrate) for over two decades. It was constructed in the 1960s but asbestos concerns saw its tenants leave en masse in the 1980s. Various sales and redevelopment plans since have gone awry and now demolition is under discussion. Elsewhere in Louisiana lie many more eerily empty sites including the crumbling campus of this high school, set near the Tallulah river in northeast Louisiana, which closed its doors for the last time in 2006. More historic abandoned sites include Laurel Valley Plantation, a sprawling sugar mill and plantation set along a bayou in Thibodaux that sits in ruins and is open for tours.
As the birthplace of America's auto industry, Detroit was a hub of industry that boomed and bust. The city became famed for its grand abandoned buildings, with the handsome station one of its most high profile. The Beaux Arts Detroit Central Station was left to decay for nearly four decades before a huge restoration project revived it. Art Deco skyscrapers were vacated too, along with industrial sites whose eyesore ruins blighted the city. The Fisher Body Plant 21 (pictured) is one – it has lain dormant since 1993, although plans for regenerating its tattered ruins are in motion. The Packard Automotive Plant is another forlorn structure, which shut its doors in the late 1950s with demolition underway. Despite recent investments in regenerating Michigan's biggest city, plenty of empty places still speckle the state.
Relics of its earlier industrial past include old mines and logging communities by the shores of the Great Lakes. The state has 128 ghost towns, in fact, including Fayette in Fayette Historic State Park in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Other atmospheric vestiges include the old brick walls of the 19th-century Frankfort Iron Works in Elberta and the lonely old lighthouse at Waugoshance (pictured), which guided ships carrying cargo across Lake Michigan. A haunting sight on the water, the lighthouse has been slowly crumbling away since it stopped serving in 1912. Plenty more forsaken structures lurk below the water – approximately 1,500 of the 6,000 vessels lost on the Great Lakes ships are located in Michigan.
The plains and rugged slopes of Montana are littered with remnants of the state’s once flourishing mining industry, from the faded outline of camps to well-preserved towns. It has 106 ghost towns, including its first territorial capital Bannack, which sprung up around the site of the region’s first major gold discovery in 1862. Its weather-beaten buildings are steeped in stories. The crumbling shell of the Miners' Union Hall and foundations of an old bank in Granite, a 1890s silver boomtown, are well worth the steep drive up to Granite Ghost Town State Park. While Garnet is another evocative old boomtown brimming with stories of the state’s past. Now the Ghost Town route loops around some of these time-worn towns.
An abandoned site with a tragic backstory is Smith Mine in south-central Montana (pictured). The coal mine was shut down in 1943 after an explosion killed 74 people. Not all of the state’s ghost towns were mining communities, some are deserted farmsteads and old railroad towns that emptied as routes changed. Dooley, in the far northeastern corner, was one such place with its wonky old wooden Lutheran church all that was left of the rail town until it was demolished in a storm in 2019. The ruins of Fort Benton date back before the Gold Rush, when it was the fur trade that drew settlers here. Set on the upper Missouri River, the fort was established in the fur trading post that is now the oldest town in Montana.
With more than 600 ghost towns, Nevada positively rattles with dusty old, abandoned dwellings, most remnants of its mining days. In fact, the Silver State has more ghost towns than populated ones. Chief among these desolate settlements are picturesque Rhyolite (pictured), which went from a two-tent camp in 1905 to a bustling town of 5,000 and Goldfield, a 'living' ghost town with many ambient, empty old buildings remaining from its heyday (1905 to 1908). Another rudimentary camp turned boomtown then ghost town is Belmont, which has some of the state's most attractive abandoned buildings including the Belmont Courthouse. Tunnel Camp in northern Nevada is another notable deserted dwelling. It was built in 1927 to house workers at a cyanide mill.
With the most abandoned mines of any state too, Nevada’s deserts and rugged hills are also riddled with tunnels. Go for a hike around the wilderness and you’ll likely come across old mine shafts that lead to dilapidated passageways and boarded up cabins, like these rickety old ones strewn among sagebrush in varying states of decay. It’s not just relics of its mines that sit abandoned here, Nevada also has deserted 21st-century attractions including the remnants of the Sagecrest Drive In. The raggedy remains of its screen, ticket booth and markings of its parking bays are a forlorn sight just off the highway outside Yerington.
Home to one of the country’s most historic cities, it’s no surprise that New York state is riddled with empty and atmospheric places. Many can be found in the Big Apple. From defunct train stations like City Hall Subway Station and empty warehouses to crumbling castles and wrecked mansions that were once home to high society. The islands surrounding Manhattan are peppered with spooky abandoned spots. On Roosevelt Island the ivy-clad shell of the Renwick Smallpox Hospital (pictured) remains while Pollepel Island has the decaying bones of Bannerman Castle built by Scottish-born munitions dealer Francis Bannerman in the early 1900s.
North Brother Island was also used to isolate immigrants with contagious diseases in the 19th century – and later house war veterans and juvenile delinquents. Now uninhabited and off-limits, the East River isle houses the timeworn wreck of the Riverside Hospital (pictured) whose dangerously decrepit ruins, including a tuberculosis pavilion, have been reclaimed by nature and are now a nesting site for birds. So too is Swinburne Island with a brick chimney from its crematorium among the few remnants of its infamous quarantine station. Also standing empty and neglected on the city's waterfront is the Red Hook Grain Terminal, whose hulking structure has lain dormant since 1965.
From old oil boomtowns and settlements that sprang up in the 19th-century land rush to roadside novelties fallen into a state of disrepair, Oklahoma has oodles of abandoned spaces to explore. The remains of lawless Ingalls are steeped in stories of the state’s tumultuous past – it was the site of a shootout by the infamous Doolin-Dalton Gang. Arguably the most notorious of its 200-plus ghost towns, however, is the off-limits Picher (pictured), a zinc and lead mining boomtown in the state’s northeastern corner. In the 1920s it had a population of nearly 20,000, but it emptied by the 2000s due to dangerous levels of lead pollution.
Oklahoma’s stretch of the Mother Road, the cross-country route that connected Chicago with Los Angeles, is also dotted with historic empty buildings such as the stone ruins of this 1930s service station on the original US Route 66. Just before the road crosses into Texas, is the town of Texola, home to a dwindling population and notable for its shuttered diner and shops along with its one-room jail. Another of the iconic route’s abandoned sights is the old Blue Whale of Catoosa, just north of Tulsa, which was built on the site of a long-gone swimming pond.
As one of America's most industrialised states, Pennsylvania is peppered with abandoned mines, factories and steel mills built in the late 1800s to take advantage of its newly found natural resources, notably oil and coal. After the collapse of the region’s steel industry in the 1970s and 1980s, Pittsburgh’s extensive Homestead Steel Works on the Monongahela River closed. Now part of the Rivers of Steel National Heritage Area, its Carrie Furnaces are the only non-operative blast furnaces that remain in the region. Lackawanna Coal Mine is another space that can now be visited on tours – it opened in 1860 in northeastern Pennsylvania's Anthracite Coal Field and sat forgotten for a few decades after it closed in the late Sixties.
Perhaps the state’s most intriguing empty place is the so-called lost town of Centralia in the northeast of the state. It was founded in 1866 and largely emptied in 1962 after an underground fire consumed its tunnels. The fire is still blazing beneath the condemned coal mining town. With a rich history, empty and intriguing spaces abound in capital Philadelphia too. The Eastern State Penitentiary is one of its most prominent and petrifying deserted sites. As a major railroad transportation hub, there are many overgrown railways and derelict rail structures here – the city’s elevated Rail Park was created on its long-abandoned Reading rail line. While Kinzua Bridge, a vast, defunct viaduct in the north of the state that was abandoned after being severely damaged by a tornado in 2003, has since been revitalised as a skywalk.
When it comes to ghost towns, Texas has more than any other state, according to Geotab's research. These old mining and oil towns with their weather-beaten wooden structures and crumbling ruins are fascinating relics of the past. Big Bend National Park has the remnants of an abandoned mercury mine, Mariscal Mine, including the old furnace and miners’ homes. In Big Bend Ranch State Park, the ghostly remains of mercury mine town Terlingua – including its tiny old jail and dusty cemetery – ooze atmosphere. As well as genuine ghost towns, Texas has a famously fake one – the empty buildings of Contrabando (pictured) were built by the Rio Grande in the 1980s as a film set.
The Lone Star State is speckled with the ruins of frontier forts too, many built in the mid-1800s to protect settlers as they moved westwards. These include the mid-19th-century Historic Fort Phantom Hill in Abilene and Fort McKavett in Menard County. The remains of an earlier fortified settlement, the 18th-century Presidio of San Saba which was built by Spanish colonial soldiers, is another of the state’s historically significant abandoned sites. A more modern – and much photographed wreck – is the weather-worn sign of the long-gone Stardust Motel on the way into Marfa. The gloriously retro sign (pictured) sits along US 90 where the roadside motel once welcomed travellers.