My sister lives in Merced and we went to visit her last week. Greg and I were sightseeing a little, and we came across the "skeleton houses" in the Bellevue area. My brother-in-law explained that Merced was booming even more than the rest of the country because of the new California University campus. So it got hit harder when the bubble popped.
Here's a closeup of a boarded up house:
There was a lot of work done on the infrastructure: roads, sidewalks, street signs, streetlamps, stubbed out utilities but houses were never even started:
More infrastructure:
There were a lot of coiled wires for utilities for future houses -- but who knows when they will ever be built?
