America's largest ghost towns, with homes and a hospital still standing

Representative Image of the abandoned hospital buildings in Eagle Mountain (AI-generated image) On the southeastern edge of Joshua Tree National Park sits Eagle Mountain, once a thriving company town of roughly 4,000 people, now one of California's largest and best preserved ghost towns. Founded in 1948 by industrialist Henry J Kaiser to house workers for the adjoining Eagle Mountain iron mine, the town featured wide landscaped streets lined with more than 400 homes, a shopping centre, schools, a bowling alley and a fully staffed hospital serving the mining community and their families. When the mine closed in 1983 after 35 years of continuous operation, the town emptied out almost overnight, leaving behind an unusually intact snapshot of postwar American company town life, right down to the hospital that once treated its residents.How Eagle Mountain came to exist in the first placeAccording to a boundary study prepared by the National Park Service, the Kaiser Steel Corporation operated the Eagle Mountain Mine from 1948 to 1983, extracting iron ore to supply its steel mill in Fontana, California, roughly 180 kilometres to the west. During this period, Eagle Mountain became the larg...