Abandoned places in Wyoming are spread across a state so empty that you can drive for an hour without seeing another car, which means the ruins here feel more genuinely forsaken than almost anywhere else in the country. With over 50 documented abandoned locations on the Urbex Maps atlas, Wyoming holds ghost towns from the gold rush and the coal era, military posts from the Indian Wars, railroad settlements abandoned when the tracks moved, and charcoal kilns built to feed 19th-century smelters that shut down before the 20th century even started. This is the state where Amelia Earhart was building a cabin when she disappeared over the Pacific. Where the Oregon Trail carved ruts into sandstone that are still visible 180 years later. Where Union Pacific coal towns boomed and busted with the rhythm of steam locomotive demand. Wyoming's population density is the second lowest in the nation, and the abandoned places benefit from that emptiness: nobody is around to demolish them, repurpose them, or build on top of them.
Free urbex GPS: how Urbex Maps works
Every spot in this guide has a free GPS pin on the Urbex Maps interactive atlas. No paywall for these 6, no registration wall, just coordinates dropped onto the map with access notes. The atlas works on mobile, which matters when you're navigating the dirt road to Kirwin in the Absaroka Mountains or looking for the Carbon cemetery off a two-track road in the Red Desert. The full Wyoming database has over 50 locations and growing, covering everything from 1860s mining camps to Cold War missile infrastructure and abandoned railroad stops.
1. Kirwin Ghost Town
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Kirwin sits at 9,300 feet in the Absaroka Mountains, at the end of a rough 28-mile dirt road that follows the Wood River into one of the most spectacular alpine valleys in Wyoming. The town was founded in the 1890s after gold and copper were discovered in the surrounding peaks, and at its height it had about 200 residents, a hotel, a sawmill, and enough optimism to sustain mining operations for over a decade. Then came the avalanche. In March 1907, a massive snow slide swept through the town, killing three miners and destroying several buildings. The surviving residents took the hint and left. By 1910, Kirwin was empty.
But Kirwin's most famous connection isn't to mining. It's to Amelia Earhart. In the early 1930s, Earhart and her husband, publisher George Palmer Putnam, fell in love with the area during a visit and began building a cabin on a ridge above the ghost town. Earhart planned to use it as a summer retreat, a place to escape the pressures of her fame. The cabin was still under construction when she disappeared over the Pacific Ocean on July 2, 1937, during her attempted circumnavigation of the globe. The cabin was never completed.
Today, the ruins of both the mining town and Earhart's unfinished cabin are accessible to hikers and drivers with high-clearance vehicles willing to tackle the road from Meeteetse. The mining buildings are in various states of collapse, their timber frames twisted by decades of snow loads at altitude. The Earhart cabin site offers views of the surrounding peaks that explain why she chose this spot. The valley itself is stunning: wildflower meadows, snowcapped peaks, and a rushing creek that makes the only sound for miles. The road is typically passable from mid-June through September, depending on snow conditions. This is grizzly bear country, so carry bear spray and make noise on the trails.
2. South Pass City
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South Pass City is one of the best-preserved gold rush ghost towns in the American West, and it holds a distinction that has nothing to do with mining: this is where American women first won the right to vote. The town was founded in 1867 after gold was discovered in the southern Wind River Range, and by 1868, it had a population of roughly 2,000 miners, merchants, and speculators. The territorial legislature that met in 1869, heavily influenced by South Pass City representative William Bright, passed the Wyoming Suffrage Act, making Wyoming the first government in the world to grant women equal voting rights. Esther Hobart Morris, a South Pass City resident, became the first female justice of the peace in U.S. history.
The gold, as gold tends to do in these stories, ran out quickly. The easily accessible placer deposits were exhausted by the early 1870s, and the population plummeted. Hard-rock mining sustained a smaller community for a few more decades, but by 1900, South Pass City was effectively a ghost town. The state of Wyoming acquired the site in 1966 and has since restored and stabilized over 30 historic buildings, creating one of the most complete and authentic mining-era townscapes in the West.
Walking through South Pass City today feels different from most ghost towns because the buildings are still furnished. The Carissa Saloon still has its bar. The general store has goods on the shelves. The cabins have beds and stoves. It's less a ruin and more a town caught in amber, frozen at the moment everyone decided to leave. The Carissa Mine, on the hill above town, is also open for guided tours. The setting is high desert at 7,800 feet, with the Wind River Range rising to the north and the vast Red Desert stretching to the south. The drive from Lander or the turnoff from Highway 28 is itself worth the trip: South Pass, the broad saddle in the Continental Divide where the Oregon Trail crossed the Rockies, is just a few miles north.
3. Carbon Ghost Town
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Carbon was Wyoming's first major coal mining town, and its story tracks the rise and fall of the steam locomotive. The town was built in 1868 by the Union Pacific Railroad, which needed fuel for its engines as the transcontinental line pushed west across southern Wyoming. The coal seams near what became Carbon were thick and accessible, and a mining camp quickly grew into a town of several hundred residents. For two decades, Carbon supplied the coal that kept Union Pacific's locomotives running across the Great Plains and over the Rockies.
The town's history was marked by disaster and violence. In 1881, an explosion in Mine No. 1 killed several miners. The Chinese Massacre of 1885, in which white miners attacked and killed Chinese workers at the nearby Rock Springs mine, sent shockwaves through Wyoming's coal communities, including Carbon. Mining accidents continued to claim lives throughout the 1880s and 1890s. When Union Pacific shifted its operations to other coal deposits and rerouted some of its traffic, Carbon's reason for existing evaporated. The last mine closed in 1902. The railroad pulled up the spur line. The buildings were dismantled or left to rot.
Today, Carbon is one of Wyoming's most atmospheric ghost towns because almost nothing is left. The cemetery is the most prominent feature: rows of weathered headstones, some hand-carved, marking the graves of miners who died young. Beyond the cemetery, you can find building foundations, mine shaft depressions, and scattered debris in the sagebrush. The wind is constant. The landscape is austere: rolling brown hills, sparse vegetation, and the distant Snowy Range on the horizon. Carbon is on a dirt road accessible from Highway 30/287 south of Hanna, and the drive itself passes through some of Wyoming's most desolate ranch country. The town is on a mix of BLM and private land. Respect the cemetery.
4. Piedmont Ghost Town and Charcoal Kilns
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Piedmont sits in the far southwestern corner of Wyoming, near the Utah border, in a landscape of sage-covered hills and dry creek beds. The town was established in 1869 as a Union Pacific Railroad station and tie-cutting camp, one of many small settlements strung along the transcontinental line as it crossed the high desert. What made Piedmont different was charcoal. Three massive beehive-shaped charcoal kilns were built here in the 1870s to supply Utah's smelters with fuel for processing ore. The kilns, each about 30 feet in diameter and 30 feet tall, converted local timber into high-quality charcoal that was shipped south by rail.
The town had a rough reputation. Like many railroad settlements in territorial Wyoming, Piedmont attracted a transient population of workers, drifters, and outlaws. The Butch Cassidy gang reportedly passed through. The Mormon community in the area clashed with non-Mormon settlers. When the railroad built the Aspen Tunnel in the early 1900s, trains could bypass Piedmont entirely, and the town lost its reason for existing. The charcoal operation had already wound down as Utah's smelters switched to coke. By 1940, Piedmont was abandoned.
The three charcoal kilns are the main attraction and they're in remarkably good condition. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the stone structures stand in a row on the hillside, their arched doorways still intact, their interiors blackened from decades of charcoal production. The craftsmanship is impressive: the dry-laid stone walls have held together for 150 years without mortar in a climate that swings from below zero in winter to over 100 in summer. Around the kilns, you can find the remains of the town: foundations, stone walls, and the railroad grade that connected Piedmont to the main line. The site is accessible via a dirt road off Interstate 80 near the Leroy exit. It's BLM-managed and free to visit. The isolation is total.
5. Fort Laramie (Abandoned Structures)
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Fort Laramie is one of the most historically significant military posts in the American West, and while the National Park Service has restored several of its buildings, many others remain in deliberate ruin, preserved in their state of decay as a record of what happens when a frontier military installation is abandoned and left to the elements. The fort sits at the confluence of the Laramie and North Platte rivers in southeastern Wyoming, a location that made it a natural crossroads for fur traders, emigrants, and the military from the 1830s onward.
Originally built as a fur trading post in 1834, the site was purchased by the Army in 1849 and expanded into a major military installation that served as a supply depot, treaty negotiation site, and staging area for campaigns during the Indian Wars. The fort hosted the signing of the Treaty of Fort Laramie in 1851 and again in 1868, agreements that would be broken and renegotiated as the westward expansion continued. At its peak, the fort contained dozens of buildings: barracks, officer's quarters, a hospital, warehouses, a bakery, a magazine, and supporting structures spread across a wide area along the river.
The Army abandoned Fort Laramie in 1890, and the buildings were sold at auction to private buyers. Some were dismantled for materials. Others were left standing. By the time the National Park Service acquired the site in 1938, many structures were in advanced states of decay. The NPS made the deliberate decision to stabilize some ruins without restoring them, creating a landscape where a fully furnished officer's quarters sits next door to a roofless, crumbling adobe building with nothing but its walls remaining. This approach makes Fort Laramie one of the more honest and affecting historic sites in the West: you see both what the place was and what time has done to it. The site is open year-round with a small admission fee.
6. Miner's Delight Ghost Town
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Miner's Delight is one of Wyoming's earliest gold mining communities, founded in 1868 during the same rush that created South Pass City a few miles to the south. The town sits near the Continental Divide at roughly 8,000 feet, in a landscape of rolling sage hills and alpine meadows that turns green for about eight weeks each summer and then goes brown again. At its peak, Miner's Delight had several hundred residents working placer and hard-rock gold claims in the surrounding gulches. The Miner's Delight Mine itself was one of the richer strikes in the Sweetwater Mining District.
Like most gold towns, Miner's Delight declined as the easy gold was worked out. But unlike most, it didn't die completely. A few stubborn residents held on through the early 20th century, and the last permanent inhabitant reportedly stayed until around 1960. That long, slow decline means the buildings weren't all abandoned at once: some date to the 1870s, others to the early 1900s, and the mix of construction styles gives the site a layered quality that a boom-and-bust ghost town doesn't have.
Today, Miner's Delight is managed by the BLM and accessible via a dirt road from Highway 28 south of Lander. The road is rough in places but passable for most vehicles in dry weather. What you'll find is a collection of log cabins, stone foundations, and mine workings scattered across a meadow and the surrounding hillsides. Some cabins still have their roofs. Others have collapsed into piles of logs being slowly absorbed by the earth. The site has a few interpretive signs but no facilities, no admission fee, and no staff. On most days, you'll have the place entirely to yourself, with nothing but wind, grass, and the distant peaks of the Wind River Range for company. It's one of the quietest places in Wyoming, which is saying something in a state that practically invented quiet.
Beyond the List
Wyoming has more ghost towns per capita than almost any state in the union, which makes sense when you consider that its current population of about 580,000 is barely larger than it was during the territory's gold rush days. The six spots in this guide cover mining, railroading, military history, and the charcoal industry, but the Urbex Maps atlas has over 50 locations across Wyoming, including abandoned tie-hack camps, forgotten homesteads on the high plains, and Cold War-era Atlas missile sites scattered across the eastern part of the state. The GPS coordinates are free on the Urbex Maps interactive atlas. Fill up your tank, check your spare tire, and go find what Wyoming left behind in the sagebrush.
Explore more abandoned places in the United States
- ●Abandoned Places in Montana: 6 Iconic Urbex Spots
- ●Abandoned Places in South Dakota: 6 Iconic Urbex Spots
- ●Abandoned Places in Idaho: 10 Iconic Urbex Spots
- ●Abandoned Places in Utah: 8 Iconic Urbex Spots
- ●Abandoned Places in Colorado: 10 Iconic Urbex Spots
- ●Abandoned Places in Nebraska: 6 Iconic Urbex Spots
- ●Abandoned Places USA: 50 States, 50 Iconic Urbex Spots
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Explore More Abandoned Places Nearby
Looking for more abandoned locations? Check out these neighboring states:
- ●Abandoned Places in Montana
- ●Abandoned Places in South Dakota
- ●Abandoned Places in Idaho
- ●Abandoned Places in Utah
- ●Abandoned Places in Nebraska
- ●Abandoned Places in Colorado
Or explore our complete guide: Abandoned Places USA: 50 Iconic Spots, One Per State.
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