10 ghost towns to add to your travel bucket list

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Thurmond, W.Va., a coal town, went from several hundred residents in the late 1800s to seven by the year 2000. Visitors can tour the restored train depot and museum, but many come for river rafting.

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Virginia City, Mont., is a former gold mining town founded in 1863. It has been frozen in time since the late 19th century. The town's Gypsy Museum houses an antique Gypsy fortune teller machine that has received multimillion-dollar offers from curators, including magician David Copperfield. Collectors say the 100-year-old machine that speaks your fortune may be the last of its kind.

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Rhyolite, Nev., was established in 1905 during the Gold Rush, quickly boomed and fell apart after the mine closed in 1911. It's now one of the most photogenic ghost towns in the Southwest because of the abandoned buildings and rocky landscape. It's northeast of Death Valley National Park.

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Low-hanging clouds hug part of Superstition Mountain in Lost Dutchman State Park in Apache Junction, Ariz., as seen from Goldfield ghost town. This former gold town thrived until the 1890s.

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Tourists visit St. Elmo, a Colorado ghost town near Salida. The town, which declined by the 1930s, was a mining village and railroad stop. Visitors can shop at the town's antique-filled General Store.

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A portion of the copper processing plant in Kennecott, Alaska, is dwarfed by the gravel-covered expanse of the Kennecott Glacier. The town was too remote to survive after its heyday in the early 1900s.

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Animas Forks, Colo., is a former silver and gold mining town at 11,200 feet in the San Juan Mountains. This ghost town is off the beaten path, so rent a four-wheeler for your visit.

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Now a ghost town, Bodie, Calif., was a Gold Rush-era mining town of nearly 10,000 people in the late 1870s. Its post office closed in 1942. The town still has stocked stores. If anyone steals from the site, bad luck will allegedly follow.

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Alabama's first state capital, Cahawba, Selma, was founded in 1819. This house is one of only two remaining structures at the site of the town that boasted a population of nearly 5,000 people. An artesian well on the site was still flowing in 1983, providing Mattie Arthur, the home's occupant, with a continuous flow of water.

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Terlingua, Texas, was a hotbed for mercury in the early 20th century. The town declined by the 1940s. If you'd like to visit this ghost town, the Big Bend Hotel is the only nearby place to stay.