If you have an iPhone or other mobile device, there is now a theme setup just for you. No special URL needed to access it. At least not on the iPhone. It will auto detect your browser and format your screen for the correct settings. This is only for the blog right now. I may enable the mobile browser settings for the wiki at a later time.

Enjoy!

There is still a lot of work to be done on this site.  I figure it is going to take a few years just to get to some point of completion and even then there will still be work to be done.  Here is what has happened since I started this site about two weeks ago:

1. Got the wiki up and running
2. Created links for each of the Oklahoma counties on the wiki page
3. Created maps for almost all of the counties.  Found a few I missed when uploading the maps.
4. Listed ghost towns in each of the counties.
5. Began work on few of the ghost towns listed.
6. Setup a Twitter account and configured settings to push out site updates over Twitter.
7. Created an Amazon store for books I recommend reading.
8. Created a Flickr group page for other to share their ghost town pictures.
9. Created a Facebook fan page.
10. Got the blog pages laid out nicely and tried to make them user friendly.

Here is a list of things I still need to get done:

1. Create maps for each of the ghost towns to try and show where within the county that town lies.
2. Research at least one ghost town a week and work on its wiki page.
3. Continue looking for other towns that the site does not currently have listed.
4. Travel to as many of these towns or areas as I can to get new pictures for the site.
5. Promote the site and history as much as possible.

I have great expectations and hopes for this site.  I welcome others who share the same interest to join me in educating others about Oklahoma’s ghost towns.  If you have any information or knowledge to share about any of the towns or know of other towns that we don’t currently have listed, please use the contact page to share it.  I have gotten several submissions so far and they have all been great.

I would like to recommend a book for your reading and research about Oklahoma Ghost Towns.  This is the same book that inspired me a few years ago to begin looking for more towns and more information on other towns.

Ghost Towns of Oklahoma

Ghost Towns of Oklahoma is a well written book.  Unfortunately it is about 30 years old and much has changed since the book was written.  None the less, the history behind the towns is solid and stories about each is worth your time to read.  The author includes several pictures for many of the towns from it’s hey day to the time the book was written in the 70′s.  I have visited several of the towns mentioned in the book and there is even less of them from the pictures taken in the 70′s.

I feel like there could have and probably should have been more towns mentioned in this book.  Perhaps it would have made for too large of a book to include many of the towns I have been made aware of that are not in this book.  Regardless of that fact, I still really enjoyed reading this book and would highly recommend it to anyone.  This book helped to inspire this website and will be referred to many times for both research and reference.  I have included this book in our Amazon Store.  Stop by and pick yourself up a copy.  I think you will enjoy it as much as I have.

If you haven’t looked at the wiki in a while, you have been missing out. Quite a lot of time and effort has been put forth in getting the wiki up and going. The wiki is where the list of all the towns organized by county is maintained.  We have started laying out the county pages and even have a county map for reference on the front page of the wiki.

The goal is to get each county page setup with a little bit of history about the county.  Towns arranged by order of the type of ghost town and references to other historical information about the county.

This is a continual research project.  Additional towns may be added based on research and recommendations from readers.  I have already had people recommend two different towns be added since the project started a week ago.  If you know of a town you do not see on the list, please use the Contact Us page to submit your recommendation.

This is one of the trickiest questions in ghost town research.  How do you define a town as a ghost town?  To try and help answer that question, here is a guide used by Oklahoma Ghost Towns.

Barren Site

• Sites are no longer in existence
• Sites have been destroyed
• Deserted
• Covered with water
• Barren site
• Reverted to pasture
• May have a few foundations left
• Only rubble left
• Roofless building ruins
• Buildings or house still standing, but majority are roofless

Abandoned Site

• Buildings or houses still standing
• Buildings and houses all abandoned
• No population, except maybe a caretaker
• Site no longer in existence for one or two buildings

Semi-Abandoned Site

• Buildings or houses still standing
• Buildings and houses mostly abandoned
• Very few residents

Historic Community

• Buildings or houses still standing
• Still a busy community
• Smaller than in the boom years
• Dramatic population decrease, one fifth or less

While this still isn’t a perfect formula, it is a guide to classifying each town.  This will also help to serve those who go looking for these towns by knowing what to expect when they get there.

If reading about real life ghost stories interest you, then you have got to add Ghostlahoma to your reading list.  Here is what others are saying about this book:

I spent a month in Pryor, OK and its surroundings once and I fell in love with the people and the rich history of the state. I have read its history but nothing I’ve read has captured the essence of the stories I heard at many stops during that trip…until now.

Ghostlahoma by Tonya Hacker and Tammy Wilson records, for the first time, tales from Oklahoma’s mysterious history in a well-written, fun to read volume that relies on extensive research, first-hand experience and the collected true tales of Oklahoma residents to illuminate the strange side of this wonderful state.

From ghostly western villains that still haunt their prison cells and odd happenings at Beaver Sands to tales of mysterious phantom hitchhikers, Ghostlahoma is a tour-de-force of the weird written by two women who know and respect their subject matter. The world of Oklahoma literature will never be the same! I can only hope this is the first of many more volumes from Hacker and Wilson.

So grab a copy of Ghostlahoma, turn down the lights and settle yourself for an exciting, creepy read! And just ignore that weird sound from the other room…after all; it’s only the wind outside. Right?

John Winterbauer

American Ghost Society

Illinois Hauntings

I spent a fair amount of time today working on the site.  The wiki is going to be a large part of this site.  I built links for each of the 77 counties in the state and then list ghost towns for almost all of the counties.  It is still not a finished product.  The majority of towns are listed, but information for each town still needs to be entered.  This is going to be a time consuming and ever evolving process.

Also added to the site today was a contact form.  This is your chance to share your knowledge about the ghost towns near you with others.  For instance, today I was reminded of a town in Custer County that was not well known and was lost when Foss Lake was built.  The cemetery was even moved to Canute, so nothing of the town even remains in the area.  Curious which town it was?  Edwardsville.  I did find the town on old Oklahoma maps prior to 1960.  This is just the kind of thing that sometimes only those who have lived in the area for a long time can share.

I installed the Disqus commenting system on the site today.  This should allow users to begin posting comment to the site and keep the SPAMMERs at bay.  I have had other blogs I have managed in the past and they always seemed to have problems at some point with SPAM comments and a lot f time moderating the SPAM out.

I am hoping that Disqus will not allow that to happen here.

One of the things that makes a site great is great pictures.  I really need to get some pictures from Oklahoma’s past.  If you have any pictures you can share from towns of the past and wouldn’t mind sharing them others on this site, I would love to use them.  If you have a story that goes with the picture or can name the town or buildings in the picture, even better!

I would also be happy to have any current pictures of ghost towns.  What do the old buildings look like now?  How much of the town is left?  Both great types of pictures to have in comparison with ones from the past.

Please share!

I want to give a quick shout out to a friend of mine.  Kevin has been working hard for a few years now to make BlogOklahoma.us a very useful site for researching Oklahoma’s history.  I have from time to time helped him with the site and contributed a few bits of information, but Kevin has been the driving force behind it all along.

The site started with the simple idea of logging the locations of historical markers around the state and making them easier to find.  He was a little frustrated by the fact that no directions could be found on how to get to many of markers.  So why not catalog them and give driving directions along with GPS coordinates to them?  On top of that, tell you what each marker says and learn a little more about the state along the way.  While most of the markers in the western half of the state have been cataloged, there are still many in other parts of the state that need their information updated.

From that simple idea, the site has morphed and new items have been added.  You can now find information about state parks and other landmarks.  He has even begun doing a podcast for the site!  Stop by and visit.  I think you will be impressed.