In the 1940s, Hiawatha, Utah, had about 1,500 residents; its coal mine closed in 1992, and the former company town has since become largely deserted

In central Utah's Carbon County, there sits a dusty, abandoned site with several run-down wooden houses, a locked chapel, and a "No Trespassing" sign. This is Hiawatha, a company town that was built from scratch on coal money, and eventually emptied out once that money ran dry.

On the surface, this seems like old news, but a 2025 research study titled “Company Towns: Single-Industry Dominance and Local Government Capacity,” by political scientist Elizabeth Mitchell Elder, published in the British Journal of Political Science, shows that places like Hiawatha may be especially vulnerable to decline. For readers whose hometowns have faced single-industry collapse, this is a relatable story.

A one-company boomtown in the middle of nowhere


Hiawatha was essentially planned as a single-industry town. In 1909, coal was discovered near Gentry Mountain. Shortly after this, a railway was laid through. By 1911, the town was incorporated and had approximately 500 residents. The town was essentially controlled by the United States Fuel Company. They built homes, a school, and a recreation hall, along with a dairy farm. The majority of people working in the town were Greek immigrants, with many coming from the island of Crete. By 1940, the town had grown to approximately 1,500 people.

Why company towns were quietly designed to crumble

Elder’s research showed that coal towns throughout Appalachia and the Illinois Basin often had weak local government capacity. This meant they had lower tax revenue, fewer public employees, and less spending compared to similar towns. This issue lasted for decades after the coal mines closed. The coal companies had every reason to maintain a small local government.

A larger local government would have meant higher taxes for the company, and a greater risk that it could eventually be held accountable by that government. Everything from schools to policing was controlled by the company, meaning once it left, there was nothing left. Hiawatha perfectly fits this description, as there was only one employer, landlord, and reason for the town to exist.

The slow bleed after the boom

Hiawatha started to decline after the 1940s. This resulted in a drop in population, from 439 in 1960 to just 43 in 1990. Hiawatha was officially disincorporated on the 20th November 1992. Essentially, it was a few families trying to stay in the area with an increasingly quiet mine. This is a common tale for anyone growing up in a factory town, mill town, or single-employer town within the American Rust Belt. A boom, plateau, decline, and ghost town.

Coal’s national hangover hasn’t ended

Hiawatha is not an isolated example. It is just a small example of a larger trend across the country. The average number of employees working in U.S. coal mines dropped to just 44,060 in 2024, as per the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s “Annual Coal Report 2024.” This has been a long-term issue caused by cheaper natural gas, renewable resources, and automation.

Within Appalachia alone, the coal mining industry has lost around 150,000 jobs (around 85%) between 1980 and 2017, according to a 2023 Harvard Kennedy School paper titled “The Persistent Consequences of the Energy Transition in Appalachia’s Coal Country,” by Eleanor Krause, published in the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. This has resulted in a sharp population decline.

What a ghost town in Utah has to say to us now

Whilst it may be easy to look at the sepia images of Hiawatha and see it as a lost way of life, Elder’s research shows that these towns were inherently doomed to fail. Interestingly, her paper highlights that there is a link in modern times. There is a town in Texas that was set up around a single company’s employees; however, they are looking to formally incorporate. ‘Company towns’ do not appear to be a thing of the past. For those of us seeing tech hubs, factory towns, and company cities in the gig economy rise and fall, the run-down porches of Hiawatha aren’t a thing of the past. They are a subtle reminder that if one employer controls everything, it can cause issues for the town and its people.