Arizona · Ghost town
Jerome
A copper town clinging to a hillside above the Verde Valley, ten thousand people in the 1920s and four hundred and sixty four now.
Position Yavapai County, Arizona · 34.7489, -112.1083
Jerome stands on Cleopatra Hill in the Black Hills of Yavapai County, roughly a hundred miles north of Phoenix on the road between Sedona and Prescott. Copper built it, and in the 1920s more than ten thousand people lived here. The 2020 census counted 464.
The geology behind it is worth a sentence: the ore bodies formed about 1.75 billion years ago along a ring fault in the caldera of an undersea volcano. The town is sitting on the remains of one.
It is built into a steep slope, which produced the town's most famous quirk. Ground movement caused by mining and by the grade sent buildings sliding downhill over the years, and the jail is often pointed out as having travelled a considerable distance from where it was built.
Jerome did not empty completely. It has been an artists' town since the 1960s and is busy at weekends, so treat it as a working small town with a mining past rather than a ruin.
Facts checked against the Wikipedia article Jerome, Arizona. The words above are ours.