Ghost Town USA home page

WELCOME TO

GHOST TOWN USA! ™

YOUR Favorite Ghost Town Website!

LOVE IT! – LIVE IT! – READ IT!

Home of the GHOST TOWN OF THE MONTH

Gary B. Speck

Gary B. Speck Publications
PO Box 1328
Moreno Valley, CA 92556-1328

Researching and exploring ghost towns throughout the

United States & Canada since 1968.

ONLINE 15 YEARS!

SINCE 1994!

MISSION STATEMENT

Preserving the history of America’s fading and vanished towns,

communities and other places of habitation through education.

SITE MAP

What’s NEW at Ghost Town USA

LATEST UPDATE: Nov 18, 2009

In the past 30 days we’ve made these changes:

· UPDATED our monthly feature: GHOST TOWN OF THE MONTH (Nov 02).

· LINKS:

· GENEALOGY:

· GHOST TOWNS:

1. ADDED NEW FEATURE: ON THE ROAD AGAIN - A series of pages devoted to traveling America’s Blue Highways.

2. ADDED NEW photos (taken Jul, 2008) to the UTAH page for Coal City and Eureka (Nov 02). Added a couple new towns (Nov 02). Also updated a couple photos for the Salton Sea area. They were taken Saturday Oct 24, 2009 and uploaded (Nov 02). The motel at North Shore has been torn down, and the yacht club is undergoing renovations. Also, the buildings at The Corners have been torn down. The sea’s level has dropped a couple feet since my last visit in February 2007.

3. ADDED NEW PAGE for BELMONT, Nevada (Nov 02)

4. UPDATING NEW PAGES!!! Ghost Town USA Column Index This is an index to all of the ghost towns that have appeared in Gary’s column in Western & Eastern Treasures Magazine. (Sep 16)

5. UPDATE: Currently working on captions for the photos for my new ghost town book being published by a major Chicago book publisher. It is entitled Ghost Towns – Yesterday & Today, and should be on the shelves early next summer. MORE COMING….

6. ONGOING: Continuing to add GPS coordinates - where known to the state and individual location pages. This will be ongoing through the year at the request of several readers. Also posting updated state lists, adding numerous reader submissions – this has been a long time in coming! Thanks to all who have submitted locations for inclusion on these pages. As I have mentioned before, only a SMALL PORTION of my entire ghost town files are posted, especially from states where I have extensive files. At least a half-dozen states have well over 1000 locations each in my files for that state.

1. ONGOING: Updating a GPS page supplementing my monthly in-print Ghost Town USA column as featured Western & Eastern Treasures Magazine.

· LICENSE PLATE COLLECTING:

· MISC:

1. I am still looking for historical information and photographs on the Salton Sea area and Imperial County, CA. We are anticipating publication of a very detailed Ghost Town Guru Guide to the Salton Sea region soon. I have received a lot of new information and photos from several readers, and I have a couple more photo excursions planned during the upcoming cooler weather – Also I have just contracted to write a Ghost Town book for a large national publisher, so there will be a delay in getting this guide out. I apologize for the delay in getting this new format guide out, but writing a book for a real publisher is a great feat and I want to give it 100% of my attention.

· PLEASE NOTE: IF you find any broken or dead links please advise. IF you do, please let me know specifically which page the problem is on, as well as which link is broken. I have over 350 individual web pages, along with many photos, so you need to be specific so I can find it AND fix it. Thanks.

Freelance writing and photography:

Celebrating over 30 years of continuous publication, with over 530 articles (as of Sep 2008) and well over 2500 photos published in 22 different publications. My first published article was in March 1978.

· AUTHOR of the Book “Dust in the Wind – A Guide to American Ghost Towns”

AUTHOR of the “Ghost Town Guru Guides”
AUTHOR of the upcoming book Ghost Towns Yesterday & Today. Publication should occur sometime in 2010.

· Contributing Editor for “Western & Eastern Treasures Magazine”

· Author of THE monthly column “Ghost Town USA”

Featured monthly in Western & Eastern Treasures magazine, since April 1984!

· SEARCHING FOR MY ROOTS THROUGH: GenealogY

License Plate Collecting:

· Want List:

· Trade List:

· General collecting information:

License Plate Collecting clubs:

· Automobile License Plate Collector's Association ( ALPCA )

· Number Plate Collector's Club-Australia

1. Visit NPCC’s main website.

2. North American membership coordinator for NPCC

GHOST TOWNS

Those two words promise adventure to thousands of Americans who take to the highways and byways of this country in search of these lost or forgotten habitations.

But what are they?

Curled wood battens peel away from the facade above a sagging, weathered canopy, standing only by virtue of a few rusty nails. Glassless windows stare blankly onto a rutted dirt street overgrown with native vegetation. Flaking paint of an unreadable advertisement is barely visible on the desiccated, chocolate colored wood wall. A rusting bed frame leans against the storefront under a broken window with a faded "Visitors Wel..." painted in gold paint. A slight breeze blows through open window casements and doorless entries, rustling the decaying debris of a dead town. This is all that remains of the hopes and dreams of hundreds of people. People whose hopes and dreams have evaporated and blown away like Dust in the Wind.

So, what is a ghost town?

"A Ghost Town is a town or community that at one time had a commercial or population center, and is either wholly abandoned or faded greatly from its peak, and now is just a shadow of its former self."

Ghost towns are one of America's least understood and appreciated historical treasures. Unfortunately the ones with tangible remains, especially the classic ghost town with a street full of abandoned buildings, are disappearing far too rapidly. A large percentage of ghost towns left in the United States are either barren or rubbled sites. Another classification of ghost towns could better be considered “semi” or “near” ghost towns. These locations still contain a few die-hard residents, along with a collection of abandoned or unused building--the remains of a dying town. Lastly many well-preserved ghost towns fall under government or private protection and are open to the public.

Historians estimate there may be as many as 50,000 ghost towns scattered across the United States. Obviously there is no one source for information on all those locations, but the man that CNN called "The Ghost Town Guru" is working on it!

If you like the lost and forgotten sites, classic ghost towns, near-ghost towns, or state protected ones, Ghost Town USA has them all. You can read all about them monthly in the pages of Western & Eastern Treasures Magazine, or you can explore different locations on this website. Please note that the ghost towns featured on these pages are only a tiny part of our entire file of ghost towns.

When you are out exploring, always remember how fragile these rickety relics of Americana are. Always treat them with respect, and please abide by the Ghost Towner’s Code of Ethics. In that way, they may last a little longer, and be available for someone else (or YOU!) to visit next year.

To begin exploring these rickety relics of Americana, join "The Ghost Town Guru" ™ on a journey into the world of

GHOST TOWN USA!

"The Ghost Town Guru"
and "The Ghost Town Guru's Guides to the Ghost Towns of ***"
are trademarks of Gary B. Speck Publications.

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