About
Ghost Towns is a map of ghost towns, abandoned mining camps, drowned villages and ancient ruins. It currently shows 21,795 places; 2,751 of them have a known abandonment date.
Data sources
Places come from the open Wikidata database: items whose “instance of” (P31) is a ghost town, abandoned or former village, former, destroyed or submerged settlement, ruins, lost city or ancient city. A place is shown if it has coordinates and either a Wikipedia article or a dissolution date (P576). wikidata.org
Each place's history is the lead of its Wikipedia article in your language when one exists. Photos come from Wikimedia Commons.
How the cause is detected
Wikidata almost never records why a place was abandoned, so we detect it automatically from descriptions and article text — mentions of gold rushes, mines, reservoirs, disasters, wars and economic decline. Each place page shows the phrase the conclusion is based on. Automation makes mistakes — check the article.
- ⛏️ Gold rush
- ⚒️ Mines & quarries
- ☢️ Disaster
- 🌊 Flooded
- 💥 War & expulsion
- 📉 Economic decline
- 🏛️ Ancient ruins
- ❔ Cause unknown
How to help
Found a mistake or know the date and cause of abandonment? Edit the item on Wikidata (linked at the bottom of every place page) — the next map update will pick it up.
Safety
Abandoned sites can be unstable, private, military or contaminated (like the Chernobyl exclusion zone). Learn the access rules before you go and never go alone.
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