Van Dyke Cab Company and Yellow Cab served the terminal in lieu of a streetcar loop downtown, which was planned but never built.
history under ground
clouds
Pillars among trees… those who inherit the earth will be so confused.
A wide view of the poor house. Look at the smokestack and elevator shaft, which show the former roofline.
Originally, this part of the dock was reserved for the weather station.
…a better view of the huge tailings boom stretching outside of the tailings pond.
The copula stacks were fitted with scrubbers. Making metal is a very polluting activity.
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.
Sometime soon, maybe in early 2016, someone will have this view from their office or condo.
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.
A divot to let more light and air into the building.
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.
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 out at the abandoned neighborhood around the house.
One of my favorite night views of Fort Snelling’s so-called Upper Post, taken between snowstorms.
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.
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!
In the corner of the former school grounds…
A panorama of the dock buildings, before the left one was demolished.
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.
Taken just after the sun set over Duluth. Don’t you love that green glow?
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 back of the neon sign before it was converted to LED lighting. The image is mirrored so it can be read.
The crane on Dock 2, as seen from Dock 4 right after sunset. Notice the old light tower is warped.
A switch for the yard engines, now on the edge of the property where nobody will find it.
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.
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.
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.
SWP4-A on the left and Viterra C on the right in a 90-degree panorama.
There is no denying that the Fergus Falls asylum was a beautiful place, especially around sunset.
Looking through Workhouse A from the top of a silo.
Another perfect Indianan sunset alights like a bird on the tops of the vent houses and tree-packed smokestacks.
The perimeter fence still holds strong, 50 years after it was put up.
The fantastic red elevator that is Pool #61, built 1928.
The gold mine is now a gravel pit.
Reflections of graffiti during spring melt.
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.
Colleen on the roof.
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 parking lot is in better condition than most of the complex. The left building is the lab.
A look at the Longmont Sugar Mill in May 2014.
A typical dwelling in San Luis. I could not tell if it was occupied, but most of the town is abandoned.
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.
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.
The moon highlights the contrails over the engine house in the middle of the night. Foreground light painted.
Gopher Ordnance Works, aka the U-Lands, is a landscape where roots and boughs break apart concrete and steel.
Some of the earlier buildings were dressed up with brick facades.
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.
Near the guard post protecting the launch pad at the Duluth BOMARC is an orange windsock.
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.
I was squatting overnight in one of the buildings and woke up with the sunrise. This is what I woke up to.
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.
The Barker turning around before it backed into Tac Harbor to unload coal for Minnesota Power.
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.
Looking out of the labs at the company garages.
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.
An abandoned ranch on the east side of the tracks. This was not the Colmor Cutoff they were waiting for.
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.
The rust garden’s brick centerpiece contrasts the muted winter Kentucky palette.
Unloading boats had the option to take on fuel at Taconite Harbor. This building, among other things, pumped fuel to the dock.
From the highest roof of Ogvilvie’s, Thunder Bay looks like paradise.
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.
Looking toward the old power house, right below one of its arteries.
Heavy industrial looks good in cotton candy pink.
The approach to the dock is rigidly geometric. I always thought its outline was beautiful against the lake that, by contrast, was always moving.
Showering red-hot coke fresh from the furnaces near the Coal Tower (in the back) was the Quenching Tower’s duty (front).
Like a grave marker, a single post remembers where Dock 3 stood on the bay.
2013. A perfect summer day meets a beautiful old roundhouse on the edge of town.
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 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.
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 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.
No ambiguity here… miners, check in at this office.
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 main street of the ghost town is also the maintenance road for the BNSF line that bisects Colmor.
Taken several years before the tornado story when the weather, and the condition of the buildings, were nice.
The topmost roof of the hospital is covered in antennae and includes a star that faced the rest of the complex, now demolished.
Looking up the tallest structure left at ACME.
No matter what environmental disasters industry throws at Mother Earth, she will bounce back.
Looking out across the elevator row from Portland Huron’s roof. Don’t you love the color of the sky?
Not a wisp of smoke can be seen today.
A rail maintenance building. I liked the color of the tree against the peeling red paint.
The Harrison flour mill, completed in 1897 and expanded in 1901 and 1902. The tunnel that I am standing on probably transported grain from the elevator to the mill. Medium Format.
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.
Looking at the concrete headframe from street level. Acros 100 in Pentax 67
The last of four radar domes on the base.
Winter skies over Allouez Bay. From a distance, it looks almost fragile.
The first time I saw Buffalo Central Terminal was from a westbound Empire Builder. In the foreground you can see the rows of platforms.
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.
From a distance (here, Union Yards), you can still see ARMOUR spelled out on the smokestack in white brick.
The southernmost houses in Gilman are seen through the pines on the right, near the tram stop.
Here, the concentrated gold (and silver, and zinc, I would guess) would be loaded into trucks bound for the smelter.
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.
I wonder what this guy is thinking, walking through the complex.
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 last times I saw the skyway standing. ADM’s Meal Elevator is in the distance.
A shallow creek traces Illinois Gulch toward the Chain O’ Mines mill. Ball mills are laid out in the sun.
A panoramic view of the sintering plant’s gas plant (?). Everyone who visits must get a picture of these rusty smokestacks!
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.
35mm Film, Expired. An abandoned swath of NAD is landlocked by soybean fields.
Boards on the window are like rings on a tree, if you know how to read abandonments.
A taste of Superior culture.
Frontenac’s shaft house is well preserved, compared to all other around it. Leica/Summilux 35/Ektar 100
One of the covered rail loading docks. All of them were overgrown and rust-clad.
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.
The bottom of the tailings boom is rotten. In days when the dredge, floated, gangways connected it to shore, it seemed. You can see the size of the pontoons under the boat here.
The command building and a coolant tank. In the distance, rain and hail pound Wyoming dirt.
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.
This building was an office and lounge for engineers. It is also demolished.
A windmill marks one corner of GOW.
Coming to an inspirational poster near you… what should it read? ADVENTURE AWAITS? Don’t hang posters. Go outside.
The rear of the complex shows the more than 100 year old workhouse–still working! I do not know if the tanks are original to the 1901 elevator, but I suspect so.
The St. Louis County Sheriff constantly patrols the property looking for trespassers.
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.
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.
A bridge crosses the main street of the village; one that goes nowhere. Ambiguity intended.
The powerplant and its dedicated water tower supplied steam for heating and mechanical work.
There is a flipped tram car about a third of the way down the cliff.
The modern shaft stands above the north side of Gilman.
The truck scale is closed at Lena, MB.
The company headquarters. Abandoned last time I drove past it, though it is the classiest building in downtown South Bend.
Street lights and pavement are some of the obvious signs a town used to be here.
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).
Kate in the crow’s next… very shaky by the time she got to it.
The roof was in bad shape, but too beautiful to avoid. This is the spot were I used to study medieval Latin.
A row of houses north of Pommenige.
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.
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 Algosteel crew strikes a pose while heading through Superior Entry toward Allouez
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.
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.
This bridge over Eagle River is beautiful.
On the dark side of the workhouse at sunset, you can almost see where the walls used to be. Kodak Portra 160/Mamiya 6.
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.
A morning breeze pushes the last ice from the lake against Wisconsin Point.
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 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.
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.
Looking out from a hallway on the third floor where a ceiling and roof should be. I could not stand in the room, as the floor had collapsed into the basement, but I could put my camera out at arm’s length and fire a few pictures upward, which is how I came away with this image!
“Crunch, crunch, crunch,” said the ground. “I know,” I replied.
A single cloud makes its way to Buffington Harbor and Lake Michigan from the quiet backroads of the plant.
Two versions of Detroit. One where buildings stand tall and proud, and one where they wilt under the sun. It’s an amazing juxtaposition.
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.
Shadows of distant power lines are carried to the concrete by street lights.
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.
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.
A cloud moves across the attic in front of the window. How? A photographer’s secret.
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 sort of materials handling building, judging by the construction.
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.
The sun unzipped the clouds. Mist blew across the harbor.
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.
Even with a hundred people parked in front of the lakeside relic, it was invisible.
The roof had structures bigger than most buildings in South Bend.
The building is winking.
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.
Taken at a junction in the tube world.
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.
The back of the castle is barely visible through the trees that have grown thick around the walls, making it look so much older.
Rogers Mine is one of the most structurally sound mines in the Iron River area that isn’t part of a museum.
The tailings boom is the first and last thing you see when approaching the mountaintop shipwreck.
The exterior of the factory is unassuming
Approaching the power station and its giant stack. The stack replaced four shorter stacks in the 1960s, helping with pollution in the downtown corridor.
A dead work truck rusts near an outbuilding. Everything is marked with a code. Modernity.
This building was 99 years old when it was demolished for the coal mine.
A US Army Corps of Engineers tug, tied at the end of the pier before the American Victory was parked here.
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.
The taller of the two smokestacks on site. Note the crack around its crown.
Much of the circa-1950s buildings remain with few alterations, such as these long boring sheet metal ruststicks.
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.
Looking at the tallest part of the plant from a skeletal loading dock. Kodak Portra 160/Mamiya 6.
Don’t you love the shape of the house on the right?
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.
Knowing that a tornado just passed nearby is less distressing when you’re surrounded by nuclear-attack-hardened buildings.
The ghost town of Lauder, Manitoba. It’s seen better days, but I bet the TV reception on the flatlands is great.
Giant chunks of cooled slag form an island near Mud Lake.
I believe this is the push car, meaning it would push the charge in the oven out the opposite side into the train car.
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 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.
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.
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.
When block glass shatters, it looks like ice.
The Port Arthur elevator row, as seen from the edge of Fort William.
A buck-fifty shot for a postcard stand. Taken from the Stone Arch Bridge.
“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
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.
One of my favorite images from my stay… Note the snowed-over road in the distance! This is looking toward Animas Forks.
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.
Looking at The Windy City from the top of the coal tower. The pond you see is the former ACME Coke coal yard.
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.
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 tallest dock structure is an equipment elevator that connects the many dock levels.
Looking across the catwalk attache to the elevated control room, in charge of the train dumping part of the operation.
Delmar #4 is like two elevators in one, in capacity and design.
A little cloud passes over the Five-Stack powerplant ruins, like a puff of smoke.
The four buildings seen here comprise almost all of the notable remaining structures.
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.
The Algosteel navigating Superior Entry.
Like a railgun pointed at the Rockies… the boom would direct tailings–junk rock–outside of the dredge pond.
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.