I’d bet on the hanta virus.
It wiped out entire populations here in the desert SW. Left weird ghost towns of very elaborate cave dwellers, including one on my ranch.
(No, I won’t tell you where I am. Our means of protecting the site is the only people who know are some very discrete college professors. We’ve avoiding letting the gubmint know, as they’d promptly leak it to treasure hunters.)
Very cool, Im jealous.
I remember when I was about 9 my parents looked at a farm, big for Indiana. You westerners would probably laugh, like 180 acres. Anyway it had somewhat of an abandoned town on it. Maybe 6-7 abandoned houses and a few old barns falling down around what you might describe as a dirt street. As a 9 year old (early 70s) I was Uber-fascinated. My parents didn’t buy it because the primary home wasn’t much better than the abandoned homes and they could not swing the land AND re-model costs.
BTW
That’s probably the greatest change in the USA I’ve seen in the last 1/2 century; Land prices. The idea a couple with a teaching job and a Secretary could even seriously look at a 180 acre farm within a 30 something minute commute to Louisville today would be very unlikely. Sad really and unlike anything in our history, first generation to be unable to buy land.