Ghost Town Directory

Oregon ghost towns

Towns
12
Counties
10
With photographs
12

The Oregon ghost towns people look for most.

All 12 towns

All Oregon ghost towns

  1. 01AndrewsHarney County3 min readAndrews, Oregon, is a ghost town where painter John Simpkins lived alone in the schoolhouse from 2011 to 2020, years after the last house burned in 1996.
  2. 02AnlaufDouglas County3 min readAnlauf, Oregon began as a homestead filed by German immigrants along Pass Creek in Douglas County. It became a lumber town of about 30 people at its peak.
  3. 03AntelopeWasco County3 min readIn 1982, the ranchers of Antelope, Oregon voted to dissolve their own town to stop followers of Bhagwan Rajneesh from taking it over. They lost the vote.
  4. 04AshwoodJefferson County3 min readIn 1902, a newspaper said Ashwood, Oregon, made more noise than any town three times its size. Then the Oregon King Mine closed and the hammers stopped.
  5. 05BayoceanTillamook County3 min readBayocean, Oregon was a resort town marketed as the playground of millionaires. Its residents built a jetty that sent the ocean's currents into their own town.
  6. 06BuncomJackson County3 min readIn 1864 Gin Lin, a Chinese mining boss, bought a ranch and claims at Buncom, Oregon, and built a five-mile ditch to power hydraulic mining on Sterling Creek.
  7. 07Castle RockMorrow County6 min readCastle Rock, Oregon was a Columbia River rail and shipping point in Morrow County until a rival railroad, a fire and Lake Umatilla ended it. Read its story.
  8. 08ShanikoWasco County4 min readShaniko was the 'Wool Capital of the World' in 1903 until a rival railroad bypassed it in 1911. Visit Oregon's best-preserved ghost town on Highway 97.
  9. 09SumpterBaker County4 min readSumpter, Oregon was a gold boomtown of 2,200 with an opera house and three newspapers. A 1917 fire and played-out mines left a dredge and 204 residents behind.
  10. 10ValsetzPolk County4 min readValsetz, Oregon was a rain-soaked timber company town famous for a 9-year-old's newspaper, bulldozed and burned by Boise Cascade in 1984. Here's its story.
  11. 11VanportMultnomah County4 min readVanport was Oregon's second-largest city until a 1948 Memorial Day flood erased it in hours. Inside the shipyard metropolis that shaped Black Portland.
  12. 12WhitneyBaker County4 min readWhitney, Oregon was a Sumpter Valley Railway logging town platted in 1900. Fire in 1918 and the timber collapse of the 1940s left it completely gone by 2008.