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Definition: Ghost Town |
Ghost TownNoun1. A deserted town (especially in Western United States). Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. |
| Domain | Definition |
Building & Civil Engineering | A town permanently abandoned by its inhabitants, because of its business decline, a natural catastrophe, or. . . because a nearby mine which drew its inhabitants has been worked out. Source: European Union. (references) |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
Ghost towns are common in mining areas Colorado, Arizona, Nevada, Montana, and California in the western United States, British Columbia in western Canada, and parts of Australia. Old mining camps that have lost most of their population at some stage of their history, such as Central City, Colorado; Aspen, Colorado; Tombstone, Arizona or Cripple Creek, Colorado are sometimes included in the category, although they are active towns and cities today.
Other factors leading to abandonment of towns include natural resources such as water no longer being available, and railroads and highways bypassing or no longer accessing the town, shifting economic activity elsewhere. Chance significant fatality from epidemics has also produced ghost towns; for example, some places in eastern Arkansas were abandoned after near-total morbidity during the Spanish Flu pandemic.
Some ghost towns are tourist attractions, especially those that preserve interesting architecture. Visiting, writing about, and photographing them is a minor industry. Other ghost towns may be overgrown, difficult to access, or illegal to visit.
A recent attempt to declare an "Official Ghost Town" in California collapsed when the adherents of the town of Calico, in Southern California, and those of Bodie, in Northern California, could not come to an agreement as to which of their favorites was more deserving.
See also: List of ghost towns
Ghost town was a hit in the British charts in the 1980s for Ska group The Specials
Stampede to Timberline, Colorado's Ghost Towns and Mining Camps by Muriel Sibell Wolle, Revised and Enlarged Edition, Paperback, Swallow Press, 1991, ISBN 0-8040-0946-5 and Timberline Tailings, Tales of Colorado's Ghost Towns and Mining Camps, Muriel Sibell Wolle, Sage Books, Swallow Press, 1993, Paperback, ISBN 0-8040-0946-5; older hardback editions are available as used books. The author was a professor at the University of Colorado in Boulder, Colorado and began visiting old mining camps in the Boulder area in the 1920s and 1930s and eventually visited most of the ghost towns in Colorado, sketching them. The second book Tailings is mostly letters and other information elicted by the first book.Additional reading
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Ghost town."
| Domain | Usage | |
Screenplays | Why'd they build this ghost town so far away (The Simpsons; writing credit: Artur Brauner; Paul Hengge) | |
Movie/TV Titles | Ghost Town (1955) The Ghost Town (1944) Ghost Town Law (1942) The Lone Rider in Ghost Town (1941) Ghost Town Riders (1938) | |
Song Titles | My Boo (performing artist: Ghost Town DJ's) | |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | ||
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Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |||
| Thumbnail | Description & Credit | Thumbnail | Description & Credit |
 | The tide staff at Skamokawa - a ghost town on the Lower Columbia River. Credit: America's Coastlines. |  | The tide house at Skamokawa - a ghost town on the Lower Columbia River. Credit: America's Coastlines. |
 | An old church at the bridge at Skamokawa - a ghost town on the Lower Columbia River. Credit: America's Coastlines. |  | Historic structure at Animas Forks ghost town along the Alpine Loop National Back Country Byway. Credit: Unknown. |
 | Davies store in Garnet Ghost Town. Credit: Unknown. |  | Charles Morris, one of the few remaining inhabitants of the ghost town of Pony, Montana. Some of the furniture was brought overland by wagon. Credit: Library of Congress. |
 | Old house, a remnant of mining ghost town near Deadwood, South Dakota. Credit: Library of Congress. |  | Old storekeeper and abandoned store in near ghost town. Shaw, Kansas. Credit: Library of Congress. |
 | Bannack, Montana. Bannack is now a ghost town of about twelve population, but it was once one of the early mining camps of Montana, and the first capitol of the state. Credit: Library of Congress. |  | Creede, Colorado. Lead and silver mining in a former "ghost town". Credit: Library of Congress. |
Source: pictures compiled by the editor from various references; see picture credits. | |||
| The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com. |
| Language | Translations for "ghost town"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses. | |
Albanian | qytet i braktisur nga banorët. (various references) | |
Arabic | مدينة الأشباح. (various references) | |
Bulgarian | запустял град. (various references) | |
French | ville-fantôme, ville morte. (various references) | |
German | geisterstadt. (various references) | |
Hungarian | lakatlan város. (various references) | |
Italian | citt fantasma. (various references) | |
Japanese Kanji | コンマ以下 (below the decimal, cockroach, commune, connecting rod, con-rod, conversion, convert, convolution, convolve, cornrow style, ghost, ghost writer, giving permission, go steady, goal, goal getter, goal kick, goal line, goal post, goal reached, goalkeeper, goatability, go-cart, goggles, go-go, go-go dance, going my way, gold, gold medalist, gold rush, Goldberg, golden, golden age, golden disk, golden hour, golden time, Golden Week, golem, Gordon, gorgeous, gothic, green light, hit the goal, make the goal, of no account, prime time, traffic light). (various references) | |
Japanese Katakana | ゴーストタウン . (various references) | |
Pig Latin | ostghay owntay.(various references) | |
Portuguese | cidade fantasma. (various references) | |
Russian | призрачный город. (various references) | |
Serbo-Croatian | napušteni grad. (various references) | |
Spanish | ciudad muerta. (various references) | |
Thai | เมืองร้าง. (various references) | |
Turkish | terkedilmiş kasaba, hayalet kasaba. (various references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various translation references. | ||
Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams | |
| Words within the letters "g-h-n-o-o-s-t-t-w" | |
-3 letters: thongs, tooths. | |
-4 letters: ghost, goons, gowns, hongs, hoots, nohow, nowts, ottos, shoon, shoot, shott, shown, snoot, sooth, swoon, thong, tongs, toons, tooth, toots, towns, whoso, wonts, woosh. | |
-5 letters: goon, goos, gosh, gown, hogs, hong, hons, hoot, host, hots, hows, nogs, nosh, nows, nowt, onto, oohs, oots, otto, owns, shog, shoo, shot, show, snog. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro. | |
| 1. Definition 2. Usage: Modern 3. Usage: Commercial 4. Images: Slideshow | 5. Images: Photo Album 6. Expressions: Internet 7. Translations: Modern 8. Anagrams | 9. Bibliography |
Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
