Picher, OK

In the 1990s, the government offered families with young children buyout options and many accepted. In 2006, an Army Corps of Engineers study showed that 86% of the town's buildings were about to collapse. With the exodus already underway, the town finally halted official operations in 2009 and the population dropped to 20 people. Ironically, the entire reason the town has been declared inhabitable due to the effects of the town's main reason for existing in the first place: its mines.