I thought I knew what a ghost town was.

The Wikipedia defines a ghost town as

“…an abandoned village, town or city, usually one which contains substantial visible remains.”

The quick definition of ghost town from Merriam Webster says it is

“a town that no longer has any people living in it : an abandoned town”.

These agree with what I always thought it was. So when I saw a fast fact on some tweet that Texas has over 450 ghost towns, I decided I had to find out if one was close enough for me to go see. This led me to a Wikipedia list of Texas ghost towns.

I searched the page for counties near me. First thing I found was Pyote. Pyote is so close, I can probably walk there. It is in our school district! People live there! How is that a ghost town? There is a post office. There’s a grocery store. What am I missing? The next town to catch my eye was Terlingua. Isn’t that where the International Championship Chili Cookoff has been held for the last half century?!?

How many populated cities are in this list? I’m disgusted and I’m not going to check them all.