How do I find 'ghost towns' in my area?

The only thing I can think of that might be of use tomorrow is the Library of Congress map collection. Here's a link but it's not working for me right now. You can google to get there if it doesn't work for you.

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/gmdhtml/gmdhome.html

They might have old MN maps you can download.

Good luck

Hey andrgo! I went to my local historical society and found a book about crossroad communities that use to exist. It is the closest thing I have found to ghost towns in my area. I also picked up old plat books that are very informative about the location of key sites. I would visit the historical society for your county and ask some questions. Good luck.

Try here http://www.rootsweb.com/~mngenweb/

http://www.tc.umn.edu/~pmg/Minnesota.html
There is a section on "Ghost Counties"

Another possibility would be at topozone.com, once you know the town name
put it into the search and it may give you a location. There are several areas that are named after ghost towns. You can also browse a map of a county and might discover that there is a mention of a long lost town on the map. Also look for historical maps that would have a post office listed. Many of the early post offices was merely a farmhouse. When in actuality it was a small town. Old railroad maps are also a great resource.

Good luck and HH

Try this forum, There is a guy posting Ghost towns from all states

http://www.treasurequestxlt.com/community/

Under
50,000 Treasure Sites For all!
Click on your state, if not there post and ask him about around your city, but post it in the

50,000 Treasure Sites For all! not in the state forum
Hope this helps

Go to your local library, and check in the archives. I found several old ghost towns in the area that are now just farm fields.

yep, the historical section of your library is the best bet to finding old towns, theres bound to be some old maps in there that will make it easy to find any that were in your area, old maps and plat books are also very helpful for finding old homesteads to hunt

when I was researching the ghost towns in my area I never really did find anything of any great value online as far as information(because there wasnt any) but luckly I did get the name a a local hisotrian in my area who hads been resaerching old ghost towns here forever and he gave me TONS of information, so asking the person running the historical section if they can give you some names of people to contact may get you some info too

as far as getting more out of online searching you could try to broaden your search out some by searching in different ways too, instead of just searching for "ghost towns" try looking for things like mining operations, sawmills, logging operations, railroad depots, alot of old towns developed because of, and around, operations like these, and they also died out after the operations ended

I also found out that researching these old towns also took quite a while, usually more than just a day... it took me a day just to hike in and find some of them much less detecting them...
you may also find that some of them were fairly big and any that are completely(or near completely) vanished beyond sight may require quite a bit of "on site" exploring just to figure out how things laid and where things were

detecting old ghost towns can turn into quite a bit of work...

Also talk to some of the elderly locals that grew up in the area. They can be a wealth of information in your quest. They can give you tips and locations to places that written documents may not have.

Try this http://www.freemap.com/images/1895RAND/Minnesota_1895.jpg

Try http://www.ghosttowns.com. They list quite a few for Minnesota. Worth checking out!

I linked to a site through roots-web that had tons of ghost towns in my area,where I had found practically none at ghosttowns.com another good method is to find records or names of old schools that no longer exist,every town had a school,also someone mentioned Platt maps, a lot of these showed old schools good luck!