mullens, wv has an overlook of the town you can mostly drive up, though near the end it turns into an atv trail, not sure if there's more of a view if you go all the way up the atv trail

for most people ghost town is gonna mean thurmond, wv, in the new river gorge area, you can walk around there, or there's trails and campsites nearby, as well as two shitty dirt roads one of which takes you to an extreme hard to get to waterfall and you need an atv or narrow suv to get to even where to park for that

there's also the typhoid graveyard off of one of the rail trails I wanna say on the other side of the new river near the brooklyn campground

panther state forest (now called panther wildlife management area) has TWO abandoned fire towers, one is removed but an interesting climb to the top and you could spend hours just exploring that back-country, the other one there's an orange-blazed trail leading from the group campground on the main road to get to, the other way goes from the assistant superintendent's house and it just a dirt fire road walk to the top
there's the old abandoned caretaker's cabin at the top, and what appears to be the original ww2 era fire tower, I didn't go to the top cuz I was exhausted but I think that might have the best view, its marked closed but I think you can still go up it if you are brave

most of southern appalachia is atv trails
so if you want to go anywhere you have to own an atv, rent an atv, or hire an atv tour guide

you CAN walk up an atv trail, legally I think, but um not super safe
there's an atv trail to a view near war,wv to an overlook
another one just outside williamson, wv

i recommend checking out all the little towns and just driving around matewan and williamson and war and all those little towns. Recommend coming in from beckley and trying to trace as much of the under-construction coalfields expressway as possible
it's a gorgeous multi-lane new highway that's eventually supposed to connect beckley and bluefield va

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