Talk:Lists of ghost towns in the United States

Split article
I split this out for the US towns from the main ghost towns article, due to the size. I added in the new towns from those already in the ghost town sub category for that state (if applicable). Lugnuts 11:32, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Definitions
I would like to have someone explain the definition being used to define these specific towns as ghost towns. When I made changes to the North Dakota list, I was told that I offended people because I included towns where people currently live. Yet, a number of towns in this list still have residents. Could we come to some kind of consensus on this issue. There seems to be some misunderstanding among editors about what constitutes a ghost town. 72.24.182.238 01:45, 8 November 2006 (UTC) Menk
 * Here's the definition from the Ghost town article


 * A ghost town is a town that has been abandoned, usually because the economic activity that supported it has failed or because of natural or human-caused disasters. The word is sometimes used in a deprecative sense to include areas where the current population is significantly less than it once was. It may be a partial ghost town such as Tonopah, Nevada or sometimes referred to a neighborhood where people no longer live (like Love Canal). A tourist ghost town has significant economic activity from tourism, such as Oatman, Arizona, or numerous sites in Egypt, but cannot sustain itself except by tourism. A true ghost town is totally abandoned, such as Bodie, California, but may still see visitors. A ghost town may be a site where little or nothing remains above the soil surface, i.e. Babylon. Some ghost towns revive as living cities, such as Alexandria in Egypt.Lugnuts 11:56, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Texas
I'm curious why was the list of Texas ghost towns was unsplit and returned to this article? Splitting sections out of long articles is standard procedure. Katr67 18:42, 2 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Someone said it wasn't long enough, which made little sense to me, restore it if you want to.A mcmurray 22:10, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Victor, Colorado
Why is Victor, Colorado, on this list? Any town with a population of 500 is not a ghost town. Yes, it's small but it's not abandoned. If small population is the criteria for a "ghost town" then most small towns in the Great Plains and mountain West qualify. StudierMalMarburg 13:29, 16 April 2007 (UTC)


 * We obviously need some criteria for a ghost town. There are some ghost towns (Rhyolite, Nevada is an example) that are almost abandoned, but still have a few residents.  Then there are places such as Victor (nearby Cripple Creek is an even better example) that while they have declined, are still active towns.  How about defining a Ghost town as one that has less than 10% of its historical peak population?  Plazak 14:40, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

See discussionWikipedia talk:WikiProject Ghost towns/Article guidelines, propose your guideline there. People obviously get upset by their town being included, just remove them if they aren't ghost towns. If they aren't and remain here their status will be discovered eventually, by sleuthing Wikipedians such as Studier. IvoShandor 14:52, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I removed Cripple Creek and Victor, Colorado, from the list. StudierMalMarburg 15:41, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

What are ghost towns?
In this list of 'ghost towns' someone has added Tombstone, Arizona yet in the wikipedia article on the town it says that the town has a population of around 1500. I think this article needs some serious editing and research.

Thank you for your suggestion. When you feel an article needs improvement, please feel free to make those changes. Wikipedia is a wiki, so anyone can edit almost any article by simply following the Edit this page link at the top. The Wikipedia community encourages you to be bold in updating pages. Don't worry too much about making honest mistakes — they're likely to be found and corrected quickly. If you're not sure how editing works, check out how to edit a page, or use the sandbox to try out your editing skills. New contributors are always welcome. You don't even need to log in (although there are many reasons why you might want to).

Also note the discussions linked above, it seems everyone wants to complain but no one actually wants to help solve the problem. IvoShandor 11:38, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Major cleanup in Michigan section
I just deleted the following from the Michigan section, because they are either unincorporated communities, villages, towns, or cities--in any event, there's no indication that they aren't still active, and in a few cases, they're pretty blatantly active:
 * Alba, Michigan
 * Alcona, Michigan
 * Branch, Michigan
 * Chase, Michigan
 * Climax, Michigan
 * Edwardsburg, Michigan
 * Eureka, Michigan
 * Flint, Michigan: Come ON, people, there's no way a city with over 140,000 residents qualifies as a "ghost town" under any realistic definition
 * Haring, Michigan
 * Hodunk, Michigan
 * Hoxeyville, Michigan
 * Idlewild, Michigan
 * Mayfield, Michigan
 * Mikado, Michigan
 * Norwood, Michigan
 * Osseo, Michigan
 * Pinckney, Michigan
 * Portage, Michigan: See Flint; population 41,000+
 * Richland, Michigan
 * Schoolcraft, Michigan
 * Selkirk, Michigan
 * Thompsonville, Michigan
 * Walton, Michigan
 * Westwood, Michigan
 * Williamsburg, Michigan

Additionally, I disambiguated Fayette, Michigan (an active community) to the ghost town in Fayette Historic State Park; Milton, Michigan to Chesterfield Township, Michigan, as there are at least two separate active Miltons in the state in addition to the Chesterfield Twp. ghost town; and Pinnebog, Michigan (another active community) to the ghost town at Port Crescent State Park.

There are a few unincorporated communities still in the list that may or may not be active; I didn't remove ones that are listed in their articles as having a population of less than 500, or with no listed population figure. Maybe folks from other states should do the same for the lists in their states, given that I culled the Michigan list by over a third just by removing those communities I could confirm were active without any active research? Rdfox 76 14:36, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

I deleted Sparr and Waters from this section. They are very small villages, but are far from ghost towns. Waters has a McDonalds even!! 209.173.211.254 18:29, 3 October 2007 (UTC)shaner5000

South Cape May
What does the + mean next to it? it is not explained on this page as far as I can tell. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.81.176.14 (talk) 00:27, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

WikiProjects (especially lists)
I've added this list (and hopefully all of the associated sublists) to the "Geography", "Ghost Towns", "Lists", and appropriate 'regional' WikiProjects. Hopefully I got them all....if more are created, or I missed any, 'cleaning up' after me would be nice. :)

The 'immediate attention' request for 'WikiProject Lists' is for this, and the sublists, to be 'reformatted' into a consistent, tabular format...something along the lines of... 'name', 'county', 'coordinates', 'year established', 'year abandoned', GNIS links, etc.

TBH, adding GNIS links in particular should be a 'high priority' thing for "Ghost Towns" I would think....."The database is part of a system that includes topographic map names and bibliographic references. The names of books and historic maps that confirm the feature or place name are cited. Variant names, alternatives to official federal names for a feature, are also recorded." It would probably help quite a bit with finding sources to improve articles... (the big benefit would be from doing it 'systematically'...I would think easier to do and reference in a 'list' than in the articles, or at least the 'edit' would be easier). :) Revent (talk) 21:50, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

New South Dakota/Wyoming list pages possible?
I have recently borrowed a copy of Watson Parker and Hugh K. Lambert's very reliable and helpful resource, Black Hills Ghost Towns. The book is used as a citation by the USGS. This resource indexes about 600 ghost towns in the Black Hills area, located throughout 6 counties in South Dakota and Wyoming: Butte, Custer, Fall River, Lawrence, Meade, and Pennington. The South Dakota and Wyoming lists will certainly get too long to remain on this page once it is finished, so could these state lists be moved to their own pages (similar to the List of ghost towns in Texas article)? I will create the pages and lists themselves. TCMemoire (talk) 00:30, 21 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Also, in this book, sometimes, there are two different towns with the same name, located in the same county. How should I handle these situations? Should I name the articles something like "Anchor, South Dakota (Deadwood Creek)" and "Anchor, South Dakota (Ragged Top Mining District)" (these are real examples from the book)? Should I also include a disambiguation page leading to both of them (to which searches for "Anchor, South Dakota" would link)? TCMemoire (talk) 00:43, 21 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Typically, county names are used to differentiate two cities with the same name in the same state.
 * A disambiguation page is probably helpful, unless you have knowledge that one name is much better known that the other. In that case, give the well known city the unqualified name ("Anchor, South Dakota") and include a hatnote at the top of that leading to the lesser known.  See WP:DAB for full details.  —EncMstr (talk) 02:39, 21 August 2013 (UTC)

Nevada list
If there's already a main article to Nevada ghost towns that's linked on this page, is it really necessary to have a copy of the list on this page as well? I can check that the towns on this page are included on the main article, then delete the Nevada list and leave the link to the main article. TCMemoire (talk) 21:56, 26 October 2013 (UTC)
 * No, you're right: the duplication was totally unnecessary. It appeared via transclusion of the main article. I've deleted the transclusion. --Thnidu (talk) 08:23, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

Beardstown, Tennessee
Unincorporated, not dead. Flyfisher's Guide to Tennessee, Don Kirk, 2013, p.303:
 * The upper part of the Buffalo River, in Lawrence County, is designated as a "State Scenic River" under the Tennessee Wild and Scenic Rivers Act. [...] Two unincorporated communities adjacent to the river in Perry County are Flatwoods and Beardstown.

Also, FWIW, from Chamber tip: Jump To A Tiered Dues Model
 * Matt Votaw [...] lives on the banks of the beautiful Buffalo River in Beardstown, Tennessee with his wife, two sons and and two dogs.

--Thnidu (talk) 08:34, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

Virginia list
Removed Lackey, Magruder, Bigler's Mills, and Jamestown. The first three are extinct, former populated areas and do not exist as communities - the properties were redeveloped for military use. Jamestown has been restored, preserved and redeveloped - hardly a true ghost town. Let's not be absurd about this for the sake of making lists, or "ghost town" will lose any meaning.Parkwells (talk) 15:56, 12 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Extinct, former populated areas are pretty much the epitome of ghost towns. Is your concern the fact that nothing of them remains? We have a lot of those on our lists. Ntsimp (talk) 17:08, 12 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Ntsimp is correct; the actual definition of a ghost town is not just what you see in the movies, with mostly intact ruins left standing. A ghost town is, simply put, a former populated place/locality that no longer has any permanent residents, whether anything of it remains today or not. (Some people will actually lump in communities that have quickly-dwindling populations, so the definition does vary sometimes.)  –  T C  Memoire  21:34, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Wisconsin Ghost Towns main page
EP111 split the Wisconsin list out into a separate main page a couple of years ago. A comparison shows everything here is included there, so I've replaced the list here with a link to the main page, a la several of the other states. CNJECulver (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 13:57, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

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Structure of this list and individual state lists
I'm a bit confused about what exactly this list should contain in it. Every single state appears to have it's own list article listing ghost towns in that respective state, yet some of the states here redirect to the respective state's list, and others do not, simply listing ghost towns in this list. This list's existence almost seems redundant and pointless. I'd like to try to clean up some of these articles but I'm unsure of what direction to go with them as I am rather new. -ItzHawk (talk) 01:23, 10 December 2020 (UTC)


 * This page should likely be just a list of lists similar to the one over at Lists of ghost towns in Canada. As the lists need to be updated, updating the ghost towns here and on the states' respective list pages seems redundant.
 * If this page is to be restructured that way, it should actually be moved to Lists of ghost towns in the United States, with this page being a redirect to it. No Lives Left ⸞NᴇᴡTᴀʟᴋ⸟ 04:35, 3 June 2022 (UTC)