And today it's a great destination for riders seeking for genuine a 19th-Century destination. In 1972 the newly created ghost town of Rush became part of the Buffalo National River. But instead of molten silver draining into sand molds they only saw the telltale green fumes of zinc oxide, which could be seen dancing inside the furnace. A group of these prospectors built a large rock smelter and anxiously waited while they refined the anticipated load of silver. And in 1886, just up from the banks of the Ozarks' Buffalo River, ore believed to be silver was discovered. In the early 1880s legends of lost Indian silver mines drew prospectors to the area. And between the Mississippi River and the Rockies there's only one such place: Rush, Arkansas. Technically, real ghost towns are totally abandoned - business districts, residential areas - everything. Photo: John Fowler / Flickr / CC-BY 2.The only Genuine Ghost Town in the Ozarks! Many of these ghost towns have been preserved and serve as state parks, while other former ghost towns have been slowly repopulated over time (such as Aspen, Colorado). Some of these ghost towns entered the popular culture, including Deadwood, South Dakota (which inspired the HBO TV series of the same name) and Cripple Creek, Colorado. Lindsay Baker of Tarleton State University in Texas has issued two defining characteristics of ghost towns: (1) there is no more reason for this town to exist and (2) there are tangible remnants of the town for visitors to see.In America, the notion of a 'ghost town' became popularized largely following the California Gold Rush, when a variety of mining towns and camps sprung up across the Western and even parts of the Southern US that were later abandoned when the local resources were used up. Sometimes, the term 'ghost town' is also applied to places that are sparsely populated, or from where a once-large population scattered, but this list will largely focus on abandoned, empty ghost towns.Īmerican academics have attempted to get even more specific about the definition of 'ghost town.' Professor T. Typical reasons for cities to be evacuated and abandoned by humans include an economic collapse, armed conflicts and wars, changes in the transportation grid, natural disasters such as floods and earthquakes or - in some cases - specific acts of local governments. 'Ghost Town' is a slang term for a town or city that has, for one reason or another, been abandoned by people.

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