Abandoned places in California tell the story of a state that has always built fast and moved on faster. Gold rush boomtowns boarded up overnight when the veins ran dry. Military bases sprawling across thousands of acres were decommissioned after the Cold War and left to rot. Hollywood-era malls and seaside resorts that once drew millions closed their doors when the money shifted elsewhere. The Mojave and Colorado deserts swallowed entire communities whole. Today, California holds more than 757 verified abandoned locations on Urbex Maps, making it one of the densest states in the country for urban exploration. From the snow-dusted ghost town of Bodie in the Eastern Sierra to the sinking ruins of Drawbridge in the San Francisco Bay marshes, the Golden State is a graveyard of American ambition in every climate zone imaginable.
This article covers 10 of the most iconic abandoned places in California, each one selected for its historical weight, visual impact, and accessibility in 2026. Every spot includes history, current condition, access and legality notes, a YouTube video walkthrough, and a free GPS button that saves the coordinates directly to your Urbex Maps profile. No paywall. No subscription. Just click, sign in, and the location is yours. Explore the full California abandoned places on the interactive map.
1. Bodie Ghost Town
Bodie is the most famous ghost town in the American West and one of the best-preserved examples of a 19th-century mining camp anywhere in the world. It sits at 8,379 feet elevation in the Eastern Sierra Nevada, about 13 miles east of Highway 395 and 75 miles southeast of Lake Tahoe. In 1859, William S. Bodey discovered gold in the hills here. He died in a blizzard that same winter and never saw what his strike would become. By 1879, the town had exploded to nearly 10,000 residents, with a main street lined with saloons, opium dens, breweries, a Chinatown, three newspapers, and a reputation as one of the most lawless places in the West. A young girl reportedly wrote in her diary before her family's move: "Goodbye God, I'm going to Bodie."
The gold thinned out by the mid-1880s. A devastating fire in 1892 destroyed much of the business district. Another fire in 1932 leveled two-thirds of what remained. The last mine closed in 1942 when the War Production Board deemed gold mining nonessential to the war effort. The post office shut down in 1942, and the last residents drifted away.
California designated Bodie a State Historic Park in 1962. The park service maintains the remaining 170 structures in a state of "arrested decay," meaning they prevent further deterioration but do not restore or rebuild anything. You walk through the town exactly as it was left: a schoolhouse with books still on the desks, a general store with canned goods on the shelves, a mortuary with a child-sized coffin on display. The Methodist church still has its original pews. Dust coats everything. It is the closest thing to time travel that California offers.
Bodie is open year-round, though the access road (State Route 270) is unpaved for the last three miles and closes to vehicles after heavy snow, typically from November through April. In winter, the park is accessible only by ski, snowshoe, or snowmobile. Admission is $8 per adult. Rangers patrol the site and there is a strict "take nothing, leave nothing" policy. Removing so much as a rusty nail is said to trigger the "Curse of Bodie," and the ranger station displays letters from people who mailed back stolen artifacts after experiencing bad luck.
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2. Bombay Beach / Salton Sea
Bombay Beach sits on the eastern shore of the Salton Sea in Imperial County, roughly 60 miles north of the Mexican border. The Salton Sea itself is an accident: in 1905, irrigation canals from the Colorado River broke through their levees and flooded the Salton Sink, a below-sea-level basin in the Imperial Valley. The water ran unchecked for two years before the Southern Pacific Railroad managed to plug the breach. What it left behind was a 35-mile-long inland sea in the middle of the desert, with no natural outlet and no way to drain.
For a few decades, it worked. In the 1950s and 1960s, the Salton Sea became "the California Riviera," drawing more annual visitors than Yosemite. Bombay Beach was the quintessential resort town: yacht clubs, waterfront motels, speedboat races, Frank Sinatra sightings. Then the water started changing. Agricultural runoff from Imperial Valley farms kept flowing in, loaded with pesticides, fertilizers, and salts. With no outlet, salinity climbed steadily. By the 1970s, the sea was saltier than the Pacific. By the 1990s, massive fish die-offs were covering the beaches in rotting tilapia. The smell drove tourists away. Property values collapsed. The population of Bombay Beach dropped from a few thousand to under 300.
Today, Bombay Beach is a post-apocalyptic landscape of trailer homes half-buried in salt crust, dead palm trees, and art installations built from the wreckage. The Bombay Beach Biennale, an annual guerrilla art festival launched in 2016, has turned parts of the town into an open-air gallery of rusted sculptures, painted buses, and surreal structures. The shoreline has receded hundreds of yards, leaving old docks and boat launches standing in dry, cracked mud. The entire eastern shore of the Salton Sea is lined with abandoned motels, resorts, and mobile home parks in various stages of collapse.
Bombay Beach is on public roads and freely accessible. A handful of residents still live there. The art installations are open. The smell of dead fish can be overwhelming on hot days, particularly near the waterline. Bring water and sunscreen: summer temperatures regularly exceed 115 degrees Fahrenheit.
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3. Sutro Baths
The Sutro Baths were once the largest indoor swimming establishment in the world, a glass-and-iron palace built into the cliffs at Lands End on the northwestern tip of San Francisco. They were the brainchild of Adolph Sutro, a Prussian-born mining engineer who had made his fortune building the Sutro Tunnel to drain the Comstock Lode silver mines in Nevada. Sutro bought the Cliff House and the surrounding oceanfront land, and in 1896 opened his baths: a 1.7-acre complex enclosed under a massive glass roof, holding six saltwater pools at different temperatures, one freshwater pool, seating for 10,000 spectators, a museum of curiosities, restaurants, and promenades. Seawater was pumped directly from the Pacific through a series of tunnels carved into the rock. At high tide, the pools filled naturally.
The baths were popular through the early 1900s but never turned a consistent profit. Heating costs were enormous, and the Great Depression crushed attendance. By the 1930s, Sutro's heirs had converted part of the complex into an ice skating rink. In 1952, real estate developer George Whitney bought the property. Plans to redevelop the site into apartments stalled when costs ballooned. On June 26, 1966, while demolition crews were already stripping the building for salvage, a fire broke out and destroyed everything that remained. The cause was never officially determined, though arson was widely suspected given the convenient timing.
What survives today are the concrete foundations of the pools, the carved-rock tunnels, the seawall, and a network of staircases leading down from the clifftop to the ruins. At high tide, the Pacific surges through the old tunnel openings and floods the pool basins. The ruins are part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, managed by the National Park Service. A small visitor center at the trailhead tells the history.
The Sutro Baths ruins are freely accessible via a short trail from the Merrie Way parking lot at Lands End. The path down to the pool foundations is steep but paved. Swimming in the flooded basins is not officially recommended due to rip currents and unstable debris, but people do it anyway. Sunset visits are particularly dramatic, with the Pacific framed by the concrete skeleton of what was once the world's largest bathhouse.
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4. Murphy Ranch
Murphy Ranch is hidden at the bottom of Rustic Canyon in the Santa Monica Mountains, tucked between Pacific Palisades and Topanga Canyon in Los Angeles. Its origin story reads like a rejected screenplay. In the late 1930s, a German-American couple named Winona and Norman Stephens fell under the influence of a man calling himself "Herr Schmidt," believed by historians to have been a Nazi sympathizer and possible agent. Schmidt convinced the Stephens that Germany would win World War II, that the United States would collapse into chaos, and that they needed a self-sustaining compound in the hills where loyal sympathizers could ride out the fall of democracy and emerge to help build a new fascist order on the West Coast.
The Stephens invested an estimated $4 million (1930s dollars) into the project. They built a concrete power station, a 395,000-gallon water tank, a diesel power plant, a 22-room mansion, gardens, and bomb shelters, all concealed in a steep canyon accessible only by a long staircase from the ridge above. When the United States entered the war in December 1941, the FBI raided the ranch and arrested more than fifty residents. The property changed hands several times after the war: it served briefly as an artists' colony, then as rental housing, then was simply abandoned.
Today, Murphy Ranch is a collection of graffiti-covered concrete structures scattered through dense chaparral and eucalyptus forest. The main access is via a steep staircase of over 500 steps descending from the Sullivan Fire Road trailhead on Capri Drive in Pacific Palisades. The power station, the water tank foundations, and several outbuildings still stand, though they are heavily tagged. The canyon itself is beautiful, lush, and eerily quiet.
Murphy Ranch is on city of Los Angeles land within Topanga State Park. The trail is publicly accessible. The staircase is open but there is no official signage or maintenance. The buildings are fenced but the fences are routinely bypassed. LAPD and park rangers patrol occasionally. The January 2025 Palisades Fire burned through Rustic Canyon and damaged vegetation around the site, but the concrete structures survived.
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5. Sunken City
Sunken City is what happens when a neighborhood slides into the ocean. It sits at the southern tip of Point Fermin in San Pedro, at the far southern edge of Los Angeles. In 1929, a section of the coastal bluff began to move. The landslide was slow and relentless: over the course of several years, an entire residential block of homes, streets, sidewalks, and utilities slid downhill toward the Pacific. Foundations cracked, roads buckled and split apart, and houses tilted at impossible angles before eventually collapsing or being demolished. By 1940, the area was abandoned and fenced off. The slide never fully stopped.
What remains today is a surreal landscape of broken concrete, fractured sidewalks, tilted palm trees, and exposed rebar, all slowly crumbling down the cliff face toward the waves below. Street grids are still visible but warped and folded like a geological layer cake. Former house foundations jut out at 45-degree angles. Graffiti artists have covered every flat surface with murals, tags, and elaborate pieces, turning Sunken City into one of the most photogenic urban ruins in Southern California.
For decades, Sunken City was technically closed but practically open, with visitors climbing through gaps in the chain-link fence along Paseo del Mar. The site has been a rite of passage for Los Angeles urbex explorers, photographers, and sunset watchers since the 1970s. LAPD occasionally ticketed trespassers, but enforcement was inconsistent. In recent years, the city of Los Angeles has moved toward formalizing access, with plans to incorporate the site into Point Fermin Park. As of 2026, the fence remains but foot traffic continues daily. The cliffs are genuinely dangerous: unstable edges, loose rock, and no guardrails above a long drop to the surf.
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6. Fort Ord
Fort Ord was one of the most important military installations on the West Coast for more than half a century. It sprawls across 28,000 acres of coastal land between Monterey and Marina on Monterey Bay, about 115 miles south of San Francisco. The Army established the post in 1917 as a maneuver area for field artillery. It expanded massively during World War II, becoming a major infantry training center and deployment point for the Pacific Theater. At its peak during the war, Fort Ord housed more than 50,000 soldiers. It continued operating through the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the Cold War, serving as home to the 7th Infantry Division.
In 1991, the Base Realignment and Closure Commission (BRAC) placed Fort Ord on the closure list. The Army pulled out in 1994. Since then, portions of the base have been repurposed: California State University, Monterey Bay occupies the former barracks and classroom buildings on the eastern side, and the Fort Ord National Monument (managed by the Bureau of Land Management) covers 14,658 acres of the former training ranges. But large sections of the base remain abandoned. Rows of empty barracks, mess halls, motor pools, a hospital complex, a stockade, and officer housing sit vacant and decaying. Some areas are fenced off due to unexploded ordnance from decades of live-fire training.
The abandoned sections of Fort Ord have a particular quality that sets them apart from most military ruins: they feel like a complete city that simply emptied out one morning. Streets are still paved, streetlights still stand (though they no longer work), and the grid layout of a functioning military base is perfectly intact. Trees have grown through parking lots, vines cover the barracks, and wildlife has moved into the empty buildings. The proximity to the Pacific coast gives the ruins a misty, atmospheric quality, especially in the morning fog that rolls off Monterey Bay.
The Fort Ord National Monument trails are open to the public for hiking and mountain biking. The abandoned built-up areas are mostly fenced and posted as no trespassing, with ongoing environmental remediation (lead, asbestos, unexploded ordnance). Some sections are accessible from public roads. Exercise caution and do not enter areas posted for UXO hazards.
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7. Eagle Mountain
Eagle Mountain is a ghost town in the Colorado Desert of Riverside County, about 25 miles east of the boundary of Joshua Tree National Park. It was built from scratch in 1948 by industrialist Henry J. Kaiser as a company town for his Eagle Mountain iron ore mine, which fed the Kaiser Steel mill in Fontana, 150 miles to the west. At its peak in the 1960s, Eagle Mountain was a fully functioning community of about 4,000 people: ranch-style houses with lawns, a swimming pool, a school, a hospital, a company store, churches, and recreational facilities, all of it laid out in neat suburban rows in the middle of absolutely nowhere. The mine produced more than 130 million tons of iron ore over its lifetime.
Kaiser Steel closed the Fontana mill in 1983, and the Eagle Mountain mine followed in 1983. The town emptied almost overnight. Residents packed up and left, abandoning houses full of furniture, a school full of desks, and a hospital full of equipment. For decades, the site was proposed as a landfill for Los Angeles County trash, with plans to use the open pit mine as a mega-dump. Environmental lawsuits and opposition from nearby Joshua Tree National Park blocked the project through the 1990s and 2000s. The landfill plan was finally abandoned in 2017 after a federal court ruling.
Today, Eagle Mountain is one of the most complete abandoned towns in the California desert. The residential streets are still there, lined with empty houses, many with their original 1950s fixtures. The company store, the school, the swimming pool (drained and cracked), and the hospital all stand. The open pit mine yawns at the edge of town. The Kaiser company railroad tracks run off into the desert toward the former processing plant. The isolation is extreme: the nearest gas station is 30 miles away.
Eagle Mountain is on private land owned by Kaiser Eagle Mountain Inc. Access is technically not permitted, but the roads leading to the site are county-maintained and the property is not actively patrolled. The desert heat is brutal from May through October, with temperatures frequently exceeding 120 degrees Fahrenheit. Bring more water than you think you need.
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8. Cerro Gordo
Cerro Gordo ("Fat Hill" in Spanish) is a silver mining ghost town perched at 8,500 feet in the Inyo Mountains, high above the dry bed of Owens Lake in Inyo County. The site is about 22 miles east of Lone Pine on Highway 395. The mines here were discovered in 1865 by Pablo Flores, a Mexican prospector. By 1869, Cerro Gordo had become the most productive silver-lead district in California. At its peak, the town had a population of around 2,000, with hotels, saloons, a smelter, and a reputation for violence that rivaled the worst of the Old West. The bullion produced here was so valuable that it essentially financed the early growth of Los Angeles: ore was hauled down the mountain by mule train and shipped across Owens Lake by steamboat to the railhead at Cartago, then on to L.A.
The silver played out by the 1870s, but zinc mining continued intermittently until the 1930s. The town slowly emptied. The last full-time residents left in the 1950s. For decades, Cerro Gordo was owned by a single family who allowed occasional visitors. In 2018, YouTube creator Brent Underwood purchased the entire town (with a group of investors) for $1.4 million. Since then, Underwood has been living in the ghost town full-time, documenting the restoration on YouTube and social media. He has repaired the 1871 American Hotel, reopened the bunkhouse for overnight guests, and stabilized several mine structures, all while chronicling the experience online.
Cerro Gordo today contains about 30 structures in varying states of preservation, including the American Hotel (1871), the Belshaw Smelter ruins, the Gordon shaft headframe, mine tunnels (most sealed for safety), workers' cabins, an assay office, and a cemetery with views down to Owens Lake and across to the Sierra Nevada. The setting is spectacular: the Inyo Mountains are stark, barren, and wind-blasted, and the town hangs on the side of the ridge like a set from a Western.
Access is via the Yellow Grade Road, a steep, unpaved, single-lane road with switchbacks and no guardrails, climbing 5,000 feet from Keeler on the valley floor. High-clearance vehicles are strongly recommended. 4WD is required in winter. Brent Underwood offers overnight stays in the bunkhouse and guided tours by reservation. Do not enter mine shafts under any circumstances.
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9. Hawthorne Plaza Mall
The Hawthorne Plaza Mall opened in 1977 as a major enclosed shopping center on Hawthorne Boulevard in the city of Hawthorne, in the South Bay area of Los Angeles County. It was developed by the Ernest W. Hahn company and anchored by The Broadway, JCPenney, and Montgomery Ward. At 1.1 million square feet with more than 100 stores on two levels, it was the commercial heart of the South Bay for more than a decade. The mall had fountains, skylights, escalators, and the full suburban shopping experience of the late 1970s and 1980s.
The decline was gradual but merciless. The opening of the nearby South Bay Galleria in Redondo Beach in 1985 pulled foot traffic away. The 1992 Los Angeles riots damaged businesses in the surrounding area and accelerated the economic decline of Hawthorne Boulevard. Anchor stores began pulling out. Montgomery Ward closed nationally in 2001. JCPenney left shortly after. The last remaining stores closed by 1999, and the mall was shuttered entirely in the early 2000s. Demolition proposals have been floated repeatedly, but the site has been tied up in ownership disputes, redevelopment plans, and environmental reviews for more than two decades.
From the outside, Hawthorne Plaza Mall looks like a functioning building: the roof is intact, the walls are solid, the parking lots are paved. But inside, it is a time capsule of 1990s retail America. Escalators stand frozen. Directory signs list stores that no longer exist. Water damage has warped floors and ceilings. Skylights illuminate dust motes drifting through empty atriums. The mall has been used as a filming location for music videos and movies, including scenes that required a convincingly abandoned retail space.
The mall is on private property and is fenced with security cameras and private guards. Trespassing arrests have been reported. The site has been approved for mixed-use redevelopment multiple times, but construction has not begun as of 2026. Photography from public sidewalks on Hawthorne Boulevard is legal.
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10. Drawbridge
Drawbridge is the last ghost town inside the San Francisco Bay Area, and one of the strangest abandoned places in all of California. It sits on a narrow strip of land in the salt marshes at the southern end of San Francisco Bay, within the Don Edwards San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge in Fremont. The town was founded in 1876 as a station on the South Pacific Coast Railroad, which built a drawbridge across Mud Slough at that point. The bridge gave the town its name. Hunters and fishermen were the first settlers, drawn by the abundant waterfowl and the rail access. By the early 1900s, Drawbridge had become a weekend retreat for San Francisco and San Jose residents: a cluster of rough cabins on stilts above the marsh, two hotels, a saloon, and a general store, all accessible only by train.
Drawbridge peaked around 1927 with about 90 structures and several hundred seasonal residents. The decline came from all sides. Salt production companies began diking the surrounding marshes, disrupting the tidal flow. Raw sewage from San Jose was dumped upstream, poisoning the water and killing the fish. Bootleggers and squatters moved in during Prohibition, and the town gained a rough reputation. The Southern Pacific Railroad cut passenger service in the 1940s. Residents left one by one. The last full-time resident, Charlie Luce, held on until 1979. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service took over the land as part of the refuge in 1974.
Today, Drawbridge is a collection of roughly a dozen collapsing wooden structures on stilts above the marsh, slowly sinking into the mud. The cabins lean at drunken angles, their porches submerged, their roofs caved in. There is no road access. The only way to see Drawbridge is from the Marsh Trail in the Don Edwards refuge, which passes within viewing distance but does not allow approach. The Fish and Wildlife Service prohibits entry to the townsite to protect nesting habitat for the endangered California Ridgway's rail and the salt marsh harvest mouse. Violators face federal fines.
The Marsh Trail is open daily during refuge hours (sunrise to sunset). Drawbridge is visible from the trail with binoculars. Do not attempt to walk across the marsh to the structures: the mud is deep, the footing is treacherous, and the area is monitored for wildlife protection.
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FAQ: Abandoned Places in California
Is urban exploration legal in California?
California trespassing law (Penal Code 602) makes entering private property without permission a misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in county jail and a $1,000 fine. Public land (state parks, national monuments, wildlife refuges) has its own access rules, which vary by site. Some abandoned places in this list, like Bodie and Sutro Baths, are legally open to visitors. Others, like Hawthorne Plaza Mall and Eagle Mountain, are on private property where entry is prohibited. Always check the current legal status before visiting, and respect fences, signs, and posted hours.
What is the best season to explore abandoned places in California?
California is so geographically diverse that there is no single best season. For desert sites like Bombay Beach, Eagle Mountain, and Cerro Gordo, visit between October and April to avoid lethal summer heat (temperatures above 120 degrees Fahrenheit are common). For mountain sites like Bodie, the access road is only open reliably from May through October. Coastal sites like Sutro Baths and Sunken City are accessible year-round, though winter storms can make cliff trails slippery. Spring (March through May) is the most versatile season for covering the widest range of sites.
What equipment do I need for California urbex?
Sturdy closed-toe shoes or boots (desert terrain, broken concrete, rusted metal). Plenty of water (at least one gallon per person per day in desert conditions). Sun protection (hat, sunscreen, sunglasses). A headlamp or flashlight for interior spaces. A charged phone with offline maps downloaded (cell service is nonexistent at many remote sites). A first aid kit. For desert sites, bring extra fuel and let someone know your itinerary. For coastal sites, bring layers for fog and wind.
Which region of California has the most abandoned places?
The Mojave and Colorado deserts in southeastern California have the highest concentration of ghost towns and abandoned mining camps, a legacy of the gold rush, silver booms, and 20th-century resource extraction. Inyo, San Bernardino, and Kern counties alone account for hundreds of abandoned sites. However, the greater Los Angeles metro area has a surprising density of urban ruins: abandoned hospitals, malls, military installations, and industrial sites are scattered throughout LA County. The Urbex Maps California page lists all 757 verified locations with free GPS coordinates.
Can I visit Bodie Ghost Town in winter?
Bodie State Historic Park is technically open year-round, but the last three miles of the access road (State Route 270) close to vehicle traffic after the first major snowfall, usually in November. From November through April, you can reach Bodie only by cross-country ski, snowshoe, or snowmobile. Winter visits are spectacular but require serious preparation: the town sits at 8,379 feet and temperatures can drop well below zero. The park service does not plow the road or maintain facilities in winter.
Conclusion
The abandoned places of California are monuments to the boom-and-bust cycle that has defined the state since the Gold Rush. Ghost towns in the desert, military bases on the coast, shopping malls in the suburbs, and entire neighborhoods that slid into the Pacific: every corner of California has something left behind. The 10 sites in this article are the starting point, not the finish line. With 757 verified abandoned locations on the California urbex map, there are enough ruins in this state to keep an explorer busy for years. The GPS coordinates are free. The map is open. Go find them.
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