Many reasons exist as to why a community becomes abandoned (or nearly so).
Transportation: With the development of major highways and interstates, people were willing to travel farther for goods and services causing local businesses in smaller towns to lose customers and ultimately close. The more businesses that close, the more people are apt to want to move away to a bigger town. Transportation has played a major role in settlement in Kansas. As traffic from the Oregon and Santa Fe Trails increased, towns boomed along them. When railroads were established towns developed along the tracks or even moved to where the tracks were.
Politics: In Kansas, the political atmosphere was highly divided. Towns were either proslavery or abolitionist. When Kansas became a free state in 1861, proslavery towns died out. Certain towns, lacking any other economic basis, banked their development on becoming a county seat. If they failed, there would be little employment, and the few inhabitants would abandon the town to find work elsewhere.
Boom and bust: Towns that catered to a specific industry such as coal mining or military housing were boom towns that quickly died when their markets collapsed. Some towns that mainly relied on agriculture were abandoned in the 1930s during the Dust Bowl period.
Eminent domain / flood control: Since 1951, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has sought to control floods through the building of dams along rivers and the resulting outcome is a town having to be moved or abandoned and demolished.
Environmental degradation: Remnants of lead and zinc mining can cause soil contamination that can render entire communities uninhabitable; e.g. Treece.[1]
Kansas Dead Town List The Kansas Historical Society has a list of the Kansas "Dead Towns" online. These lists are detailed in books available at the Society in Topeka.
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