While some ghost towns have been partially restored and commercialised as tourist traps, many more are in remote or awkward locations where the abandoned buildings are left to be slowly reclaimed by the elements. Occasionally a village can avoid becoming a ghost town by finding a new vocation to replace a dying industry, but this becomes substantially more difficult if the town site is far off the beaten path.
A mining town is abandoned once too little ore remains to be profitable, a railway town is abandoned once the train no longer stops, a manufacturing town is abandoned when its last factory closes. More commonly, ghost towns quietly appear when the reason for the town's creation no longer exists.
Some ghost towns might have a handful of permanent inhabitants hospitality staff, researchers, or inhabitants who never left.Ī few ghost towns are part of exclusion zones due to man-made or natural disasters.
It is usually implied to have enough remaining or partially remaining buildings to look like a town. There is no commonly accepted definition of a ghost town.
