The story
The Elko Tract lies in the woods of eastern Henrico County outside Richmond, Virginia, and its strangeness is documented: during the Second World War the state cleared the land as a decoy 'city' with lights to mislead bombers away from Richmond's airfield, and in the postwar years a development for a state institution was begun and abandoned — leaving paved streets, kerbs, hydrants and streetlights gridded through empty forest, a city that never received its buildings. For decades Richmond teenagers made the pilgrimage, and the legends grew as legends do: a hidden hospital, patients wandering, lights in the trees, cars stalling on the ghost streets — folklore folklorists have traced to the site's genuine eeriness rather than any event. Much of the tract has since been absorbed by development and utilities, with remaining sections restricted; visiting means public roads and no trespass, stated plainly. Present the Elko Tract as Virginia's great built legend — real pavement, imagined city — its stories hedged as the campfire canon they are.