The Rust Belt: 100 Abandoned Places and the Economic Decisions Behind Them (Abandoned America)

100 abandoned factories, steel towns, coal camps, rail stations, amusement parks and civic ruins — and the economic decisions that left them behind. The Rust Belt is a documented journey through America’s industrial heartland: the steel mills, automobile plants, coal towns, glass factories, rubber works, company towns, rail yards, hospitals, ballparks and civic landmarks that once powered the United States — and then became evidence of a different kind of economy.

This is not a ghost-tour guide or a photography book of ruins. It is a narrative history of deindustrialization, factory closures, labor conflict, corporate underinvestment, urban decline, environmental contamination and post-industrial redevelopment across Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, West Virginia, New York, Maryland and beyond.

Across 100 self-contained entries, Cole Morrow asks the same hard questions:

Who built these places? Who profited from them? Why were they abandoned, demolished, preserved or redeveloped? What happened to the workers, families and communities left behind?
Inside you will find the industrial and civic history behind places including Homestead, Bethlehem Steel, Youngstown, Gary, Detroit, Flint, Weirton, Sparrows Point, Pullman, East Chicago, Clairton, Chester, Allentown, Michigan Central Station, Euclid Beach Park, Eloise Psychiatric Hospital, Calumet Park, Neville Island, the Carrie Furnaces and many more.

The Rust Belt was long America’s manufacturing, steelmaking and coal-producing heartland. Its decline brought unemployment, poverty, population loss, contaminated land and abandoned infrastructure — but those outcomes were not inevitable. They came from decisions: mergers, closures, disinvestment, technological change, labor strategy, racial segregation, public policy and redevelopment choices.

The Rust Belt did not simply decline. It was dismantled — one decision at a time.