A multi-family home with an attic bedroom. The staircase was unstable, to say the least.
history under ground
clouds
A cloud moves across the attic in front of the window. How? A photographer’s secret.
A quick vertical panorama taken on my back at the sweet spot of a great summer sunset. On the skylight is the torch-cut catwalk that used to link the outside of the smokestacks that vented the cupolas.
Grain is taken from the bottom of the silos through a conveyor in a tunnel. These blowers keep the air in the tunnel fresh.
Looking toward Old Taylor Distillery from the roof of Old Crow.
Looking at the concrete headframe from street level. Acros 100 in Pentax 67
These concrete blocks were formed to be solid mounts for machinery. All the metal was scrapped in the late 1990s, leaving these modern ruins. Seagulls love them.
Pillars among trees… those who inherit the earth will be so confused.
The gulls wait to eat the next load of spilled grain. Arista 100.
A gymnasium, if I recall. The last building before the road dead-ends.
A row of security lights line the roof of the power station.
Sidewalks to a boarded barracks, each making the other obsolete in the night.
Looking out of the labs at the company garages.
A cracked sign at dock-level, where loading boats would be tied below the taconite conveyors. All across the surface of the concrete dock were taconite pellets, like slippery little marbles. One wrong step could put a worker in the water, which is a bad, bad place to be.
One of the old cooperage buildings is largely unchanged from when it was built. The raised section of the building houses a crane.
The sun unzipped the clouds. Mist blew across the harbor.
Demolition about 50% complete.
The fiery side of a launch building, just is it began to rain.
Kate in the crow’s next… very shaky by the time she got to it.
A buck-fifty shot for a postcard stand. Taken from the Stone Arch Bridge.
Even with a hundred people parked in front of the lakeside relic, it was invisible.
“Crunch, crunch, crunch,” said the ground. “I know,” I replied.
This tree caught my eye. Note the bench swing near it. Portra 160.
The same view in 2007.
Superior, WI, some have said, is a suburb of Duluth, MN. It’s more like a sub-suburb, I would argue. It’s the industrial district that is technically in another state, one that sells beer on Sundays. Perspective is looking out of the mostly-disassembled larger (newer) elevator.
This photo illustrates how vertical the complex is.
Peering at Stelco’s abandoned steel rod rolling mill, not demolished. The rectangular on the right in between is the boiler house that heated Stelco.
Looking toward the old power house, right below one of its arteries.
Standing where the Final Assembly Building used to hum and staring across the former site of the Sheet Metal and Spring buildings. Today, of course, the Foundry is gone as well, so you’d be looking across Prairie Ave.
A switch for the yard engines, now on the edge of the property where nobody will find it.
A US Army Corps of Engineers tug, tied at the end of the pier before the American Victory was parked here.
Wyoming has Montana’s ‘big sky’ reputation truly challenged.
Ava near the Memorial Building. The block glass embedded in the sidewalk here is actually a skylight for the tunnel below, which connects the Memorial Building to the steam and supply systems of the hospital.
A social club/restaurant that was likely the place to be late at night.
Looking at the headframe for Shaft 3 from the tower for Shaft 1. Below is the roof of the Dry House. It was hard to remind myself that these building have been abandoned longer than I’ve been alive.
This heavy door opens directly into the missile vault and was used to load and unload the missile erector.
The exterior of the factory is unassuming
The first time I saw Buffalo Central Terminal was from a westbound Empire Builder. In the foreground you can see the rows of platforms.
On the dark side of the workhouse at sunset, you can almost see where the walls used to be. Kodak Portra 160/Mamiya 6.
A damaged roof channeled rain onto the adobe walls, cutting them in half. In the distance, a preserved house and the ruins of the Colmor School.
This old Jetta did more offroading than your average lifted tinted loud-exhaust pickup.
A great lakes freighter slowly passes SK Wheat Pool 4 with ‘The Sleeping Giant’ in the background. Arista 100.
A defunct UGG elevator in Killarney, not far from where the Harrisons (of Holmfield, MB and Harrison Milling) once operated a small elevator. Medium Format.
No, it’s not your Mac’s desktop, it’s a beautiful Lake Superior night. Taken from near the former Pittsburgh and Reading Anthracite Plant. You can see the frame that used to hold the lifeboat that was auctioned in 2006 to the left of the Pilot House.
There are 700 of these storage bunkers. Their design was to funnel explosions upward, rather than toward other buildings, to minimize secondary explosions.
The control room floats above the top of the dock atop a spiral staircase.
The school (hospital) campus was expansive.
A full harbor on a hot summer evening, just after twilight, as seen from atop the castle walls.
On my second or third trip, the cross had broken in the wind.
The front of the mill reads “Montana Flour Mills Company”
I wonder what this guy is thinking, walking through the complex.
Giant chunks of cooled slag form an island near Mud Lake.
Frontenac’s shaft house is well preserved, compared to all other around it. Leica/Summilux 35/Ektar 100
SFAAP’s iconic smokestacks. You’d notice if you drove past this on the highway.
Originally, this part of the dock was reserved for the weather station.
The conveyor between the shore and Dock 2. Note the gap in the aerial walkway that used to connect Dock 4 to the rest of the complex.
Looking across the spired rooftop of the Kirkbride building. In the foreground is a fire chute that contains a metal spiral slide designed to evacuate patients in case of a fire. Note the ironwork on the chimney.
The spectacular, if precarious, view of downtown Minneapolis from the roof of ADM Annex 4. Note the great messages left by various graffiti artists who made it to the spot.
The screen and mineral stained window cross-processed the sky.
The top of the docks are so rotten in places that you can see the lake through the boards. In the foreground you can see the controls for the chutes, which work on a clutch.
The perimeter fence still holds strong, 50 years after it was put up.
Some of the earlier buildings were dressed up with brick facades.
The purpose of the concentrator was to separate the gold and silver-rich ore from the waste rock. You can tell from the design that the process relies heavily on gravity.
The Clipper was one of the most popular Packards, but its production was cut short by WWII. Had they produced the car instead of Rolls Royce plane engines I imagine there would might be driving a Packard today, rather than a Ford.
A panorama of the dock buildings, before the left one was demolished.
The top three floors were removed from the top of the Temple Opera Block (right). If you have a sharp eye, you can see the outlines of some of the old floors on the shared wall of the Orpheum (left). For a time, the front of the building held a bus stop.
One of my favorite night views of Fort Snelling’s so-called Upper Post, taken between snowstorms.
On top of the light hoop, 160-feet up, a ship comes into port, ready to load-up. If you look really close, you can see my shadow cast on the dock below, courtesy of the full moon.
This is what the mine shops look like from the road between Gaastra, MI and Rogers Location (formerly Bates, MI). The community was renamed for the mine, probably under the heavy influence of M.A. Hanna.
A rusting disconnect gangway. The smokestack is for a boiler, if I recall.
In the corner of the former school grounds…
Delmar #4 is like two elevators in one, in capacity and design.
A typical dwelling in San Luis. I could not tell if it was occupied, but most of the town is abandoned.
Looking out upon Mill City through the lens of FLOUR, highlighted in pink and low clouds. This sign has recently been converted into LED lighting.
Here, the concentrated gold (and silver, and zinc, I would guess) would be loaded into trucks bound for the smelter.
A dead work truck rusts near an outbuilding. Everything is marked with a code. Modernity.
Rogers Mine is one of the most structurally sound mines in the Iron River area that isn’t part of a museum.
Summertime is when Duluth goes to the lakeside to listen to music, visit traveling fairs, and talk to neighbors about the smell of the lake. As seen from the castle walls.
One of the older buildings on the site, this is an old power house that provided electricity to the plant. I spent some time walking around it and believe it was fired with coal gas but had a diesel backup installed later.
…a better view of the huge tailings boom stretching outside of the tailings pond.
Looking up the tallest structure left at ACME.
One of the last times I saw the skyway standing. ADM’s Meal Elevator is in the distance.
An unshielded heaframe and single pulley.
The top of Dock 4 was too dangerous to explore, but this panorama gives you an idea of the view (and how rotten the wood was).
Looking at the tallest part of the plant from a skeletal loading dock. Kodak Portra 160/Mamiya 6.
Shadows of distant power lines are carried to the concrete by street lights.
Colleen on the roof.
No ambiguity here… miners, check in at this office.
Looking out from what little remains of the second floor at the poor house, which was in terrible condition. No roof and no floors. Soon to be ruins.
A storm passes over BOMARC’s center row of launch buildings. You can clearly see the tracks on which the roof would retract for launch.
When I first saw Ogilvie’s from the ground, I promised myself to look back when i found my way into this little pitched outcropping which seemed to have the best view of Thunder Bay I could imagine. It turns out, though, that there is no floor in that section; it is just extended machine access! Oh well. Mount McKay in the background in the last light.
Looking through Workhouse A from the top of a silo.
An abandoned ranch on the east side of the tracks. This was not the Colmor Cutoff they were waiting for.
Looking out at the town water tower (which I love) from the sugar mill (which I also love).
National Mine and its rockhouse (?) as seen from Mammoth Hill. From this angle, I am fairly certain this was a crushing and sorting house. The bottom looks like it has two aerial tram doors as well.
Don’t you love the shape of the house on the right?
Near Howardsville, Colorado, the Animas River gets quite wide. This is near the Little Nation Mill, which is worth a stop if you’re traveling north from SIlverton. It’s also near the former Gold King Mine, which “blew” in 2015 and flooded the Animas River with toxic mine water.
The ghost town of Lauder, Manitoba. It’s seen better days, but I bet the TV reception on the flatlands is great.
The building is winking.
Through a section of the tailings boom where mountain winds tore open the sheet metal around the conveyor, I poked my head out.
A huge steel tank, one of several left over, left over from either the Ashland Oil or Allied Chemical periods.
Short-stack remains of mounts for rod and ball mills, if I was to bet. The concentrator separated junk rock (tails) from the copper and silver ore, to such a point it could be smelted.
There is no denying that the Fergus Falls asylum was a beautiful place, especially around sunset.
The moon highlights the contrails over the engine house in the middle of the night. Foreground light painted.
A tower above Minneapolis that few people see.
“Five Roses” was the brand of flour that Lake of the Woods marketed. Later, this became another Manitoba Pool elevator. Notice the “POO” up top? It’s missing the ‘L’…
From a distance (here, Union Yards), you can still see ARMOUR spelled out on the smokestack in white brick.
The pitch of the roof is more typical for areas with lots of snow—not the border of Ohio and Kentucky. So, I assume this roofline accommodated some equipment inside for trains—note the tracks.
Unloading boats had the option to take on fuel at Taconite Harbor. This building, among other things, pumped fuel to the dock.
Tornadic fronts duel over the retired missile launcher.
If you look carefully along the side of the slip alongside this image of Cargill B-2, you will see the remains of the crane stops when this was a Hannah coal dock.
The powerplant and its dedicated water tower supplied steam for heating and mechanical work.
Sunrise over Mill Hell, and all of Kurth’s various skyways. The elevators in the foreground date to the mid-1920s, Electric Steel is behind and is a little earlier than that.
Another perfect Indianan sunset alights like a bird on the tops of the vent houses and tree-packed smokestacks.
A gate large enough to accommodate a missile, next to the ruins of the guard shack. Wyoming is the intersection of lonely and beautiful.
Gopher Ordnance Works, aka the U-Lands, is a landscape where roots and boughs break apart concrete and steel.
These houses were built for the use of the lighthouse keepers in 1913 (left) and 1916 (right). The second house was added when the entry added a fourth light and required a second rotation. Today, there are no unbroken windows in either building.
Before Portland-Huron Cement’s Duluth Plant was (mostly) demolished and (partly) turned into a hotel, the top of its silos gave a cinematic view of elevator row.
A side view of the oven pusher from the ground. The tallest coal bunker looks tiny in the distance, though on the scale of the factory it’s practically on top of me as I’m taking the picture.
A broken signal light that would indicate to incoming engineers and brakemen the status of the dock deck. The streetlight-style lighting is a retrofit; originally the top of the dock would be lit by strings of lights suspended by towers on each side of the deck… a poor system according to the workers at Allouez who had the same lights.
On the National Mine property are two shafts, both serving the same workings. This one seems to have gotten some upgrades in the 1960s, judging from the condition of the metal.
Standing on a caustic tank with my head out a roof hatch, I look at the sign of the last brand to be produced here.
The new concrete workhouse, as seen through chickenwire.
A single cloud makes its way to Buffington Harbor and Lake Michigan from the quiet backroads of the plant.
The Osborn Block (front) and the Twohy (rear) at sunset. In the distance, you can almost make out Globe Elevators. One of my favorite photos of 2013.
2013. As part of the Head House’s facelift, it’s gotten new windows. However, you can now still see where the conveyor-way connected this building with the elevators behind it in the upper right of the image.
The end of Dock 5 is warped and bent from a rail accident that left some ore cars swinging like a stringy wrecking ball into the end of the superstructure and accompanying stair. The stairs are still navigable, but it wasn’t recommended by the CN workers that were with me.
The Algosteel crew strikes a pose while heading through Superior Entry toward Allouez
The fantastic red elevator that is Pool #61, built 1928.
A bridge crosses the main street of the village; one that goes nowhere. Ambiguity intended.
Looking from the brewhouse at the death of its sister building, across Minnehaha.
It is unclear when the ‘Superior Warehouse Company’ sign was put up, but it was likely around 1916-1917, when maps indicate it served as a dry goods warehouse, operated by Twohy-Eimon Mercantile Company. The Sivertson sign was likely added in the mid-1980s. In this image I tried to preserve the colors the bricks turn at sunset.
This big rusty sphere hides behind the incomplete 5-stack.
Kate stands on top of the tailings pile that added some usable land to the side of the gulch. Somewhere nearby is the buried Santiago Tunnel.
The gold mine is now a gravel pit.
As the Barker steamed past the dock and island, the sunset casts the shadow of the Taconite Harbor receiving trestle on the boat. Through the fog, you can see some of the islands that were joined into a breakwater.
A tram that once linked the Sunnyside Mine to the mill in Eureka has been reduced to a single cable. Nearby, an open adit drips water into a tributary of the Animas River.
When block glass shatters, it looks like ice.
The roof was in bad shape, but too beautiful to avoid. This is the spot were I used to study medieval Latin.
San Luis may not be a ghost town, but it’s aspiring by all indications. Luckily, it’s close enough to Cuba, NM to hang onto life, unlike the other ghost towns down the road.
The Barker turning around before it backed into Tac Harbor to unload coal for Minnesota Power.
When I see this picture, I imagine that I am an ant exploring a mushroom farm.
The truck scale is closed at Lena, MB.
The southernmost houses in Gilman are seen through the pines on the right, near the tram stop.
Coming to an inspirational poster near you… what should it read? ADVENTURE AWAITS? Don’t hang posters. Go outside.
On the left are rows of dayrooms; on the right is one of two long hallways which connect the two halves of the hospital. The large, center section of the hallway would fit chairs for patients to look out on the gardens. They called it a conservatory. This hallway would be as close as some patients would get to nature.
The approach to the dock is rigidly geometric. I always thought its outline was beautiful against the lake that, by contrast, was always moving.
This building was an office and lounge for engineers. It is also demolished.
The Blacksmith Shop (right) was connected to the Bunk House (left) via this narrow walkway. This is likely due to the fire risk in each building. The left building had a cooking stove and furnace for heat and the right building had a small industrial furnace to repair mining equipment. A little walkway would mean that a fire on one side would be easier to fight from the other.
The concrete walls, heavy steel blast doors, and plastic roof tell me that this was one of the shell loading buildings.
Zachary Taylor’s very own Scottish castle, spring-side in the Kentucky backcountry. Boarded and waiting, but in surprisingly good condition, considering the decades. I especially love the tower on the right side of the frame.
Some guerilla art for passing drivers on I-94 East to enjoy. Artist unknown.
The roof had structures bigger than most buildings in South Bend.
The tailings boom is the first and last thing you see when approaching the mountaintop shipwreck.
A shot of Longmont from the highway. Fuji 35mm.
Just across the North Dakota border, a rusty Milwaukee Road boxcar sits where it was shoved off the mainline. The grain elevator in the background marks the tracks, which is still used by BNSF.
Taken several years before the tornado story when the weather, and the condition of the buildings, were nice.
Counter-weighted ore cars alternately filled and emptied to feed Furnace 7. Honestly, though, the corner-mounted cranes are sexier in my opinion. Note the trees growing from the stacks.
The company headquarters. Abandoned last time I drove past it, though it is the classiest building in downtown South Bend.
From the bottom of the skyway I looked back, my eyes tracing the vines from the marsh up the smokestacks to the perfect Midwestern sky.
An abandoned house at Tilston, MB.
Like a grave marker, a single post remembers where Dock 3 stood on the bay.
The crane on Dock 2, as seen from Dock 4 right after sunset. Notice the old light tower is warped.
One leg of the headframe meets the hoist house. Two cranes are rusted in place.
Showering red-hot coke fresh from the furnaces near the Coal Tower (in the back) was the Quenching Tower’s duty (front).
Near the guard post protecting the launch pad at the Duluth BOMARC is an orange windsock.
This ruin was once the Toltec Mine, a producing gold and silver claim that operated into the 1940s.
Different doors for different vehicles, I would guess. White Pine Mine used tire-based vehicles, rather than track-based, making it pretty different than other mines I’ve been to.
Where equipment was scrapped.
Looking at Carrie from the place where the molten steel would be cast
Looking at The Windy City from the top of the coal tower. The pond you see is the former ACME Coke coal yard.
Looking out of the brewhouse toward the river.
Looking toward Sleeping Giant from the workhouse.
Dr. Muchow’s offices stand near his ‘new’ mill, but they show evidence of vandalism.
2005. This is very likely the oldest image I have on the website; I took this in the early 2000s with my first camera when I was new to the hobby. I still like it quite a lot.
One of my favorite images from my stay… Note the snowed-over road in the distance! This is looking toward Animas Forks.
For a short time, CN mounted flood lights atop the abandoned dock.
Soft rain on Vulcan’s ashy pyre… Both of these peaks are dead volcanos, too hard to be totally washed away by storms. As a result, they seem to rise dramatically from the flat valley.
The BOMARC launch buildings are spaced on a large concrete pad that looks like a parking lot. Out of view are underground pipes for fueling and cooling the rocket motors.
A rail maintenance building. I liked the color of the tree against the peeling red paint.
The laundry building, where many of the tunnels came to an end. It looks very East Coast industrial to me.
Looking at the side of 4B from the roof of its car shed.
One thing I like to do at Gopher is imagine the shape of the planned buildings based on the partial structures.
Reflections of graffiti during spring melt.
The offices for the Five Roses elevator have long been boarded. To the left you can see the Manitoba Pool Elevator slogan, “Service at Cost”, meaning they would not make profit off farmers and dues.
Near the old slag dump there are the remains of the pouring buckets that received the molten steel from the US Steel blast furnaces, filled to the brim with pig iron. They must be incredibly heavy!
The lower door is where the rocket exhaust would flow into the blast pit during initial launch. The upper doors would vent the rocket so the erector and other equipment in the building would not be (as) damaged.
Near the base of the mesa is a modern house, which seems to be a ranch of some sort. What a fantastic spot to live, but for the fact every rainstorm floods the arryos, muddy ditches at the bottom of gullies, making it impossible to travel.
Looking through the loading platform of Frontenac Mine toward Black Hawk. In 1900, you would see Druid Mine on the left and Aduddell on the right.
After a short rainfall douses the mill in downtown Fergus Falls, the river next to the brick walls swells and the sounds of water overtakes the echos of the nearby bars. Reflections are on the foundation of the former distribution and rail building.
There is a flipped tram car about a third of the way down the cliff.
Before the clouds broke, I snapped this profile of the dumping control room and its spiral staircase. These are the colors that I dream in.
In this ghost town where there were brick, wooden, and dirt-brick buildings, the latter fared the best by far.
The back of the neon sign before it was converted to LED lighting. The image is mirrored so it can be read.
I believe this is the push car, meaning it would push the charge in the oven out the opposite side into the train car.
A wide view of the poor house. Look at the smokestack and elevator shaft, which show the former roofline.
At first glance, I thought the center building was a hoist house because of the shape of the window. Now I think this was built as a warehouse and later used as a laboratory.
A squat building with a rail scale. Taken between rain showers in late summer, when I seemed to be the only one at White Pine.
From Main Street, looking straight up at the A Mill, only the silence makes one think that nobody’s still inside, grinding grain into Pillsbury’s Best.
The layout and design of the buildings reminded me strongly of a brewery or distillery. To the right you can see some of the retrofits by the first lumber company to buy the buildings, in the 1970s.
Looking out of the Brewery Creek Drain outfall at night, after a storm had pushed piles of rocks up onto the shore.