Ghost towns! We have several within 50 miles of us, her in the Black Hills. That was mining. Also within 50 miles, we have a few others, mainly died when rail lines were abandone.
Another one was associated with an ordinance depot that was closed down in 1967. http://www.igloo-sd.com/
Our house in Oregon was less than a mile from a mining camp/ghost town, Buncom. Three to 6 miles in any of the 3 ways out of it, were other mining era ghost towns.
http://www.buncom.org/
In Nevada, we have visited some remote sites of ghost towns that had fairly large populations; one had up to 50,000 people, and was the county seat until a second devastating fire in a short period of time finished it off. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamilton,_Nevada
http://brianbutko.wordpress.com/2007/11/05/hamilton-nv-a-lincoln-highway-ghost-town/
http://www.ghosttowngallery.com/htme/belmontmill.htm
And Idaho...had lunch here. http://www.ghosttowngallery.com/htme/silvercityid.htm
From the Oregon side, some of the road from Jordan Valley is really rotten; not so bad leaving, to get down to the west side Snake River Highway.
The nice part about some of the western ghost towns is, due to the dry air, they decay very slowly. Here, they just vanish, or they’re down to one structure, which is now a private home. Singapore MI, which was right on the Lake, burned down a couple of times, the second time occurred right at the end of the lumbering, so it wasn’t rebuilt. Pier Cove’s economy life ended due to a frost which destroyed their fruit tree business (that event led to the Red Haven peach, I think), but some people held on. Some years ago a friend and I wandered around the woods and found the remains of old homesteads. A few years later a developer built a posh new neighborhood on the site.
http://saugatuckdouglas.com/history.html
http://www.gangestownship.org/history.htm