It was doomed to be an unfinished project that would claim almost 15,000 lives. Today the remains of Stalin’s vast railway, which was set to run within the Arctic Circle from Salekhard to Igarka, can be found rusting in the icy tundra. History would later remember it as the “railway of bones”.
The old mining settlement at Bodie in California is arguably America’s best preserved ghost town. Dating back to around 1859, Bodie is frozen in a state of “arrested decay”, looked after as a historic park but not restored to its original condition. This makes the town both authentic and mysterious.
There’s something deeply unsettling about an isolated cluster of islands that is also a natural graveyard. But thanks to the strong Bering Sea currents, the Punuk Islands have become the final resting place of both man and beast.
As seen in this earlier post, there are numerous reasons why settlements become deserted and are reduced to ghost towns. Depletion of natural resources, surplus industry and lawlessness have all contributed to settlers uprooting themselves and their families and moving on. But sometimes disasters on an unprecedented scale can lead to larger urban areas – even whole cities – being abandoned.
The abandoned village of Ukivok is one of the world’s most amazing ghost towns, clinging precariously to the edge of a cliff in one of the most bleak corners of the world.
The Peak District in Northern England is an ancient landscape steeped in myth and legend, none more enduring than that of Robin Hood. Robin’s friend Little John appears alongside him in early accounts dating from 1420 to 1440, and a headstone in Hathersage churchyard is even marked with his name.
Since its closure in 1978, Sheffield’s General Cemetery has become a tangled exhibition of plants and undergrowth. Coveted by urban explorers, the final resting place of 87,000 people is ironically now a tranquil haven where plant and animal life blossoms.
RMS Titanic is without doubt the most famous ocean liner in history and most of us know how the story of its sinking. But less well known are its origins, and that Titanic began life on a now sorry-looking concrete slipway in a Belfast shipyard.
Another Place is a sculpture by Antony Gormley, consisting of 100 cast iron figures facing out to sea. The statues, like much of his work, are modelled on Gormley himself, and can be found at Crosby Beach near Liverpool, on England’s north west coast. They cover a two mile stretch of beach and emerge eerily from the sea as the tides retreat.
Ghost towns abound across the world but seldom are they more intriguing than in western United States, where former mining towns played host to the pioneers of their day. Other towns grew up around the railroad, as civilisation gradually spread from the eastern seaboard to the Wild West. Reasons for their abandonments are wide and varied, from the inherent lawlessness of the era to the depletion of natural resources. Whatever the reasons, ghost towns provide a fascinating glance into our history.
Back in the glory days of manufacturing and heavy industry, that timeless beacon of Britishness – the pub – served not only residential communities but industrial areas too. Pubs catered to factory workers and became important meeting places for factory bosses. The constant supply of people filtering through these watering holes ensured a prosperous trade. Today, few of these pubs remain. But some have managed to hang on, be it by their finger tips or with new leases of life.
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