This wide skyway connected two of the inner factory buildings, where parts would have to be transported to keep the operation moving, which is why it is much wider than other bridges in the plant.
history under ground
doors
Redlining is the practice of shutting certain races out of neighborhoods, and it is still a big problem today. Such behaviors were a big factor in creating the need for these projects.
The arches of the Twohy building, before some of the signs and sills were painted in 2015.
The end of the new elevator. Line of bird droppings follow the fire sprinkler pipes and wires in the room.
A view of the government presses, with pages of law across the floor covered in footprints.
One of the storage bunkers was cracked open. I wonder how effective this heavy door would actually be… I expect, not very.
At sunset the light skips from puddle to stagnant puddle across the whole foundry room, playing with the classic sawtooth roof with half-hearted shadows.
An automatically closing door, in case of fire or flood in the engine compartment.
The shaft house, where hydraulic steel doors allowed or denied entry into the mine shaft. Overhead is a light and alarm. If it sounds, the mine is being evacuated, and you best not go in and best stay the hell out of the way. Locals dump tires here, now.
The end of one of the scrapped turbines. Judging by the aborted attempt at cutting it in half, the scrappers had some trouble with this one.
The shed in the front was full of worker supplies–namely goggles and heavy leather gloves. Molten copper isn’t a friendly thing to handle.
Shag carpet is fabulous, and I hope it makes a comeback.
2006. A section of the third floor that has changed a lot over the years. Compare to 2015 shot.
A look at another “Belt-o-Vator”. I like the sign.
The cold air collided with the sun-warmed water on the floor, filling the ground floor of the Keg House with thick fog…
This is one of my favorite doorways (yes, I have favorites) for a few reasons: 1.) You can see how the once-arched door has been squared-off for rectangular doors to fit; 2.) you can see one complete historic door and one ruined door, and the chain that used to hold them together before someone kicked-out the security, and; 3.) I like the texture of the bricks and design of the radiators in the room beyond–the blacksmith shop. Just do.
The top floor of the apartment seemed so empty without the furniture that once adorned it. Instead, my eyes were drawn to the worn paths in the floor between the rooms.
This old ward, not a victim of remodeling, still has metal screens over the open windows of the doors. It should be obvious why glass were not used.
The blacksmith shop is pretty rugged looking. Through the door you can see the collapsed walkway that might have once connected to a building covering the Santiago Tunnel adit.
A colorful boiler is a happy boiler! RotoGrate systems remove ashes from the boiler firebox by revolving the bottom of the system to let the fly ash drop into a hopper. This greatly increases boiler efficiency.
One of the occupied buildings in Nevadaville.
A small stage in one of the barracks.
A blue chair in a blue room
Numbers on a pillar counted tank capacity for a removed water container; an unhinged door in an unhinged factory beguiles those looking for an exit.
This skyway, built to help seal off two parts of the complex during an out of control fire, was probably too rotten to burn by the time I saw it.
One of the cupola air intakes, rattled loose by the demolition downstairs, hangs stranded on the second floor. You can see that the floor I’m standing on in this picture used to extend all the way to the right wall. The blue paint on the wall made the climb absolutely worth it.
This dock goes between loading bays (see glass brick walls) and the railroad.
Note the wood and rubber wheels on this powder cart.
The piano must have been a nice distraction; there is very little to do in Roberts.
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.
A single metal emergency slide rusts away at sunrise.
Presumably, in a nuclear blast the antenna would be blown flat and pop back up, allowing communication even after a near-direct hit.
Vines are finding their way into the roundhouse.
The only door into a large windowless concrete room, probably a storage bin. Kodak Portra 160/Mamiya 6.
A small wood-paneled office for the on-duty keeper to use.
The office was redder than the rest of the building.
This ornamental stair is cast iron and used to connect all floors of the Administration building. Now it connects the first and second floor, then the third and fourth floors, with a strange cinder block and drywall barrier separating the new and old sections of the building. Note the insulation on the floor to seal heat into the lower floors that were used as offices until the hospital closed. On the corners of the staircase are lions, on the corners of the suspended section of stair are down-hanging pineapples. Set in the stairs themselves are shield motifs with slate tops.
A storage vault for guns and other weapons to protect the base from attack.
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.
This is what I believe to be the Masonic Cottage, where infected Freemasons would be treated together and enjoy some simple luxuries because of their social connections. Freemasonry is still popular in North Dakota.
An old nurse’s station (you can tell because of the half-door with table) with torn-up tiles. Notice through the curved doorway that even the ceiling has a curvature.
This picture tells half the story about the size of half of the complex. For Port Arthur, it’s average, but this would be a fantastically large elevator if it were anywhere else!
Easier-to-demolish parts of the power plant were torched apart. Catwalks to nowhere meant lots of dead ends.
An unplanned skylight. It’s unclear why some parts of the building had wooden roofing, while others were highly reinforced with brick.
The old way to get to the elevator from the mill.
Devan setting up his 4×5 camera.
In the corner of most of the factory floors, freight elevators flanked restrooms to leave more central space for machines and their masters.
Looking out at the abandoned neighborhood around the house.
This “pit” would allow workers to crawl below locomotives to service them.
A pink room with very heavy doors that reminds me of the rooms at some of the insane asylums that I’ve explored.
The stone chapel sits beside the main house and received a particularly heavy dose of gothic architectural touches.
This is one of the biggest warps I’ve ever found in a wooden factory floor hasn’t broken yet. When you stand on it, it make a very loud popping sound as the boards shift. The poster on the pillar near the left side of the frame advertises recreational boating, presumably to the factory workers who left this floor in the early 1980s.
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!
Rubber dock boots still sits under the desk in the dock office, near keys to rusted locks and files of fired employees.
Sharks in the floor.
Inside the main entrance is a whiteboard and mirror, then it branches into discrete spaces.
I can confirm the existence of the long-rumored Federal Rectangle Research Institute labs.
This building cleaned the barrels that transported ingredients through the plant.
An interesting crane in the back of the machine shop. It seems very light duty, so I am not certain what it was used for.
The right passageway is a carved staircase that winds upward to an old entrance. The left portal is one of the bigger and well-carved rooms… I would guess it’s part of the original caves.
One of Martinsdale’s defunct businesses perpendicular to the depot. Recall that Martinsdale is a T-town.
In the back of the warehouse is the old incinerator, probably used to destroy kegs that could not be reused.
Originally, this part of the dock was reserved for the weather station.
The view into one of the asylum rooms of Norwich Hospital. A long time ago, a window broke, letting the vines crawling up the bricks outside to move indoors and across the floor.
A heavy steel rail door to help funnel explosions upward, rather than outward.
Call me angsty, but I like it. Found in the Auxiliary Hospital.
Typical bunk rooms in MS-20.
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.
These racks lined many of the floors, although I couldn’t decipher their purpose. Tastes like duotone…
Looking into the main workhouse from the skyway into the annex elevator. But who care? Look at the colors!
Looking through a secure ward door at the destroyed rooms beyond.
A view of the hallway outside of the auditorium.
Looking into the engine works from the concrete addition.
Here, the concentrated gold (and silver, and zinc, I would guess) would be loaded into trucks bound for the smelter.
This door used to open at river level, but it has since been built up and sealed with a steel grate. Still, the original doors (with original paint?) stand in the same place. Once they opened to the fresh air, now they are permanently sealed in the tunnels. This is the official entrance for inspecting the mine, hence fiber optic and ladder. Shortly after the plant was demolished, this entire area was resealed and alarmed.
In this section of the Men’s Ward, sealed by brick from lower floors, the room doors had messages painted in their inside–some motivational, some not. I would be interested to hear if anyone knows the backstory of this section. Lighting is natural; it was just after sunset.
Pocket door and light switches in the upper control room, at the top of the spiral staircase.
A few of the stalls in the older section of the roundhouse, the noon sky peeking in.
The pits have long since been filled so the roundhouse could be used for storage.
A typical narrow hallway at Birtle.
While the maps name this the compressor house, I believe, based on its size and number of heavy machine mounts, that it also housed the pumps to drain the mine.
The third floor corridor is not so welcoming, as it requires visitors to walk along the support breams without the luxury of a floor. I didn’t mind, but I can’t see the family with young children that was also exploring Noisy doing the same.
The city has taken steps to prevent the curious and the desperate from going into the elevators, including piling rocks against the doors and windows.
Behind the grand staircase is this beautifully preserved hallway with medieval-style arches and vivid paint.
An unintentional skylight makes the inside of the office glow, showing the inside of the front door and its strange lock.
Between the Old Crow and Old Taylor bonded warehouses are some of the fouled barrels, now the only ones left, which were left to rot in the elements. Nearby in a loading bay that has obviously been disused longer than the rest of the property, terra cotta roofing waits in crates.
A switchboard to control the flow of electricity into the plant from the city and generators.
A steel powder keg serves as a door prop on the static-proof wood core floor. Note the ‘XXX’ marking to the left of the double door.
The sluice room was surrounded in fine grating. The company would want to finely control when the doors would be opened so the gold could be removed under supervision. No yellow bonus for the working man…
When ‘men’ meant ‘worker’.
Almost all of the doors and windows on the ground floor have been boarded, leaving the ground level very dark.
Inside the office was a small furnace and a collection of mechanical belts. You can see “SERVICE AT COST” and “POOL 168” in the background.
The side of the church, taken from a grungy sidewalk.
A sheik mustard-yellow paint scheme across the roofless engine house goes great with the industrial moss and rust.
On the extended engine bay…
Before each warhead was crated, it was inspected.
Stairs and power lines enter the abandoned depot. Shingles slide off the rotten roof. Ektar 100/Mamiya 6
Heavy wood doors for keeping people in.
A high-ceilinged room where kegs would be delivered for cleaning, before they were refilled with fresh booze.
A corner of the addition is lined with glass cabinets, formerly filled with beds.
Looking through a launcher doorway at an outbuilding… the fire truck garage, if I recall correctly. Fomapan medium format in Pentax 67.
In one of the hundreds of bunkers across the busy highway from the empty plant ruins. Most did not have doors, but I got lucky on this one.
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.
A side door for the brick factory.
The top floor of the Meal Storage Elevator.
In the power house corner is this gratuitously gigantic doorway. It used to be even bigger, too, as indicated by the brick arch another foot over the top windows.
What I make out to be the dining room or great hall of the castle, as seen through of the side rooms, which appeared to be a very ruined library. Teenager graffiti looks cooler in French.
After climbing the elevator shaft to the illusive second level, a new pallet of colors were revealed.
The incinerator’s hardened steel door… useless, but still sexy in a heavy-industrial kind of way.
The bottom of the stairs leading from the work floor to the cafeteria.
In most places, it may seem off for there to be a tunnel door on the top floor of a building, but Ford was that kind of place. This door from the steam plant led into a skyway and tunnel that connected to the main assembly floor.
The elevator tower seems to have been built with expansion of the dock in mind.
A broken window looking through the First Aid Room and into the Control Room in charge of directing grain into ships. You can see one of the large conveyors on the right, clad in green. Chutes and staircases intertwine seemingly randomly through the big empty spaces.
A bathroom in the rear of the ballroom that overlooks the Rose Garden.
The last time the city sealed this door, they must have been changing out old road signs.
The side of Stelco and its scrubber-stacks. This is demolished now.
Looking from the ‘crack’ that shows a collapsed tunnel into the dry house, in the direction miners returning home would walk. Note smoke lines above door.
A rare door left on the workhouse. The stairs to the left led down into a flooded basement. Kodak Portra 160/Mamiya 6.
At noon, the lower skylights around the shops glow yellow-green, thanks to the flora blooming on the roof above.
Kodak Tri-X 400/Leica M7. The office (first floor), laboratory (second floor) and mill behind it. Everything was clean and pristine.
This used to be one of the office doors, but it’s been removed (apparently without malcontent) and placed in the shop area.
From the 1909 addition, it’s obvious how much water it takes to carry a single wall to, into and through the cracks between the floor tiles: exactly one roof’s worth.
I believe this is the push car, meaning it would push the charge in the oven out the opposite side into the train car.
In the middle of one of the outlying cottages, perhaps the Masonic Cottage–it was too damaged to tell, really–are these pair of skinny doors that led from patient rooms to a common area with rotting shag carpet.
Between the repair shops and the stock department is this odd little structure. No, the walls are not level–it’s not your eyes. The shops slope left, the structure slopes right.
A skyway 100 feet above this office crumbled one day. This is what happened when those two met. High-impact love.
Note the severed skyway–that led to a set of grain elevators that have since been demolished.
This train shed was later converted to load trucks with concrete from the silos.
The roof could be vented when locomotives were running inside.
A sizable crane on the corner of the engine house still swings out.
The gauges on left of frame are the steam pressure indicators for the various steam-powered components around the ship, like the steering engine and windlass motors. Below the gauges are a case of tiny wooden parts drawers… note the ancient oiling can on the locker near the upper-right corner of the frame.
In the ward for the criminally insane, this door was the most-worn. Nail scratches mark the area around the peep hole, the wood is gouged everywhere from thrown chairs and hard kicks, and a ominous blood-colored stain is visible where it dripped in the second inset from the bottom. Aside from the damage, the coloring in this section was very vibrant, though it was probably little reprieve for those who had to work here.
Looking through the old brewhouse toward the Keg Wash House.
Hip bump girl.
A warped mirror in the rock crusher at the rear of the complex.
In the many-windowed metal building, the lumberyard buildings and the abandoned starch works buildings are separated by a thick wall of pallets.
A typical room in Birtle.
Dr. Muchow’s offices stand near his ‘new’ mill, but they show evidence of vandalism.
2015. Water damage hastens the decay of the annex and its stage. Every time I visit this room, the chairs are in different places. Kodak Portra 400 in a Voigtlander Bessa.
Miners would sit in this room before going into the mine. The boards on the right indicated whether every single miner was “in” or “out”.
On the top floor of the former casket building is the finishing line for the coating section; on this section the final spray of plastic would hit the wood before a small furnace would seal the plastic permanently to the surface, making it more resilient, I assume.
An employee lunchroom with every door and window covered in vented steel.
The top floor’s old-fashioned hospital ways were too much to pass without a photo or two… with the paint falling off the walls it was as if the building was shedding its skin in an effort to become rejuvenated or useful.
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.
On the second floor of the kettle building where corn mash was boiled, holes where tanks once sat were everywhere.
The portal facing Taconite Harbor (at a healthy distance) is mostly closed. Some kids put bullet holes in it. Shooting down a long tunnel is extremely dangerous, and you should not do it, obviously. Mamiya 6/Portra 160
I wanted to see the third floor to get a better view, but the third floor had already been demolished. The old walls had cascaded down the staircases. This building is gone, now, as you can expect.
It was a strange choice, although I appreciate it, for the firm reusing the shops to brick up the doorways while leaving the doors.
The front door to the auditorium.
A small bunker and blast wall between shell-loading buildings would have provided shelter during disasters, such as tornados, accidental explosions, and perhaps even enemy attacks.
A side door for the shop area with ivy crawling toward it.
Looking toward Mitchell from its last building.
A common room with a big bay window that overlooked the main entrance of the hospital.
Office manners dictate that one must tip their file drawer back upright once it is knocked through the wall.
Inside the main entrance to the depot. Through the ‘To Station’ door, you can see some of the news stands. Look at the floor!
The side of the maintenance shops, still home to several disassembled electric carts.
Part of the unremodeled hospital, above the Service Building, where employees would stay sometimes.
An elevator to bring big somethings into the basement, it seemed. Nearby were the plant firetrucks, still ready to go. I hope they were saved.
2016. A section of the third floor that has changed a lot over the years. Compare to 2006 shot.
Upper Prize Street in Nevadaville earned the nickname ‘dogtown’ when a pack of dogs took over the abandoned houses.
Taken on a short trip where the whole floor of the roundhouse and engine shop was covered in fresh snow–thanks to the holes in the roof and open windows.
One thing I like about the oppressive globalist-wrought future is the idea of numerically subdividing spaces; my geek side sort of wants to live in a flat that can be sorted by as Dewey Decimal-like code.
Perhaps this office was for a film studio or music producer.
A series of interconnected offices that look like they hadn’t been painted in 40 years.
An insurance office.
Taken several years before the tornado story when the weather, and the condition of the buildings, were nice.
Not ghosts. Slow-moving explorers’ shadows create a ghostly effect in the ‘Old Ward’–the second floor of the Service Building.
Pozo Mine, the most menacing mine building I’ve ever seen. Black and white film, shot with the Fuji GX680, a beast of a camera.
David Aho pictured.
Bayard Sugar Mill, as seen from the old power plant
This bedroom built for a tuberculosis patient has been converted into a safe room.
The big door at the bottom of the concentrator was where a tram once connected to lower the (pre-) processed ore into the river valley, where the railroad was. It’s unclear whether this ever connected directly to Eureka’s Sunnyside mill, although it’s possible.
A typical shower in the old section of the hospital. It looks a little horrifying in the harsh light of a camera flash on the thousands of little white tiles. One soap holder hadn’t been stolen yet.
The nurse’s station on this floor, a ward still in its original design, featured a half-door where patients could get their medicine. Portra 160.
Sunrise in the orphanage… between classrooms and whispers.
One of the few doors.
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.
Gaskets still organized on nails beside the power plant. This used to be a maintenance room, but since its roof and walls were torn down, it’s not any kind of room.
Standing where the Standard Oil’s boiler used to sit; the coal room is on the right, and would have been filled from trackside.
There’s a roof problem above the surgical suite.
The steam plant at Nopeming is an iconic (and crooked) smokestack. Kodak Pro 400 on a Fuji GX680.
The bathtub fell into the basement, ala The Miller’s Tale. That’s right. Chaucer.
After demolition in the mid 2000s, this interior door became exterior. I remember walking through the car shed as a teenager. It was a shortcut, if I didn’t get caught.
The tallest dock structure is an equipment elevator that connects the many dock levels.
Gloves hang in the basement of the former quality assurance labs.
The wings of the church had a lot more water damage than the rest. The organ on the balcony was in decent condition when I arrived.
The new steel door of the diesel car shops, built in 1948 and used through the 1960s, as seen from the service pit. On the top of the photograph you can see the exhaust vent.
Rocket propellant and coolant were stored underground adjacent to the missile silo. This is the hallway that connects the missile area to the propellant area. Walking in this area was nice because the floor was dry.
The historical entrance.
Sleeping bags mark this former courtyard as a crash pad for the local homeless.
The factory’s first aid room and laboratory. Sure makes me wonder how safe the lab was!
My first view of the tunnel was in the dead of winter. In spite of being in the middle of the forest, it was totally silent. Mamiya GA645 / Kodak Pro 400
The machine shop today.
No ambiguity here… miners, check in at this office.
In the nurses’ dormitories, beds, couches and chairs still sit. It’s unclear whether these are remnants of the homeless shelter in the 80s or the actual nurses.
Camera: Pentax 67. Film: Kodak Ektar 100.
Jef throws open the back door of an alley for the trailing photographers and historians.
The grain-centric buildings had automatic fire doors.
A bunk room, minus the bunks.