2025 E. Washington Road Trip 06 - Fading Small Town: Mabton

Mabton is a small town in Yakima County, Washington, a few miles southeast of Yakima on Hwy. 22. Most travelers rush by on Interstate 22 just to the north, but I took the local road to see the small towns in the region. Mabton has had a rough recent history, with a deputy city clerk being arrested for stealing $22,000 in a fake robbery scheme, along with other small-town graft exercises. Hmmm, sounds like small towns in the Mississippi Delta - or Jackson.

Approaching Mabton on Hwy 22

A block north of Hwy 22, B Street was the former commercial strip, complete with square-front shops of the type typical in small towns. Most are now closed. It was rather sad.

Proceeding west, we reached Yakima and stopped for a coffee. The downtown looks prosperous, but there may be possibilities in the outskirts. The famous teriyaki burger joint was too tempting to resist (for a photograph, not lunch).

I took these photographs on Kodak Portra 160 film with my Pentax MG camera and various lenses. The lab that processed the film made some major chemical or timing error, and the film was very thin. This resulted in exaggerated grain and odd colors. 

The old barber shop and unused grocery were behind dirty glass. I attached a rubber hood on my 28mm ƒ/2.8 Vivitar lens and pressed it against the glass. The Pentax MG camera has aperture priority exposure measurement, so I set the lens at ƒ/11 and let the camera calculate the exposure. The rubber hood shielded the lens from external light. This was much easier than trying to point a hand-held meter at the scene through the reflective glass.  

2025 E. Washington Road Trip 05 - Farms and Basalt Country in B&W

The big open country of Eastern Washington invites black and white photography. It is a relatively new photographic terrain for me, although long-term readers may remember that I took a September 2024 trip to eastern Washington. Here are some scenes from my 2025 trip.

Spokane 

Centennial Mill (50mm ƒ/1.8 Canon lens, dark yellow filter, 1/125 ƒ/8)

This immense concrete monolith is the former Centennial Mills on East Trent Avenue, built in 1940. After several mergers, Centennial became part of part of the Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) corporation. The mill is now unused. It dominates the skyline east of downtown. What a view you would have from that tower.

Reardan

Reardan (50mm ƒ/1.8 Canon lens, dark yellow filter)

Here are more of the silos that dot the skyline throughout eastern Washington. Most now are made of concrete or steel. The wood silos from the early 20th century have mostly succumbed to fire. 

Davenport

Farm off Rte. 2, Davenport (Canon 50mm ƒ/1.8 lens, dark yellow filter, 1/125 ƒ/5.6)

Davenport is in open farm country. This farm still had a traditional wood barn with shingle roof. But many farms now have modern steel buildings, which I find are not nearly as picturesque.

 

Grand Coulee

Midway Avenue, Grand Coulee (Canon 50mm ƒ/1.8 lens, 1/250 ƒ/8)

Beer store, Coulee Boulevard, Electric City (Canon 50mm ƒ/1.8 lens)

The towns near Grand Coulee still have a bit of company town appearance. The dam certainly is a monumental engineering achievement. 

Ancient Lakes 

The Ancient Lakes occupy one of the huge coulees created during the great floods. They are near Quincy, Washington, just east of the Columbia River. The trails are easy to walk. As you enter the valley from the west, the basalt cliffs loom over you. The coulee feels lonely and remote, although the surrounding plateau is farmland and vineyard.

Basalt boulder that tumbled from the nearby cliff, Ancient Lakes Trail (Canon 50mm ƒ/1.8 lens, yellow-green filter)

Ancient Lakes Trail, near Quincy, Washington (Canon 50mm ƒ/1,8 lens, med. yellow filter)

Basalt columns near Deep Lake, Dry Falls State Park

Mabton

Grain silos, Rte 22, Mabton (Canon 50mm ƒ/1.8 lens, orange filter, 1/250 ƒ/5.6)

This ends our short tour through eastern Washington in farm and basalt country. I took these pictures on Kodak T400CN film. The film was expired, and Photoland at The Evergreen State College grossly underdeveloped it. Therefore, some of the frames do not have the full tonal range and are grainy. I like C-41 film because the ICE tool in my Nikon Coolscan 5000 scanner can clean up most scratches and chemical blobs. But for 35mm film, I will return to using fresh black and white film (such as Tri-X or Acros).

Technical Note

I took most of these photographs with my 1960s Canon 50mm ƒ/1.8 Leica thread-mount lens. This is a nice example of 1960s Japanese optical and mechanical excellence. The one had intact coating (rare) and no internal haze (even more rare). When I bought it, the seller disclosed some fungus. Don Goldberg (DAG Camera) cleaned it and reported that it was intact. Unfortunately, many (most?) of these 1.8s are ruined. Some lubricant internally outgassed and etched/hazed the inner elements permanently. Such a pity. The Canon ƒ/1.4 thread mount lenses seem to have survived in better condition. 

2025 E. Washington Road Trip 04 - In Decline: the Saint Ignatius Hospital of Colfax

St. Ignatius Hospital, Colfax, Washington (28mm ƒ/2.8 Vivitar lens)

Colfax is a small city in the beautiful Palouse terrain of eastern Washington. The Palouse is known for its gentle rolling hills, which consist of wind-blown silt and dust (loess) deposits. Farmers grow wheat over much of this area. Colfax is the county seat of Whitman County. 

One of the city's notable architectural structures is the unused and long-neglected Saint Ignatius Hospital. Mother Joseph Pariseau and the Sisters of Providence built the hospital in 1893. It served central and northern Whitman County until 1968. The hospital relocated to the new Whitman Community Hospital in 1968, and a nursing home occupied the old building until it was abandoned in 2002 after a water main broke in winter. The building was neglected for years, and the city tried to condemn it. In 2015, the former hospital opened for public tours, based on claims that the site is haunted. You can book paranormal tours. Landlock Holding LLC bought the building in 2021.

When I visited the site in May of 2025, I met a workman who said he was on duty full time to do renovations. He was in process of replacing windows and making other repairs. I could not enter but could walk around the grounds.

Cornerstone (28mm Vivitar lens)

Former power plant

Nurses' residence building

All of the buildings that were once part of the hospital complex are in poor shape. 

St Patrick's Church and the former St. John's Academy occupy a lot just west of the former hospital. 

St. Johns Academy - unused?

St. John's Academy opened on June 6, 1915. The Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration operated a grade and high school in the building. The Parish closed the building in 1966. It looks like it has received some maintenance since then because it looks sound and secure. 

Abandoned apartment building

I took these photographs on May 9, 2025, on Kodak Portra 160 film with my Pentax MG camera. Most were with an inexpensive Vivitar SMS 28mm f/2.8 lens in Pentax K mount. $25 for a totally functional 28mm lens?? One day, these photographic bargains will disappear.  For some frames, I used Photoshop CS6 to correct converging verticals. The right way to do this would be to use a shift lens, but no more photo purchases - I promise......

2025 E. Washington Road Trip 03 - Palouse Falls and Washtucna

Palouse Falls State Park Heritage Site

Palouse Falls is a geologic wonder in east central Washington. The rock here is part of the Columbia River Basalt Group, which covers over 81,000 square miles of the earth's surface in eastern Oregon, eastern Washington, western Idaho, and part of northern Nevada. Most of the basalt erupted between 14 and 17 million years ago, or the middle-late Miocene epoch. We do not need to delve deeper into the volcanic history of the region, but consider that you see these remarkable basalt outcrops in many parts of the state east of the Cascades. 

Map of the Columbia River Basalt Group, from the Volcano Hazards Program, US Geological Survey

The spectacular canyon and the waterfall at the state park are a result of immense floods that burst from Glacial Lake Missoula. Near the end of the last continental glacial era, about 15,000 years ago, a lobe of ice blocked the drainage of what is now the Clark Fork River. The water that backed up created Glacial Lake Missoula, a major body of water that may have included as much volume as the combined present Lakes Erie and Ontario. As the water level rose, pressure against the ice dam increased and caused the ice to float. The dam failed and a mass of water rushed westwards (see the figure below). Peak flow may have been as high as 386 million cubic feet per second (cfs). As a comparison, the flow of the Mississippi River at Old River Control during the record 2011 flood was 2 million cfs.

Floodwaters rushed across east central Washington towards the Columbia River valley and on to the Pacific. The waters carved an immense network of channels, canyons, and valleys, creating what we now call the Channeled Scablands. These included Grand Coulee, where the dam is now located, Dry Falls, and Palouse Falls. Flood waters even reached south deep into the Willamette Valley of Oregon, where they deposited masses of sediment. Geologists now estimated that there were at least 40 of these pulses of water that occurred over a period of about 2,500 years.

Consider the time scale. The earth is about 4.5 to 5 billion years old. The Missoula Floods occurred about 15,000 years ago, only a is a tiny fraction of earth's history. Humans may have come to North America during the last glacial maximum between 21,000 and 23,000 years ago (based on footprints found at White sands National Park). Therefore, predecessors of our present native Americans saw these floods. 

The Washington Department of Natural Resources has an excellent interactive presentation of Washington's Ice Age floods. 

Areas affected by floods (teal color), from the Montana Natural History Center, Glacial Lake Missoula Chapter. Note the ice lobe that extended south into the Puget Lowlands.

Palouse Falls from the visitor's center (Samsung phone digital file)

These amazing columns of basalt show lava flows of different ages. When the basalt cools quickly, it forms hexagonal columnar formations. Devil's Tower in Wyoming (where the UFOs land) and the Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland are other well-known examples. A Wikipedia article lists other examples around the world.

View southwest (downstream) of the Palouse River. The terraces outline successive basalt flows. (50mm ƒ/2 Rikenon lens)

Do visit Palouse Falls State Park Heritage Site. It is an impressive example of geology and the amazing effects of flowing water. 

Washtucna

Washtucna is a small town in Adams County about 17 miles north of Palouse Falls and about a hour from Spokane, Walla-Walla, and Pullman. The town is at the head of the Washtucna Coulee (again, one of the remnants of the Missoula Floods) and is therefore lower than some of the surrounding terrain. 

The town looked like it had gone through a rough time economically. I saw some interesting subject material along Main Street (Route 261).

El Camino (28mm ƒ/2.8 Vivitar lens)

I took most of these photographs on Kodak Portra 160 film using a Pentax MG camera and Pentax, Vivitar, and Rikenon lenses.  Northeast Photographic in Bath, Maine developed the oilm. 

References

Camp, V.E., Reidel, S.P., Ross, M.E., Brown, R.J., and Self, S., 2017. Field-trip guide to the vents, dikes, stratigraphy, and structure of the Columbia River Basalt Group, eastern Oregon and southeastern Washington, Scientific Investigations Report 2017-5022-N, U.S. Geological Survey, https://doi.org/10.3133/sir20175022N

Waltham, T., 2010. Lake Missoula and the Scablands, Washington, USA. Geology Today, pp 152-159DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2451.2010.00763.x

2025 E. Washington Road Trip 02 - Murdock, Wishram Heights, and Kahlotus, Washington

Heading east through Eastern Washington on our May 2025 road trip, we passed through some picturesque small towns. Here are some examples.

Murdock

Murdock is a hamlet on the north (right) bank of the Columbia River just north of Dallesport. We drove through en route to the bridge that crosses to the Oregon side of the river. Murdock looked a bit tired, with some good motor transport parked on the grass and in driveways. 

Wishram Heights

Continuing east on the Lewis and Clark Highway (Washington State Route 14) and you reach Wishram Heights. The main part of town is down the hill next to the Columbia River, but the Heights is along Route 14. The impressive Oregon Trunk Rail Bridge crosses the Columbia about a mile downstream (west) of Wishram. 

The Heights was not too inspiring. The dead cars and rather beat-up cottages/houses were interesting.    

The Road North, Pasco-Kahlotus Highway

This is lonely open terrain, with an occasional barn and crossroad. In May, the temperature was comfortable, but it gets hot here in summer.

Kodak T400CN film, Leica IIIC camera, 50mm ƒ/2 Jupiter-8 lens, yellow filter

Kahlotus

Kahlotus is in Franklin County at the northern end of the Pasco-Kahlotus Highway. The population is 147? The town is in the Palouse terrain, with its gently rolling hills. 

Eastern Washington offers a wealth of interesting topics to photograph and explore. To be continued...

I took the color photographs with Kodak Portra 160 film using a Pentax MG camera and various Pentax K-mount lenses. These are still inexpensive and totally capable. Eventually, the inventory of these cheap 1980s and 1990s lenses will run out. Please click any photo to expand it and see details.

The black and white photograph of the highway is on Kodak T400CN film with my 1962 Soviet Jupiter-8 lens. 

2025 E. Washington Road Trip 01 - The Dalles, Oregon

Road Trip! A chance to explore, see new places, learn about new geography. 

Ready to roll in a rented minivan (it is not quite tall enough for bikes)

We headed east in May of 2025 with a rented minivan, bicycles, and cameras. For our first stop, we crossed the Columbia River at Dallesport and stayed in The Dalles.

The Dalles is a city on the on the left (south) bank of the Columbia River in Oregon. The city has a dramatic setting as the gateway to the Columbia Gorge. The site was a historic trading center for native Americans as well as European travelers on the Oregon trail. It is still a major rail junction and center for agricultural products. 

BNSF rail yard (135mm ƒ/3.5 Pentax-M lens)

The city has a historic downtown with early 20th century commercial buildings. We walked around town and looked for the typical topics that interest me.  

Alley facing Wasco County second courthouse

Wall art, 1st Street

Warehouse, Jefferson Street (50mm ƒ/2 Rikenon lens)

Sunshine Mill, view east from 1st Street

Where are the cars? Jefferson Street (50mm ƒ/2 Rikenon lens)

Time for a breakfast coffee and croissant, 2nd Street (50mm ƒ/2 Rikenon lens)

Where is the horse? View east from Jefferson Street

This ends our all too short stopover in The Dalles. Nice town, and I want to return. 

I tool these pictures on Kodak Portra 160 film with a Pentax MG camera and several lenses. The 50mm scenes are from my $25 Ricoh 50mm ƒ/2 Rikenon lens. This is a compact mostly plastic lens that was sold with many K-mount Ricoh SLR cameras in the 1980s. It is a light weight 6-element double Gauss design, and the optical quality is excellent. No complaints! Please click any photo above to see more details.

Tourist Notes

Restaurant: The Dalles Thai Cuisine is excellent! We were surprised considering what rotten food we have had in many Thai restaurants in the USA. We had the roasted duck.

A comfortable place to stay downtown on W. 2nd Street: The Dalles Inn