when NASA acquired land to construct the John C. Stennis Space Center SSC a rocket testing facility in Hancock County Mississippi on the Mississippi side of the Pearl River which is the Mississippi–Louisiana state line. This required NASA to acquire a large approximately 34squaremile km2 buffer zone because of the loud noise and potential dangers associated with testing such rockets. Five thinly populated rural Mississippi communities Gainesville Logtown Napoleon Santa Rosa and Westonia plus the northern portion of a sixth Pearlington along with families in residence had to be completely relocated off the facility.Sometimes the town might cease to officially exist but the physical infrastructure remains. For example the five Mississippi communities that had to be abandoned to build SSC still have remnants of those communities within the facility itself. These include city streets now overgrown with forest flora and fauna and a oneroom school house. Another example of infrastructure remaining is the former town of Weston Illinois that voted itself out of existence and turned the land over for construction of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. Many houses and even a few barns remain used for housing visiting scientists and storing maintenance equipment while roads that used to cross through the site have been blocked off at the edges of the property with gatehouses or simply barricades to prevent unsupervised access.Significant fatality rates from epidemics have produced ghost towns. Some places in eastern Arkansas were abandoned after more than Arkansans died during the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918 and 1919.89 Several communities in Ireland particularly in the west of the country were wiped out due to the Great Famine in the latter half of the 19th century and the years of economic decline that followed.Catastrophic environmental damage caused by longterm contamination can also create a ghost town. Some notable examples are Times Beach Missouri whose residents were exposed to a high level of dioxins and Wittenoom Western Australia which was once Australias largest source of blue asbestos but was shut down in 1966 due to health concerns. Treece and Picher twin communities straddling the Kansas–Oklahoma border were once one of the United States largest sources of
