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.
history under ground
clouds
A facade that tells the story of demolition and neglect. The sign on the garage door indicates that if one finds themselves there, that they enter the buildings at their own risk. If only property owners in the US took this philosophy!
I believe this is the push car, meaning it would push the charge in the oven out the opposite side into the train car.
The back of the castle is barely visible through the trees that have grown thick around the walls, making it look so much older.
A shot of Longmont from the highway. Fuji 35mm.
No ambiguity here… miners, check in at this office.
Looking at the huge and modern Cargill B2 from the circa-1919 Lake Superior “I”. This is a rather unique perspective of Enger Tower and Skyline.
There is no denying that the Fergus Falls asylum was a beautiful place, especially around sunset.
The truck scale is closed at Lena, MB.
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.
The complex was so big that trains could make deliveries through the middle of it, passing below this striped skyway.
Even with a hundred people parked in front of the lakeside relic, it was invisible.
Minnesota Power’s Taconite Harbor power station, as seen through the ship loading control room windows.
A dead work truck rusts near an outbuilding. Everything is marked with a code. Modernity.
A panoramic view of the sintering plant’s gas plant (?). Everyone who visits must get a picture of these rusty smokestacks!
A nice view of the aurora borealis (“Northern Lights”) strong enough to outshine the industrial lighting at the power plant. The lights in the foreground direct ships discharging coal for the station.
Rogers Mine is one of the most structurally sound mines in the Iron River area that isn’t part of a museum.
Originally, this part of the dock was reserved for the weather station.
The four buildings seen here comprise almost all of the notable remaining structures.
Exploring the plant while live Reggae plays nearby was bizarre.
Here, the concentrated gold (and silver, and zinc, I would guess) would be loaded into trucks bound for the smelter.
I was squatting overnight in one of the buildings and woke up with the sunrise. This is what I woke up to.
Like a grave marker, a single post remembers where Dock 3 stood on the bay.
The top of the grain handler of Ogilvie’s. The flagpole serves as a lightning rod. In fact, I would not be surprised if that was its primary purpose.
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.
Looking out of the labs at the company garages.
Looking from the brewhouse at the death of its sister building, across Minnehaha.
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.
Frontenac’s shaft house is well preserved, compared to all other around it. Leica/Summilux 35/Ektar 100
The modern shaft stands above the north side of Gilman.
Winter skies over Allouez Bay. From a distance, it looks almost fragile.
Giant chunks of cooled slag form an island near Mud Lake.
Like a railgun pointed at the Rockies… the boom would direct tailings–junk rock–outside of the dredge pond.
Standing next to the now-demolished records room.
Looking from abandoned to active. The end of Dock 6 often has a crane and some shacks on it, as the chutes aren’t used anymore. Instead, conveyors are installed on the land-side of the dock that fill docked vessels, making the end of the dock little more than a breakwater and a place to park repair and recovery equipment.
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.
One leg of the headframe meets the hoist house. Two cranes are rusted in place.
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.
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.
The sun sets in front of a huge concrete building—about four times the size of the power plant. Probably a corn storage bin from an ethanol operation that ran here in the 1980s.
Looking at The Windy City from the top of the coal tower. The pond you see is the former ACME Coke coal yard.
A gymnasium, if I recall. The last building before the road dead-ends.
King Elevator sits in the corner of a more recently-defunct lumber mill: Great Western Timber. Perhaps in the future I will write the history of it. Arista 100 in 120.
“To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,
One clover, and a bee,
And revery.
The revery alone will do,
If bees are few.”
― Emily Dickinson
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.
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.
Wyoming has Montana’s ‘big sky’ reputation truly challenged.
The ghost town of Lauder, Manitoba. It’s seen better days, but I bet the TV reception on the flatlands is great.
The tailings boom is the first and last thing you see when approaching the mountaintop shipwreck.
Through a section of the tailings boom where mountain winds tore open the sheet metal around the conveyor, I poked my head out.
The hike to the village is steep. This is looking into the valley from the halfway point.
Looking out at the town water tower (which I love) from the sugar mill (which I also love).
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 Eureka Mill, historically known as Sunnyside Mill, is now the gateway to Animas Forks.
Looking through Workhouse A from the top of a silo.
There are 700 of these storage bunkers. Their design was to funnel explosions upward, rather than toward other buildings, to minimize secondary explosions.
Some of the ruins are way off the beaten path… foundations of tank stands and pillars of buildings that never had walls or roofs.
The school (hospital) campus was expansive.
The hospital featured a farm that once helped to sustain it. This is one of the few remaining signs of those years, near the Nurse’s Cottage.
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.
The porch of the Gustavson House with the southern San Juan range in the background. Bring your own rocking chair…
Looking down at the Port Arthur Ore Dock from Manitoba Pool Elevator #3. The conveyor belts are gone and King Elevator is in the far distance.
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.
This sign was important when trains ran the length of the elevator.
This old Jetta did more offroading than your average lifted tinted loud-exhaust pickup.
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.
The new concrete workhouse, as seen through chickenwire.
The flour mill (rear) and its elevators. The taller elevator was moved here in 1955, when the Harrisons bought it from Federal, who declared it surplus. The smaller elevator replaced an earlier smaller warehouse in 1926. Taken shortly after dawn. This one picture made the drive worth it, for me. Medium Format.
Identical warehouses seem a little newer than the rest of the plant. I suspect these were added in the mid-1950s for the Korean War, during which about 200 buildings were added to the complex.
Looking toward the old power house, right below one of its arteries.
The command building and a coolant tank. In the distance, rain and hail pound Wyoming dirt.
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.
Taken just after the sun set over Duluth. Don’t you love that green glow?
It seems like this pipe was made to return dust to the collector in the main workhouse from the annex.
One thing I like to do at Gopher is imagine the shape of the planned buildings based on the partial structures.
The back of the neon sign before it was converted to LED lighting. The image is mirrored so it can be read.
Looking at the concrete headframe from street level. Acros 100 in Pentax 67
The rust garden’s brick centerpiece contrasts the muted winter Kentucky palette.
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.
SFAAP’s iconic smokestacks. You’d notice if you drove past this on the highway.
Sometime soon, maybe in early 2016, someone will have this view from their office or condo.
Sunrise in SEMI. The shadow of Kurth Malt is cast across ADM-Delmar #1. Clouds behind ADM-Delmar #4 light up. It’s cold and the air smells like train grease.
Two versions of Detroit. One where buildings stand tall and proud, and one where they wilt under the sun. It’s an amazing juxtaposition.
The front of the mill reads “Montana Flour Mills Company”
The side of a launcher, with outbuildings in the background. You can see the tracks where the roof would open before launch.
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.
Reflections of graffiti during spring melt.
A buck-fifty shot for a postcard stand. Taken from the Stone Arch Bridge.
The building is winking.
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.
Looking at the tallest part of the plant from a skeletal loading dock. Kodak Portra 160/Mamiya 6.
Looking toward Sleeping Giant from the workhouse.
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.
The company headquarters. Abandoned last time I drove past it, though it is the classiest building in downtown South Bend.
This battlement-like tower is the first thing one sees coming to Old Taylor from Frankfort.
On my second or third trip, the cross had broken in the wind.
On the dark side of the workhouse at sunset, you can almost see where the walls used to be. Kodak Portra 160/Mamiya 6.
Because of the dangers of storing the materials to make explosives as well as the explosives themselves, there were earthen bunkers all across the plant like this.
The first time I saw Buffalo Central Terminal was from a westbound Empire Builder. In the foreground you can see the rows of platforms.
Not a wisp of smoke can be seen today.
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.
No matter what environmental disasters industry throws at Mother Earth, she will bounce back.
The approach to the dock is rigidly geometric. I always thought its outline was beautiful against the lake that, by contrast, was always moving.
The roof was in bad shape, but too beautiful to avoid. This is the spot were I used to study medieval Latin.
An unshielded heaframe and single pulley.
The hiking around Central City is beautiful and full of history. Just get a proper topo map!
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.
The control room floats above the top of the dock atop a spiral staircase.
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.
Taken several years before the tornado story when the weather, and the condition of the buildings, were nice.
Gopher Ordnance Works, aka the U-Lands, is a landscape where roots and boughs break apart concrete and steel.
Taken from atop a grain train at the end of Cargill B-2, looking toward Lake Superior “I”, now part of the sample complex. This area used to have another slip, but Cargill filled it on when it built the elevator on the right.
Taken at a junction in the tube world.
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 across the catwalk attache to the elevated control room, in charge of the train dumping part of the operation.
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.
A rusting disconnect gangway. The smokestack is for a boiler, if I recall.
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.
“Against the blue sky, its rusting central silos look like rising smoke meeting the last minutes of a sunset. These give way to a corrugated night sky of blue gray, punched-through with staggered four-pane windows, all glassless.”
The laundry building, where many of the tunnels came to an end. It looks very East Coast industrial to me.
Looking at Carrie from the place where the molten steel would be cast
Another perfect Indianan sunset alights like a bird on the tops of the vent houses and tree-packed smokestacks.
It would be a shame if this building is not preserved. Word is (as of 2015) that construction may start on this section soon.
Grain is taken from the bottom of the silos through a conveyor in a tunnel. These blowers keep the air in the tunnel fresh.
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.
Knowing that a tornado just passed nearby is less distressing when you’re surrounded by nuclear-attack-hardened buildings.
The exterior of the factory is unassuming
The topmost roof of the hospital is covered in antennae and includes a star that faced the rest of the complex, now demolished.
The valley is full of rocky peaks that stand out from the winding creeks, which only truly run after storms. It is a very beautiful place.
Looking north from the east portal of the tunnel… a beautiful place. Wilderness. Mamiya 6/Portra 160
Where the trees are sprouting–below the skyways and criss-crossing pipes–are two sets of railroad tracks that turned through this narrow alleyway through the middle of the production line to drop off raw materials and pick up finished product.
A US Army Corps of Engineers tug, tied at the end of the pier before the American Victory was parked here.
A long exposure under the trestle-like approach to the dock, under which trains still pass regularly.
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.
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.
Looking at the side of 4B from the roof of its car shed.
This bridge over Eagle River is beautiful.
A shallow creek traces Illinois Gulch toward the Chain O’ Mines mill. Ball mills are laid out in the sun.
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.
For a short time, CN mounted flood lights atop the abandoned dock.
Old boathouses near the dock.
Tornadic fronts duel over the retired missile launcher.
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.
One of my favorite images from my stay… Note the snowed-over road in the distance! This is looking toward Animas Forks.
HDR matrix panorama. Looking from the grain elevators, now doomed, toward the city between the flour mill’s water tower and tile elevator’s neon sign, the old and new economies seem almost united. Yet the financial centers rise in reality to shadow the now-abandoned industry and manufacturing. The way of things, I’m told.
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.
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.
Looking toward Old Taylor Distillery from the roof of Old Crow.
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.
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.
Some sort of materials handling building, judging by the construction.
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.
The concrete walls, heavy steel blast doors, and plastic roof tell me that this was one of the shell loading buildings.
Some of the earlier buildings were dressed up with brick facades.
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.
The southernmost houses in Gilman are seen through the pines on the right, near the tram stop.
Wagons and horses were kept in the building on the left, separate from the rest of the complex in case of fire. In the distance is the boiler house, separate for the same reason.
A social club/restaurant that was likely the place to be late at night.
Looking out of the Brewery Creek Drain outfall at night, after a storm had pushed piles of rocks up onto the shore.
This building was an office and lounge for engineers. It is also demolished.
Looking up at the most conspicuous graffiti in the city on ADM #4.
The Big Dipper brought its friends into view, and the best seat is 80-feet up.
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.
Kate in the crow’s next… very shaky by the time she got to it.
A tower above Minneapolis that few people see.
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.
A sizable crane on the corner of the engine house still swings out.
A morning breeze pushes the last ice from the lake against Wisconsin Point.
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.
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.
Colleen on the roof.
A gate large enough to accommodate a missile, next to the ruins of the guard shack. Wyoming is the intersection of lonely and beautiful.
The moon highlights the contrails over the engine house in the middle of the night. Foreground light painted.
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.
It’s a small world… look at it.
The Brown Hotel still stands, but has recently gone out of business again. One of the nice things about historic buildings in New Mexico, though, is things tend to stay around a lot longer than if they were subjected to lots of rain and snow. It will probably be reopened eventually.
A typical dwelling in San Luis. I could not tell if it was occupied, but most of the town is abandoned.
The parking lot is in better condition than most of the complex. The left building is the lab.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve been getting reports that several Yellow Helicopters have been seen hovering above town. We are all aware of the Black Helicopters, which are World Government, and Blue Helicopters, which are Secret Police, and the Helicopters with Detailed Murals of Diving Birds of Prey, which are the helicopters that took all the children in Night Vale away a few months ago (we still don’t know what those helicopters are but they did bring all the children back unharmed, and much more well-behaved than before, so they are deemed just as safe as the other helicopters) but these new Yellow Helicopters, no one quite knows.” – Welcome to Night Vale, Ep. 32
Looking at the Broadway from across Broadway, a beautiful Buffalo day. Note the glazed terra cotta facade–and the signs of fire damage from the first floor.
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.
Looking from the rail shipping building through pigeon-proofing chicken wire at another manufacturing building in high Fall.
A switch for the yard engines, now on the edge of the property where nobody will find it.
Near the guard post protecting the launch pad at the Duluth BOMARC is an orange windsock.
A windmill marks one corner of GOW.
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.
A look at the Longmont Sugar Mill in May 2014.
This big rusty sphere hides behind the incomplete 5-stack.
One of the old cooperage buildings is largely unchanged from when it was built. The raised section of the building houses a crane.
One night, I camped behind the sugar mill. You can tell be the clouds that a cold front was moving out—it was a hot day.
The Algosteel crew strikes a pose while heading through Superior Entry toward Allouez
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.
Much of the circa-1950s buildings remain with few alterations, such as these long boring sheet metal ruststicks.
Pillars among trees… those who inherit the earth will be so confused.
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.
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.
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.
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.