 Not all of the communities surrounding Helper were able to weather these difficult periods of economic instability, and the town is within a few miles of a large number of former coal mining settlements that were abandoned between the 1930s and 1970s, and are now ghost towns.These towns include Castle Gate, Coal City, Consumers, National, Peerless, Rains, Royal, and Standardville.Upturns and downswings plagued the industry in the 1970s, with new lows reached in the 1980s and early 1990s.