The American Adventure Theme park opened up in Derbyshire, England, in the late 1980’s. It started out with a wild, wild west and cowboys vs. Indians theme. But the park didn’t do as well as the original owners hoped, and it closed after less than 3 months.
It reopened a couple of years later under new ownership and with more thrill rides, which seemed to do the trick in getting people to show up. It went through a few more owners and renovations before it closed for good in 2006.
Palms Motel, Salton Sea, CA
In the 50’s and 60’s, The Bombay Beach area of California was hugely popular among both tourists and locals. It was a beautiful, beachside town, full of people enjoying ocean sports and drinking tropical drinks at tiki bars. But a deteriorating ecosystem, coupled with no drainage outlets and plenty of pollution caused a plethora of dead sea life to continuously turn up on the beach. As you can imagine, no one wanted to stick around and lay in the sun next to a bunch of rotting fish carcasses.
Although some people still live in the area, gone is the Palms Motel, which was once a favorite among tourists. The building is still somewhat standing, along with several others in the area, but they’re all boarded up and the only guests are squatters.
Akrotiri, Greece
Akrotiri is believed to have first been settled in the 5th millennium, BC, as a fishing village. It’s a prime location for boats made it a popular copper trading port. But during the late Minoan period, a volcanic eruption buried the entirety of the town in volcanic ash.
Some speculations exist to suggest the stories of the lost city of Atlantis are based on this beautiful place that today exists underneath the modern-day island of Santorini. Excavations have been done in certain areas of the island that have revealed things like marble sculptures of women, along with several buildings.
Divine Lorraine Hotel, Philadelphia
The shell of the once beautiful Divine Lorraine Hotel still sits on the corner of Fairmont Avenue and Broad Street in North Philadelphia, but the inside today is made up of crumbling, graffiti-covered walls and broken glass. The hotel was the first in the city to become integrated when Father Divine arrived on the scene and purchased it in 1948.
Father Divine set rules in place for his residents, which included that men and women lived on different floors, women weren’t able to wear pants (skirts only,) and there was no drinking or swearing. The building closed in 1999 and was left to sit and fall apart until 2015 when redevelopment plans began on it and other buildings in the area.
Centralia, Pennsylvania
Centralia was a mining town that was a popular place for coal miners, but also unfortunately with the Molly Maguires, a 19th-century Irish secret society that had a taste for violence. Still, the town had 5 hotels and a couple of theatres, and at 1 point nearly 3,000 people lived there. But in the 1960s, an enormous fire was discovered burning through the mines below their feet.
Although no one took notice until things got so bad from the gasses that in 1992, the governor of Pennsylvania evoked the eminent domain act and condemned all property in the area.