A ghost town is a town that has been abandoned, usually because the economic activity that supported it has failed. Ghost towns are common in the mining areas of the Western United States such as Colorado, Arizona, Nevada, Montana, and California. Often 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 more or less included in the category.
Ghost towns are often tourist attractions. Visiting them, writing about and photographing them is a minor industry.
See 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. Many other books have been published but this was one of the first. 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 1920's and 30's 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. She has also written about "Ghost Towns of the West" and "Ghost Towns of Montana."