Molson was another mining town that went through a rapid boom and bust. It is at 3700 ft elevation about 2 miles south of the Canadian border. The town was founded in 1900 and soon had 300 residents. At its peak, it featured a saloon, general store, dance hall, hotel, and blacksmith shop - the normal bits and pieces of a remote mining town. Mines extracted copper, antimony, lead, silver, and gold. Mining in the area ended around 1938, and today, Molson is an agricultural area.
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| Empty farmhouse, Molson Road south of Molson (50mm ƒ/1.4 SMC Takumar lens) |
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| Walker & Odell office, 1906 |
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| 1896 Poland China & Molson Gold Mines assay office |
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| Molson Post Office or bank? (35mm Super-Takumar lens, 1 sec exposure) |
I usually prefer to visit historic structures in their original locations, but in this case, they were preserved at the museum. The air is so dry here, the wood seems to last for decades. This is a dramatic contrast to where I lived before in Mississippi, where rain and humidity quickly destroyed any building whose roof had failed.
After walking around for a couple of hours (and changing a flat tire), I headed south on Molson Road and caught up to Chesaw Road again. I love this dry high altitude terrain with the pure brilliant light.
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| Lonely barn, Molson Road |
I used KR1.5 skylight or polarizing filters for these frames. But I over-polarized, a mistake I often make. Look through the viewfinder at maximum polarization and then back off about 50%. This is especially valid in dry high altitude air like this.
I took these photographs on Kodak Portra 160 film with my Pentax Spotmatic F camera.
3 comments:
Porta and polarizer work well together.
These are really interesting. We visited an abandoned mining town in Colorado once, which was very interesting, but this is very different! I liked the old farmhouse photo, but it definitely looks lonely out there. I am enjoying seeing the difference in your photography now that you relocated.
Thank you both of you for the comments. The light, shapes, flora, lonely spaces, and clouds are so interesting here, there is so much to photograph. I definitely plan to do more exploring in eastern Washington. We have northern light here, similar to what I remember from Iceland and Scotland.
Kodachromeguy
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