Wyoming Trading Post
Wyoming Travel

8 Wyoming Ghost Towns Worth the Drive

South Pass City, Atlantic City, Miner's Delight, Jeffrey City, and four more genuine Wyoming ghost towns. Where they are, what's left, and what they tell us about boom-and-bust Wyoming.

By Wyoming Trading Post Editors Updated October 15, 2026
Restored frontier buildings of South Pass City State Historic Site, Wyoming, with original 1860s wooden storefronts under a high-altitude blue sky.
South Pass City State Historic Site, Wyoming, a gold-rush town laid out in 1867, where Esther Hobart Morris served as the first woman justice of the peace in 1870. , Photo via Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA.

Wyoming was built on boom-and-bust economies. The fur trade boomed and busted in the 1820s-1840s. The Bozeman Trail military forts rose and fell in 1866-1868. The transcontinental railroad attracted dozens of construction camps in 1867-1869 that vanished within a year. The 1860s-1880s gold rushes filled mining camps with thousands of people who left within a generation. The 1920s oil booms and the 1950s-1970s uranium booms repeated the pattern at industrial scale.

What this means for visitors: Wyoming is full of ghost towns, ranging from substantial preserved historic sites to scattered foundations that you would not recognize as a town if you did not know what to look for. The list below covers eight that are worth visiting in 2026, in rough order of accessibility and substance.

1. South Pass City

Where: Central Wyoming, about 35 miles south of Lander on Wyoming Route 28.

Boom: 1867. The town was laid out that year in the Sweetwater Mining District; by 1868 about 1,500 people lived in the South Pass and Atlantic City districts. South Pass City was the first Sweetwater County seat, until the seat moved to Green River in 1873.

Bust: By 1872 the boom was over as the easy gold ran out, and the town began a long, steady decline.

What’s there: A Wyoming State Historic Site where 17 of the 23 original structures have been restored and are open to walk through, among them the Smith-Sherlock store, the hotel, saloons, the jail, and family cabins. Esther Hobart Morris served here in 1870 as the first woman justice of the peace in the United States.

Visit: The grounds are open year-round, weather permitting; the staffed buildings keep a summer season, roughly mid-May through September. Plan 3-4 hours. Pair with the Esther Morris suffrage history for full context.

Why it matters: the substantive ghost town visit in Wyoming. If you only do one, do this one.

A gravel road running across open sage country toward the scattered low buildings of South Pass City, Wyoming, under a wide sky of broken cloud.
South Pass City from the approach road. Within a year of the 1867 gold strike, the South Pass and Atlantic City districts held about 1,500 people. What a walk through the restored buildings cannot show you, and this can, is how little there is around them: the road, the sage, and a horizon with nothing on it. Photo by Carol M. Highsmith, Library of Congress (LCCN 2017688458). Public domain.

2. Atlantic City

Where: About five miles by road northeast of South Pass City.

Boom: The same late-1860s gold rush as South Pass City.

Bust: The boom faded in the 1870s, but unlike South Pass City, Atlantic City was never fully abandoned.

What’s there: Atlantic City counted 54 residents in the 2020 census. The Atlantic City Mercantile, built in 1893 and on the National Register, still operates as a bar and restaurant. Several other historic buildings are private residences: a “living ghost town” where the original buildings are still in use.

Visit: Lunch at the Mercantile is the standard pairing with a South Pass City visit. The drive between the two is about a quarter hour.

Why it matters: the working counterexample. Atlantic City shows what South Pass City would have looked like if a few residents had refused to leave when the gold ran out.

A white clapboard one-room schoolhouse with a green roof and a small bell tower standing on bare ground at Atlantic City, Wyoming, under a cloudy sky.
The old schoolhouse at Atlantic City. A bell tower is a bet on the future, and somebody in a gulch of a few hundred people made it. The building is the clearest evidence on the ground that this was a town with children in it, not a camp. Photo by Carol M. Highsmith, Library of Congress (LCCN 2017688207). Public domain.

3. Miner’s Delight (Hamilton City)

Where: A few miles from Atlantic City: north on County Road 237, then east on the Fort Stambaugh Loop Road (BLM 2324) and north on the signed spur.

Boom: Gold was found here in 1868, making it one of Wyoming’s earliest communities.

What’s there: Abandoned cabins and other buildings and the foundations of more. Less restored than South Pass City; more atmospheric for visitors who want the “stumbled across an abandoned town” experience.

Visit: A BLM-managed site with no fee, an interpretive kiosk at the entrance, panels inside, and a rugged walking path. Bring water and a map. Best in late spring through early fall.

Why it matters: the small, undeveloped ghost-town experience. South Pass City is what these sites looked like when they were inhabited; Miner’s Delight is what most became.

4. Carbon

Where: Carbon County, Wyoming, about nine miles south of Hanna.

Boom: Founded in 1868 on the Union Pacific line while the railroad was still being built, and named for its coal mines; Wyoming’s first mining town. It peaked at 1,140 people in the 1890 census.

Bust: In 1890 the Union Pacific opened new coal mines at Hanna, and when the railroad rebuilt its main line around 1900 it bypassed Carbon. The Carbon mines closed for good in 1902, and the town was gradually abandoned, with a few people hanging on for a decade or so.

What’s there: Old foundations, roads, mine ruins, the cindered roadbed of the original Union Pacific line, and the cemetery, which dates to the late 1860s and has been refurbished by the Carbon Cemetery Association.

Visit: Public access via gravel road. Bring water and topographic map. The cemetery is the substantive site.

Why it matters: the railroad-era boom-bust example. Carbon shows what happens when the only thing keeping a Wyoming town alive is one industry, and that industry moves.

The 1886 Union Pacific railroad depot in Cheyenne, Wyoming, a Romanesque sandstone building with arched windows and a clock tower.
The 1886 Union Pacific depot in Cheyenne, hub of the economic system that created and then erased Carbon, Piedmont, and Cumberland. When the UP's Carbon mines closed in 1902, the town began to empty. The railroad built the town and took its reason for existing with it when it left. Photo via Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA.

5. Jeffrey City

Where: Central Wyoming, on US-287 about 60 miles east of Lander.

Boom: The uranium boom built the town around company housing for mine workers; estimates of its peak run from about 3,000 to 4,500 people.

Bust: Layoffs, falling uranium prices and then a mine closure ended it. By 1982, 95 percent of the population had left.

What’s there: A town of 47 people in the 2020 census, in a setting built for thousands, with boarded-up buildings along the highway.

Visit: Drive-through stop on US-287. The juxtaposition of an intact 1970s townscape with a near-zero current population is the point.

Why it matters: the recent ghost town. Jeffrey City demonstrates that the boom-bust cycle continued through the late 20th century. The ruins are 1970s rather than 1880s, but the dynamic is identical.

6. Cambria

Where: Weston County, Wyoming, in the Black Hills foothills north of Newcastle.

Boom: 1889-1928. A coal company town; the 1900 census counted 966 people, and the company claimed about 1,400 a few years later.

Bust: The company announced the closure in February 1928, the mine whistle blew for the last time on March 15, and the post office closed at the end of that year.

What’s there: This is not a public historic site. The company’s 1920s Cambria Casino resort building survives as the Flying V Cambria Inn, and the remains of the town are on private land, so look from the road or stay at the inn rather than wander.

Visit: Pair with a Black Hills trip. Newcastle is about three hours by road from Buffalo and three and a half from Sheridan.

Why it matters: the company-town example. Cambria existed entirely to support the mine. When the mine closed, no organic community remained.

7. Piedmont

Where: Uinta County, Wyoming, in the southwest corner of the state, south of I-80.

Boom: In 1869 Moses Byrne built charcoal kilns here, burning timber from the Uinta Mountains to supply charcoal to Utah’s iron smelters, shipped out on the Union Pacific.

What’s there: Three surviving beehive-shaped kilns, about 30 feet across and 30 feet high, now a state historic site managed from Fort Bridger and on the National Register. The ghost town of Piedmont lies alongside.

Visit: Free, grounds open sunrise to sunset. Allow 30-60 minutes.

Why it matters: the industrial-archeology ghost town. The Piedmont kilns are remarkable engineering structures and a window into the railroad-era charcoal economy.

A long weathered wooden building with boarded and broken windows standing behind waist-high dry grass at Jay Em, Wyoming, with a small hand-lettered sign in front of it.
Jay Em, in Goshen County, against the Nebraska line at the far eastern edge of the state. It is here because eight entries is a short list, and because the wooden ones go the way this one is going: windows first, then the roof, then the whole thing at once. Photo by Carol M. Highsmith, Library of Congress (LCCN 2017685181). Public domain.

8. Cumberland

Where: Lincoln County, Wyoming, about 17 miles south of Kemmerer on the Uinta County line.

Boom: The early 1900s. Cumberland was a cluster of four coal camps, two of them Union Pacific Coal Company towns platted in 1903, with schools, a company store, a Mormon meetinghouse and a Catholic church.

What’s there: The Cumberland Cemetery, a few ruins, and little else. Quiet, dispersed, accessible via gravel road.

Visit: Free, public access. Bring water and basic backcountry awareness.

Why it matters: the western Wyoming counterpart to Cambria. Different mining district, identical economic story.

What Wyoming ghost towns tell us

The pattern across all eight sites is the same: a single industry (gold, coal, charcoal, uranium) supported a population that had no reason to be there once the industry left. Wyoming has more of these sites than most states because:

  • Wyoming had multiple boom industries across multiple eras (1860s gold, 1870s charcoal, 1880s-1920s coal, 1950s-1970s uranium, 2000s coalbed methane).
  • Wyoming has low population density, so failed towns mostly were not absorbed by adjacent communities; they were just abandoned.
  • Wyoming’s dry climate and high altitude preserve abandoned wood and stone structures longer than most other regions.
  • The state has formally protected several of the more substantial sites, South Pass City and the Piedmont kilns among them.

The ghost-town tradition is not over. The current 2026 economic shifts in Wyoming coal country (Gillette, Wright, Hanna’s modern coal operations facing decline) may produce the next generation of Wyoming ghost towns within the next two decades. The pattern repeats.

For visitors interested in seeing the pattern in action across history: pair a South Pass City visit with a Jeffrey City drive-through. The same forces are at work; only the commodities and the dates have changed.

Pinterest-worthy shots

For photographers planning a Wyoming ghost-town circuit:

  • South Pass City at sunrise or in light snow.
  • Jeffrey City mid-day, the empty parking lots and intact 1970s signage.
  • Carbon cemetery with high plains in the background.
  • Piedmont charcoal kilns at golden hour.

The Wyoming light is dry and clear and rewards the work of getting up early or staying out late. Most ghost-town sites have no operating hours; you can shoot whenever you want.

Reconstructed stockade and parade ground at Fort Phil Kearny State Historic Site near Banner, Wyoming, an 1866 Army post preserved under the same Wyoming State Parks program that maintains South Pass City.
Fort Phil Kearny, near Banner, Wyoming, another Wyoming State Parks site, abandoned and burned in 1868, with part of its stockade reconstructed. The same dry climate that preserves wood at South Pass City keeps the fort site readable. Photo via Wyoming State Parks. Public domain.

Gear for ghost-town exploration

Most Wyoming ghost towns require unpaved-road access or short hikes, but nothing here demands a dedicated overlander. The public sites on this list are reachable by a standard passenger vehicle in summer; a couple, Miner’s Delight and the Carbon backroads especially, run enough gravel that a sedan wants dry weather, and a higher-clearance vehicle handles a rough patch with more margin. Winter closes most of them. The South Pass City grounds stay open year-round, weather permitting; the rest go quiet from roughly November through April.

Safety is mostly common sense, with one real hazard worth naming: stay well clear of old mine openings, which still turn up unsealed in the old mining districts. Stick to established paths, don’t climb on unstable structures, and treat the maintained state historic sites (South Pass City, the Piedmont kilns) as the low-risk option; the dispersed sites like Miner’s Delight and Carbon deserve more attention, and most have no cell service at all. Bring water and tell someone your route.

Pack the basics:

Further reading

  • History of Wyoming by T.A. Larson (University of Nebraska Press, 1978, 2nd ed.). Standard scholarly history with multiple chapters covering the boom-bust cycles.
  • Wyoming State Historical Society publications, especially the Annals of Wyoming journal.
  • Mary Lou Pence and Lola M. Homsher, The Ghost Towns of Wyoming (Hastings House, 1956).
  • Wyoming State Geological Survey mining district histories.

Sources

  1. South Pass City State Historic Site, Wyoming State Parks
  2. WyoHistory.org, South Pass City (laid out 1867, peaked about 1870)
  3. Wyoming State Parks, About South Pass City (17 of the site's 23 original structures restored and exhibited)
  4. BLM, Miner's Delight (BLM-managed; walking path, kiosk and interpretive panels; South Pass mining districts had about 1,500 people by 1868)
  5. WyoHistory.org, Carbon, Wyoming (1868; peak 1,140 in 1890; Hanna mines 1890; Carbon mines closed 1902)
  6. Wyoming State Parks, Piedmont Charcoal Kilns State Historic Site (Moses Byrne, 1869)
  7. Atlantic City Mercantile, National Register of Historic Places (built 1893)
  8. Mary Lou Pence and Lola M. Homsher, The Ghost Towns of Wyoming (Hastings House, 1956)
  9. Bureau of Land Management Wyoming, abandoned mine and townsite information
  10. Wyoming State Geological Survey, mining district histories