The first ghost towns I ever remember visiting were the abandoned hillside villages high above the Adriatic Sea. Then, as borders were redrawn and enemies dwindled, earthquakes struck and maritime trade took hold, the people of those old villages followed new prospects down to the sea. Novelist Téa Obreht spent childhood summers visiting the hillside ruins of abandoned towns along the Dalmatian Coast. The ruins of the Carissa mine in South Pass City, Wyoming, stand as a vestige of the region's 19th-century gold rush. GettyThe most renowned of them, South Pass City, served as a touchstone for my latest novel, Sunrise.