Hub Selfie
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Luck was with us once again on our travels to and from Augusta, WI last Sunday. It was a double good find once again. Two abandoned farmsteads. These two had some character and wonderful light.
We barely covered the whole county and I am sure there are even more in the area. There were several coop farms along our route. Lots of coop farms usually means there is a very good chance that there will be other abandoned farmsteads in the vicinity. That’s been my experience anyway.
We actually ran into a third but the day was getting on, the sun was going down and we were tired. There is always next time.
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On our way back down the North Shore we stayed in Two Harbors. Lou’s Fish House has some very tasty morsels for the smoked seafood connoisseur. The smoked jumbo shrimp were fantastic!
If you are into architectural antiques, be certain to stop by North Shore Architectural Antiques and check out the inventory. There are lots of interesting old pieces there to browse. They offer a deconstruction service – three levels in fact. I see this becoming more and more popular as society is taking to the repurpose, reuse, reclaim and recycle movement.
You can head down to the waterfront and observe a working ore dock by walking out on the break-water. Also in the immediate vicinity are four locations operated by the Lake County Historical Society: Two Harbors Lighthouse, The Depot Museum, Edna G. Tugboat and 3M Museum.
This is a great town to spend some time in.
The Duluth, Missabe and Iron Range Railway (DM&IR) is a railroad operating in northern Minnesota and Wisconsin that hauls iron ore and later taconite to the Great Lakes ports of Duluth and Two Harbors, Minnesota. Control of the railway was acquired on May 10, 2004, by the Canadian National Railway when it purchased the assets of Great Lakes Transportation.
The Duluth, Messabe and Iron Range Railroad began in Two Harbors with a 6-stall wooden roundhouse, but it didn’t take long for the railroad to expand. By 1930, a machine shop, boiler shop, car shop, boiler house, storehouse, foundry, engine room and a 50-stall brick roundhouse blanketed the 30 acres of DM&IR’s lakefront property. 109 locomotives were maintained by the shop, half of which were overhauled annually, while 30 or so received light repair. The roundhouse and machine shop ran 24 hours, maintaining the fleet for both a long ore season and abusive timber season, in addition to limited passenger service.
Out of the 30 buildings that comprised the historic shops, 8 still exist today, although the roofs of many are failing catastrophically. Historic roundhouses and locomotive shops all over the Midwest have been destroyed, but these are still preservable, in spite of the damage. With a little social-historical consciousness and the desire to save those reminders of bygone days that mark the American timeline.
This site was absolutely fantastic! I must say that it is my all-time favorite abandoned site to date that I have had the privilege to shoot. The lighting inside was amazing and the graffiti outstanding. I shot this location with my trusty Nikon D60 coupled with the Tamron 18-270mm @ 7.1 on auto ISO. This is the camera that is by my side at all times. You’ll notice the grain in the photos. I think it adds character to the images. I was going to process this location all in B&W, but the colorful graffiti, moss and other aspects of the building dictated otherwise. On some level I wish I would have spent more time and used a different camera, lens and tripod. Different gear and more time would have allowed for a more complete exploration of the light and angles of this relic and captured some rock-solid exposures. I think some really amazing HDR photography could be produced here.
An extensive account of the history of this location is available via Sometimes-Interesting.com’s Ghosts of the Duluth, Missabe, and Iron Range Railroad.
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Cyndie and I had time last weekend to do some abandoned hunting. We drove through West Central MN (212), NE South Dakota and SE North Dakota. We were amazed at the number of abandoned farms and homes still standing. The first two images are two of many that “got away.” The snow was somewhat of a hindrance. Minimum Maintenance roads are nothing to mess around with this time of year. The roads to several properties where minimum maintenance or simply were just not plowed. GPS coordinates will come in handy for a return trip 🙂
The next few images are of an almost abandoned town in SD called Hammer. There was one home there still occupied – not quite a complete ghost town yet.
Further along you will see that we did find a couple of abandoned homes that we could actually explore (Montevideo and Big Stone City).
We both would have liked to get inside the 1911 brick schoolhouse in Louisburg, MN, but that just wasn’t possible.
A few more abandoned places we encountered.
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After some much-needed rest in Jamestown, we set out on day two of our North Dakota abandoned hunt. The Jamestown Reservoir provided for some lovely early a.m. scenery as we meandered away from the populated city and into the vast and open country of North Dakota.
There were numerous wetlands as we made our way west of the reservoir. Some of which were not so wet, but extremely or completely dry altogether. There wasn’t a shortage of wildlife despite these dry conditions. There were still plenty of areas that still held water along with your typical fowl for this time of year. Although this is not consider prime pheasant country, I was a bit disappointing that I only saw one the whole time.
With this type of scenery between abandoned farmsteads the miles just fly by. I have several photos of all the points between here and there of this trip that will soon become our North Dakota Safari post.
We stumbled on this farmstead out in the middle of nowhere near Binford. This must have been a musical household as there were sheet music strewn about the place. There was also remnants of a piano at the bottom of a heap of yesteryear. There was also a skeleton of an acoustic guitar on the second level surround by more sheet music.
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The last farmstead of the day was near Ellendale and the Tatanka Wind Farm. The timing couldn’t have been more perfect. The light cast out by the setting sun was fantastic. All the dust in the air for harvesting corn added a nice effect across the landscape.
This place had some real character; more so around the grounds than in the tiny house. The tulip wall paper that covered the pink walls wasn’t much of an improvement 🙂 The little Allis Chalmers in between the house and a shed made for an interesting subject to photography as well. This was a great spot to finish out our day.
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After we explored the Forbes area we headed North towards Merricourt. This was another location that we found through the GhostsOfNorthDakota.com website. Merricourt was completely uninhabited. The only sign of life was the local farmer harvesting corn on the North side of town. There were several buildings and homes in town – all of which we would have loved to shoot inside and out, if not for the NO TRESPASSING signs everywhere :-/ I can’t blame the owners though, I wouldn’t want my property vandalized. Seeing very little opportunity here, we moved on.
It wasn’t long until we found another abandoned farmstead West of town. This farmstead had some really amazing texture in the flaky, pealing paint of the two-story house. The crown moldings and trim where in surprisingly great condition. This little gem is in its prime. A finite moment; a balance between what was and the inevitable decay to come.
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This abandoned farmstead was located just North of Forbes. This property has several out building along with a house that was partially hidden by trees. I did see this on the way to Forbes. Cyndie was too busy surveying the gazetteer to notice this nugget of abandonment. I wanted to stop, but figured we would on the way back through – our first goal was to get to the school.
It was already 1:00 p.m. when we got to the abandoned school in Forbes. I wanted to burn some of the harsh mid-day light there and hope for a tamer glow later on at the farm and hopefully other sites. We spent some time in Forbes shooting the sites. There were several other locations of interest. It was 3:45 p.m. by the time we returned to the farmstead and there was still plenty of bright light. It was a gorgeous day; sadly we spent a fair chuck of the day in the car getting here. It was all good though as we were in the middle of an abandoned haven of sorts.
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I’ve been following Ghosts of North Dakota for a while now and have been eyeing up various locations to photograph. This site has no shortages, but only seeming endless supply of possible places to shoot. Cyndie and I had an opportunity recently to go to North Dakota and search for abandoned structures to shoot. We used this site to pick out a few areas of interest to begin. We figured that we would wander around from town to town. We found numerous abandoned homes and farmsteads outside of the various town listed on this site.
Our first stop was Forbes, ND. This teeny tiny town is situated right on the border of North and South Dakota in Dickey County. The abandoned school there looked very interesting. A bright sunny afternoon provided for some great light to photograph this wonderful mess of an abandoned school. At some point, someone must have played some paint ball in the school or just walked around shooting paint balls everywhere. It added a titch of interesting color to an otherwise fairly drab interior.
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