Utah

Ghost Towns of Utah

Utah’s ghost towns range from remote railroad stops abandoned when the transcontinental lines moved on, to silver and copper mining camps in the mountains that boomed and emptied within a generation. Many are accessible by regular car; others require high-clearance vehicles and careful planning.

Gold & Silver Mining

Frisco Ghost Town

A booming 1870s–80s silver camp in Beaver County once infamous as one of the wildest, most lawless mining towns in the Great Basin.

Agriculture · Mormon Settlements

Grafton Ghost Town

A Mormon pioneer farming settlement near the Virgin River, undone by repeated flooding and a failing irrigation canal.

Railroad

Terrace Ghost Town

A Central Pacific Railroad maintenance town that emptied out almost overnight when the transcontinental route was rerouted.

Railroad

Thistle Ghost Town

A Denver & Rio Grande railroad junction buried in 1983 when a massive landslide dammed Spanish Fork Canyon and drowned the town.

Railroad

Little Valley Ghost Town

A Southern Pacific company town on the Great Salt Lake shore, built to construct the Lucin Cutoff causeway and abandoned once the trestle was complete.

Copper Mining

Garfield Ghost Town

A copper-smelter company town of 3,500 on the Great Salt Lake shore, condemned at its peak in 1955 and relocated to Magna one house at a time.

Copper Mining

Bingham Canyon

A cosmopolitan copper city of ~15,000 stretched seven miles up a canyon — razed in 1972 and swallowed whole by the open-pit mine it served.

Explore the Map

Interactive map of Utah’s mapped ghost-town sites. Click a marker for details.

A Short History of Utah’s Ghost Towns

Utah’s ghost towns came from an unusually broad mix of forces — mining, railroading, industry, floods, and pioneer settlement — which gives the state a remarkable variety of abandoned places. Frisco, in the Great Basin, was a wild silver camp of thousands whose main mine literally collapsed under its own workings in the 1880s. Grafton was a Mormon pioneer farming village along the Virgin River, abandoned after repeated floods and now one of the West’s most photographed ghost towns. Terrace served as a Central Pacific railroad maintenance hub until the line was rerouted; Garfield was a copper-smelter company town relocated house by house; Little Valley housed the crews who built the Great Salt Lake causeway; and Thistle, a railroad junction, was drowned in 1983 when a massive landslide dammed the river and flooded the town.

Getting There & Access

Access ranges from roadside to remote. Thistle’s drowned remains are visible from Highway 89 southeast of Spanish Fork, and Grafton is reached by a short gravel road near Rockville, close to Zion National Park. Frisco and Terrace, out in the western desert, require longer drives on dirt roads where high clearance is advisable and services are nonexistent. Garfield and Little Valley, near the Great Salt Lake, sit in an industrial and causeway landscape with limited public access. Utah’s deserts are hot and dry in summer and its western basins are genuinely isolated, so carry ample water, keep a full tank, watch for sudden storms and flash floods in canyon country, and check road conditions before venturing off pavement.

Public Land & Responsible Visiting

Much of Utah’s backcountry is public land managed by the Bureau of Land Management, interlaced with private, tribal, and industrial parcels. Grafton is a privately preserved historic site maintained by a nonprofit — admire the buildings but do not enter or damage them. On public land, collecting artifacts from sites like Frisco and Terrace is illegal, and the region’s many abandoned mine shafts and unstable ruins are dangerous, so keep your distance. Respect fences, gates, and posted industrial and tribal boundaries near the Great Salt Lake. Stay on established roads to protect fragile desert soils and biological crust, pack out all trash, watch for rattlesnakes, and leave each site intact for those who follow.