Somewhere there was a hoe left on the ground. Given that we had read articles about photographers being mugged around the abandoned projects, we felt it wouldn’t hurt to carry this around. I am glad we did; it made a great musical drumstick against the warped Wheeler Rec Center floor.
Fall fog swept up from the river valley, making the building look more like it felt–a ghost, out of time and place.
These stairs were probably removed to discourage scrapping and graffiti. Ask me if it worked.
Colleen on the roof.
A social club/restaurant that was likely the place to be late at night.
Hiking into the ghost town with enough gear to live there for a few days, if we wanted.
Like looking out of an airship.
The walkway to the end of the dock is elevated, so one walks above the trees and bushes growing in the rotting taconite pellets that have collected over the years.
A self portrait on a tire swing outside the Service Building.
Now, to add a human scale.
Four A.M. was the best time to be on the main assembly line. This was about shortly after most of the machinery was removed.
Even with a hundred people parked in front of the lakeside relic, it was invisible.
A self portrait, from the early 2000s.
Standing on the fence barricade that used to keep squatters out of the tunnel, the size of the space is impressive. What you see here is the current length of the tunnel; I set up a flashlight at the end to illuminate the concrete wall that is the lower portal.
How many buildings are in this pile of blocks? Not as many as there are piles, I can bet you.
A view from the loft in the shipping/receiving building, where the crane operator would step into his cab.
A comrade lights-up where so many workers apparently congregated to do the same.
The Wheeler Rec Center was very nice and included gymnasiums and a pool.
Kat dancing down the trestle, which is one of the highest in the state, standing about 100 feet over the road. Mamiya 6/Portra 160
A bridge crosses the main street of the village; one that goes nowhere. Ambiguity intended.
This old Jetta did more offroading than your average lifted tinted loud-exhaust pickup.
Construction lights were still plugged in from the last inspection. Note the murals on the walls.
Frankie on the White Pine Mine vehicle access shaft. The mine was traditional inside… all room-and-pillar.
Looking into the Argo Tunnel at its Idaho Springs portal. I was hoping to see tracks and a steel door, but found a busy crew of environmental workers installing a pipe between the bulkhead and new water plant.
Chicago looks in as we look out, for holes and trolls where anything goes.
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.
The tailings boom is the first and last thing you see when approaching the mountaintop shipwreck.
Kate for scale. Powder that passed the floatation level was flowed over sluice tables, another mass-based way of separating gold. I’ve never seen so many of these in one place. Though it was a hardrock mine, it worked more like a placer mine.
This roof hasn’t budged under the weight of snow, instead it just filters-through the light onto the floor.
Explorers.
Andy Miller
Harris Machinery rests under snow on the left. Two explorers enjoy the view.
Do you like Hunter’s tattoo?
Looking up at the arch–the symbol of the original Lyric.
The approach to Dock 4 is long demolished, so it is only accessible when the lake freezes.
Some small candles light one of the few surviving tunnels that once linked buildings on the campus with the steam plant. In winter, it was common for patients to be transported through these to avoid the cold, and during the Cold War these served as nuclear fallout shelters.
Ben.
Miller Creek, in one of the wider sections that features a trout (as in the fish) canal in the middle of the drain. Even though it is underground, the fish are able to visit their breeding ponds upstream by swimming through the specially designed tunnel.
From the loftily perspective of the crane cab, I thought about how nice it would have been to have been here when there was equipment to share the space. This begs the question, who took out the equipment?
Storms and waves, focused by the Port of Wisconsin entry have focused the faces to tear-up these boards below.
Elsie finds her makeup brush across the hospital in the middle of the hallway. How did it get there?
Hand-shooting 4×5 underground. Must be Kate Hunter.
I wonder what this guy is thinking, walking through the complex.
Would you wait and risk getting flooded out, or intentionally get minor burns?
My friends know that redheads are my greatest weakness.
Jef throws open the back door of an alley for the trailing photographers and historians.
In this photo you see three lives of Lyric: 1.) The Art Deco murals showing the Vaudeville background; 2.) The suspended ceiling put in when the building was converted for film; 3.) The explorers, photographers and others who worked in and on the building before its final demolition.
Kate shooting the cascade of rotten boards and steel siding that is Chain O’ Mines’ gold mill. Leica/Summilux 35/Ektar 100
We people are so small.
I liked the color of her hair against the rusty rock house and blue winter sky.
Raab strolling where the coal and ore would be dumped by trains that traveled along the top of the concrete pilings.
Aaron by the concentrator.
Another. Planet. Coal crushers and the coke loading line.
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.
Not ghosts. Slow-moving explorers’ shadows create a ghostly effect in the ‘Old Ward’–the second floor of the Service Building.
Fall in line, act skinny, watch out for low hanging pipes. Don’t ask me where in the maze this was… 90% of the plant looked like this; vast rooms and catwalks with crisscrossing pipes and valves.
A panorama of the Shipping/Receiving building on the northeast end of the block. In the old days this would be facing the ‘Dry Dock Hotel’, a boarding house owned by the company, presumably for the use of the men having their boats repaired here.
David Aho, the owner of Mitchell Engine House, poses beside the boiler.
Kate in the Atlas E, which is essentially a buried Atlas D. Above is the protective steel blast door.
Kate in the crow’s next… very shaky by the time she got to it.
A nice view of Hamilton from the roof of the theater.
“See anything?” “No, just more of it.” “How much to go?” “Oh god–we’ve only seen about 10%.” “Guess we should keep moving then…”
Devan setting up his 4×5 camera.
David Aho pictured.
A long tunnel stretches toward the Mississippi. Was this the route Model Ts took on their way to waiting barges?
Looking from the shaft room into the room where an electric hoist would be.
2004. Machine Shop Loft.
The rumors were true. Success is sweet.
Sarah in Miller Creek Drain.
“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
This is the former air compressor house–one of them, at least–which turned steam power into air power to drive machinery across the production line.
The old movie theatre sign was sitting right inside the sealed front doors.
Two versions of Detroit. One where buildings stand tall and proud, and one where they wilt under the sun. It’s an amazing juxtaposition.
Play on, Hunter. (Two keys worked on this thing.)
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.
Chris an his Nikon F2
Below the historic National Guard Armory.
Standing on the ruins of the burned Northern Pacific RR Freight House. It’s the best place to watch ships move around the harbor. Some things haven’t changed…
Hunter climbing up to the coal tower.
If you look close you can see a figure on the water tower.
Hip bump girl.
Shadows of the rusty trestle and cold control towers on the Barker. Workers are preparing to swing over the sides of the boat to help secure her to the Minnesota Power dock.
She liked to joke that she was my “tripod sherpa”.
…out of our depth.
“Crunch, crunch, crunch,” said the ground. “I know,” I replied.
At an abandoned train repair shop.
A gateway for St. Louis as seen through a gateway (of sorts) in East St. Louis.
A small upper level was accessible via ladder through the hole in this ceiling. Ben for scale.
Where the drain changes shape from round concrete to arched brick.
My favorite time to be in the brewery was sunrise. That’s the kind of light that made the brewhouse glow.
Colleen’s silhouette.
Mark, as seen from the back of one of the caves, to give the reader a sense of scale.
There is a flipped tram car about a third of the way down the cliff.
Raab
The top of the headframe, and in a sense, the mine itself. This pulley carried the life line of the mine and the men in it.
New friends met at the exploring expo.
The glow from the city is bright enough to read by.
The conveyorway between the on-site grain elevator and mill.
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.
Taking a midwinter hike in Cramer after a blizzard and ice storm was my idea. Do my friends seem upset to you?
Mamiya GA645 / Kodak Pro 400
Model: Ryan. On the second floor between wooden joists and massive, inert lighting is simply nothing but warped wood, stained with crane grease.
The building in the foreground–the old control booth–was arsoned in 2009.
On my first visit to the roundhouse, the control booth was extant.
He had the knees of a stallion. RIP.
Ryan, as seen from the crane ladder.
Worm in the path of raw ore where it would be dumped from rock cars into the silo below.
Past the underground repair shop is this cliffside adit.
She’s a charmer.
The most pointless, beautiful and nuclear-bomb-proof catwalk I’ve been on to date. It goes between two high levels in its own bottom-lit concrete capsule in the center of the tallest, thickest building. Hang on, we’re riding this one out.
Ava on an upper catwalk.
Often the quickest way to move between buildings was to take the roof. The inside of the complex was so maze-like, I don’t know how I would have found my way around.
The Algosteel crew strikes a pose while heading through Superior Entry toward Allouez
Prize Mine has been the victim of erosion. Its north wall is pushed in by rockfall and its south side is far from ground level.
Some of the earlier buildings were dressed up with brick facades.
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.
Kat’s pretty cool.
As my friend Jonathan would say, “on a human scale.”
Ryan
Ava between ammo warehouses and railroads.
Sarah below Cascade Park. This space was destroyed when the park flooded.
Hunter and the Hoist House.
Eric
A natural stone floor in Brewery Creek’s upper path has been worn smooth.
Blondes und bricks!
Will coming down “Darwin’s Ladder”.
From the summer a bunch of Australians visited Minnesota.
The north side of the plant is modern 60s industrial architecture, meaning massive open spaces with no personality. This mirror is the most interesting thing I could find.
Frankie and Quarantine pictured.
Sherman’s history is better than mine. You should read it on Abandoned Online.
A self portrait from more than a decade ago.
One of my favorite pictures of the tunnel. I am holding a bike rim and wearing a headlamp. My friend triggered the flash just behind my lower back. The fog is a temperature inversion at the entrance of the tunnel; it was 102 degrees outside of the tunnel and about 50 degrees inside, and humid.
Coming to an inspirational poster near you… what should it read? ADVENTURE AWAITS? Don’t hang posters. Go outside.
