I think towns like this pose a real dilemma. The Welsh mining towns in the valleys have never recovered from the closure of the mines and now have deprivation, crime and little hope despite (or because of?) being much less remote. In the USA they just left the old mining towns as ghost towns and here in the UK at lease one early mining town was flattened and returned to farm land when the mine closed. The residents gave up on St Kilda and abandoned it when life became too hard and I suspect they never looked back. The hardest part is for young people with no well paying jobs, when they leave its a slow death the town and it may be better to make a positive decision to abandon it and let nature reclaim it.
