Ghost Towns

Ghost Towns

A Deserted Town In the summer of 1862, John White found gold by Grasshopper Creek in what is now southern Montana. News of his discovery spread quickly. Within a few months, hundreds of prospectors had arrived at Grasshopper Creek in hopes of striking it rich. By the following year, about three thousand people lived in the town, known as Bannack. Millions of dollars' worth of gold was found in the area over the next few years. However, once gold became hard to find, Bannack turned into a ghost town.

Ghost towns are human settlements where people no longer live. As shown on the map above, these empty towns are found around the world, and each one has a story to tell. Residents often leave a town because of some kind of threat or because their work disappeared. Visitors walk among the empty buildings and imagine what life was like for the people who once called these places home.

Resources Vanish Many ghost towns, like Bannack, are abandoned after a resource runs out. In 1908, a railroad worker found a sparkly gem in southern Africa's Namib Desert. When word got out that his find was a diamond, people flocked to the region. Soon after, the town of Kolmanskop (KOHL-mun-skop) grew. Eventually, after diamonds became harder to find there, a better supply was discovered several hours to the south, and people moved away.

A former settlement at the end of the world is now a haunting ghost town. Grytviken (GRIT-vee-kuhn) was once a busy whaling port on South Georgia, a remote island in the South Atlantic Ocean. For close to sixty years beginning in 1904, dozens of companies on South Georgia hunted whales for meat and blubber. More than 175, 000 whales were killed there. Over time, there were fewer whales around the island. Whaling companies were gone by 1965, and everyone left. Buildings, boats, and equipment remain in Grytviken.

Forces of Nature Events in nature can cause settlements to become ghost towns. Before 1995, the Caribbean island of Montserrat (mon-sur-RAT) was home to more than ten thousand people. A volcano on the island had not been active for more than three hundred years. In July 1995, the volcano erupted, and it's been erupting ever since. Lava, gases, and dangerous clouds of hot ash spill out of the volcano. The south half of Montserrat is now deserted, and the capital, Plymouth, was destroyed by an eruption. More than half of the island's residents have moved away for good.