WUZombies
Adventurist
Anyone else really into UrbanEx? Urban (rural?) Exploration with the goal to photograph the forgotten past of America?
For me the long closed factories, abandoned churches, the dilapidated past isn't a scar on the landscape. Those buildings don't represent failures, the buildings and places represent something that was central to some people's lives. Take a production facility that made shoes (I say that because such a thing is near here), the abandoned building is falling down, the grass is overgrown, some windows are broken out, but at one time the place looked pristine. Hundreds of people came to work every single day to make shoes. For a lot of people their job defines them, the workplace a source of friends and family. Reverberating in those walls are the memories of hundreds of families, their livelihood, their life's work. There is something special about a place like that.
I've been lucky enough to locate, explore and photograph some incredible finds in Texas over the past few years, everything from abandoned hardware stores, to an old Woodsmen Guild widowers home, even finding a dust encrusted old Plymouth Gold Duster inside the garage of an old wooden gas station, the walls slanting. For every single one of those epic finds is a trail of dozens of misses.
This morning I had a rare few hours and I drove to a spot on an unpaved country road. Scouring Google Earth I had found what appeared to be an old single lane steel girder bridge spanning a creek. Saved on my map are dozens of points that I have on my list to go and investigate in person, often places where Street View will probably never robo-drive through.
The unpaved County Road, a mess from the thunderstorm that raged overhead, was a magical place. In between two towns so small that populations can be counted on your fingers, surrounded by trees, ranch land and deer bounding across the road, bucks chasing does, I found my spot over the creek.
Across the bridge sat my big blue E-van, the Wilson cellphone repeater turned on so my wife could reach me if the weather turned worse. A 2-meter handheld in my cupholder tuned to the local repeater and an iPad mini with BadElf GPS locating me on the USGS topo.
To my right trees and a creek steadily rising in the rain.
To my left, thick wooden beams that used to hold the bridge.
No bridge. There was a bridge, it was obvious where the road used to travel. The supports still stood like old silent soldiers, at attention waiting for the next bugle call, but the bridge had been removed. By whom I have no idea, but I would guess the county Road and Bridge took it out.
Where did it go?
I have no idea, but usually such things go to the scrap yard as so many people don't hold the past in the same reverence I do.
The spirits that watch over UrbanEx adventure won this time, but I have an abandoned factory pinned, on an old disconnected rail spur line about 40 minutes west of me that I'm going to investigate next!
For me the long closed factories, abandoned churches, the dilapidated past isn't a scar on the landscape. Those buildings don't represent failures, the buildings and places represent something that was central to some people's lives. Take a production facility that made shoes (I say that because such a thing is near here), the abandoned building is falling down, the grass is overgrown, some windows are broken out, but at one time the place looked pristine. Hundreds of people came to work every single day to make shoes. For a lot of people their job defines them, the workplace a source of friends and family. Reverberating in those walls are the memories of hundreds of families, their livelihood, their life's work. There is something special about a place like that.
I've been lucky enough to locate, explore and photograph some incredible finds in Texas over the past few years, everything from abandoned hardware stores, to an old Woodsmen Guild widowers home, even finding a dust encrusted old Plymouth Gold Duster inside the garage of an old wooden gas station, the walls slanting. For every single one of those epic finds is a trail of dozens of misses.
This morning I had a rare few hours and I drove to a spot on an unpaved country road. Scouring Google Earth I had found what appeared to be an old single lane steel girder bridge spanning a creek. Saved on my map are dozens of points that I have on my list to go and investigate in person, often places where Street View will probably never robo-drive through.
The unpaved County Road, a mess from the thunderstorm that raged overhead, was a magical place. In between two towns so small that populations can be counted on your fingers, surrounded by trees, ranch land and deer bounding across the road, bucks chasing does, I found my spot over the creek.
Across the bridge sat my big blue E-van, the Wilson cellphone repeater turned on so my wife could reach me if the weather turned worse. A 2-meter handheld in my cupholder tuned to the local repeater and an iPad mini with BadElf GPS locating me on the USGS topo.
To my right trees and a creek steadily rising in the rain.
To my left, thick wooden beams that used to hold the bridge.
No bridge. There was a bridge, it was obvious where the road used to travel. The supports still stood like old silent soldiers, at attention waiting for the next bugle call, but the bridge had been removed. By whom I have no idea, but I would guess the county Road and Bridge took it out.
Where did it go?
I have no idea, but usually such things go to the scrap yard as so many people don't hold the past in the same reverence I do.
The spirits that watch over UrbanEx adventure won this time, but I have an abandoned factory pinned, on an old disconnected rail spur line about 40 minutes west of me that I'm going to investigate next!
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