Denison Town is a ghost town in

New South Wales ) , nickname = , image_map = New South Wales in Australia.svg , map_caption = Location of New South Wales in AustraliaCoordinates: , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = Australia , established_title = Before federation , es ...

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

. It was established in the 1850s and is thought to have been named after the Governor of New South Wales,

Sir William Thomas Denison Sir William Thomas Denison (3 May 1804 – 19 January 1871) was Lieutenant Governor of Van Diemen's Land from 1847 to 1855, Governor of New South Wales from 1855 to 1861, and Governor of Madras from 1861 to 1866. According to Percival Se ...

. It was located about from the present town of

Dunedoo Dunedoo ( ) is a village of 1,021 inhabitants situated within the Warrumbungle Shire of central western New South Wales, Australia. Dunedoo is well known to Australian travellers due to its distinctive name (''Dunny'' is a colloquial Australian ...

. In its heyday, Denison Town consisted of an inn, post office, church and cemetery, and was the occasional venue for sittings of the Local Court. Local industries included the farming of wheat, sheep and cattle, alongside sporadic prospecting for silver ore. In 1861 the inn, named the Denison Hotel, was the scene of an attempted robbery by

bushranger Bushrangers were originally escaped convicts in the early years of the British settlement of Australia who used the bush as a refuge to hide from the authorities. By the 1820s, the term had evolved to refer to those who took up "robbery under ...

s who had carried out previous attacks around

Mudgee Mudgee is a town in the Central West (New South Wales), Central West of New South Wales, Australia. It is in the broad fertile Cudgegong River valley north-west of Sydney and is the largest town in the Mid-Western Regional Council Local gover ...

. The innkeeper and patrons fought off the robbers, but the incident led to calls for a permanent police presence in the town. Denison Town Post Office opened on 1 January 1860 and closed in 1893. Denison Town had a provisional or half-time school from 1876 until 1899, A request for a local school was rejected in 1906. Eventually the opening of silver-lead mines at nearby

Leadville The City of Leadville is a statutory city that is the county seat, the most populous community, and the only incorporated municipality in Lake County, Colorado, United States. The city population was 2,602 at the 2010 census and an estimated ...

, as well as the absence of a railway, resulted in Denison Town becoming a ghost town. One building and the pioneer cemetery remained. Newspaper reports from the 1930s indicated that the cemetery, which contained around 50 graves, was neglected and used for grazing by local livestock. The cemetery still exists.

References

Ghost towns in New South Wales Localities in New South Wales {{NewSouthWales-geo-stub