Some of the most interesting mining ghost towns are those that have escaped restoration efforts and remain largely unchanged from the days their mines operated at peak production. A number of mining towns- Virginia City, Nevada, and Columbia, California, among them-have been restored as tourist attractions, and provide visitors with the opportunity to relive late nineteenth-century mining days. As mineral strikes slowed, prospectors and those providing them goods and services (merchants, saloon owners, bankers, and prostitutes) left homes and businesses so abruptly-to move on to the next strike-that towns were often left in a state of suspended animation, with displays still standing in shop windows, bottles and glasses on saloon tables, and the shelves of abandoned cabins lined with pieces of crockery. Most western ghost towns were once mining towns, built-during the booms that began in California in 1849 and continued into the early twentieth century-on the promise of profits to be realized from a region's abundant mineral deposits. While most ghost towns are completely abandoned, small resident populations remain in some, and while many have disappeared from the landscape entirely, buildings and infrastructure remain to mark the locations of others. GHOST TOWNS, the term used to identify communities that once prospered but later declined and wereĭeserted, usually due to economic shifts and reversals.
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