Ghost Forests, Abandoned Towns Span Five States

Across several states, abandoned and eerie landscapes offer glimpses of places transformed by time and environmental change. Oregon’s Neskowin Ghost Forest contains roughly 2,000-year-old Sitka spruce stumps exposed on the beach after a major Cascadia earthquake lowered the land and seawater buried the forest. In North Carolina, ghost forests near Wilmington are forming as saltier tidal water—linked to sea-level rise and river-channel changes—kills cypress and other trees, though the dead trees still provide perches for some birds. Other destinations include Feltville, a former New Jersey mill village and summer resort now preserved within Watchung Reservation; decaying commercial buildings at Virginia’s Old Downtown Union Level; and Washington’s Old Molson, where abandoned buildings and machinery remain at a historic ghost-town site.