Modern Ruins Photo Essays

[trekgeezer]

I know I've posted this site before, but I really dig these old places and wonder how creepy they would be in person.

Check'em out and see if your imagination doesn't  go to work.

http://www.oboylephoto.com/ruins/index.htm

[3mnkids]

Thanks for the link I love sites like that. Here is one I found yesterday showing abandoned houses in Detroit.

http://www.100abandonedhouses.com/about/

The abandoned houses project began innocently enough roughly ten years ago. I actually began photographing abandonment in Detroit in the mid 90’s as a creative outlet, and as a way of satisfying my curiosity with the state of my home town. I had always found it to be amazing, depressing, and perplexing that a once great city could find itself in such great distress, all the while surrounded by such affluence.

The photos   http://www.100abandonedhouses.com/   Some of the houses were obviously beautiful years ago. I wish I could find before pictures.  The ones with the snow on ground are really bleak.

[trekgeezer]

Some of those houses look really sad, and you're right it would be cool to see what some of them looked like back the day.

Some of them have some great architecture going on.

[dean]

That's pretty cool.  The orphanage photos are particularly creepy: just imagine living there! 

[Doggett]

That's pretty cool.  The orphanage photos are particularly creepy: just imagine living there! 

You can't, it was burnt down in a blaze. 

[RCMerchant]

These are beautifully haunting. The Jail and the Orphange are my favorites. I love the prisoner graffitti in the jailhouse. I noticed that in on picture someone made a BAD movies type list of there favorite rock bands. Sweet. If you write on the walls in Van Buern County Jail....yer a$$ would be grass!

[Ash]

Trek,

Living in Arkansas, you might remember Dogpatch USA.
It was an amusement park with the Li'l Abner theme.
I have relatives in Arkansas and went there with my family in the early 80's when I was a kid and remember having a great time.

Look at it now:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_314TG7wNno
	Small | Large

It's so weird seeing it like that.
I have vivid memories of my time there. 
From the mini train ride to the trash containers that had an animal head (a razorback) on them.  The animal's head had a large tube in it's mouth and it was essentially a large vacuum.  When you put trash near its mouth and let go, it sucked it up.
I also remember the actors who dressed up like the characters in the Li'l Abner comic strip and getting a big hug from Daisy Mae.  I'm pretty sure my mom still has the photo she took of me getting that hug.

It's almost surreal looking at it now. 

[trekgeezer]

About Dogpatch, I took my kids there in 1987 and it was great time.  I got to play the three legged guy in a dance number.  Daisy Mae asked if I would do it and I said yes. They put me in a suit with a fake arm with the hand in a pocket, then I could operate the third leg.

The place was hoot, but we went back a few years later and it had really changed.  They got rid of the tram took you down into the park and actually had a road that wound through it and it was mostly antique shops, and L'il Abner was not it site.