[rquirk]

Interesting reading! A lot of the ghost towns in the US are pretty small, maybe 100-200 inhabitants maximum. They eventually seem to fold into nearby communities with better road/rail connections.

FWIW there are ghost towns like the US examples in Spain too - villages of about 50-100 inhabitants that eventually just seem to dry up as populations give up on agriculture/subsistence/mining or whatever and younger generations move to larger cities.

Then there's Valdeluz. Political corruption at its finest, producing a semi-ghost town with less than 2000 people living there. http://desertedplaces.blogspot.com.es/2013/06/the-spanish-gh... - I visited there a couple of summers ago. Nice and peaceful, plenty of playgrounds for the kids to play on, no queues at the supermarket :-)