2024 E. Washington Road Trip 03 - Chesaw, Brodie, and Wauconda

This is Part 3 of my September 2024 Eastern Washington Road Trip. 

Reaching Chesaw Road south of Molson, I turned east and drove through beautiful mountainous terrain.  Scattered about on the farmlands and hillsides, I saw an occasional abandoned house or barn. Some were a distance from the road, and I could see silhouettes against the sky. 

House, Chesaw Road

These are handsome old houses - how many families lived here over the years? Why did they leave? Where did they go? Are they happier now somewhere else? Did they move to a city?

Unoccupied house, Chesaw

Chesaw is an unincorporated community in Okanogan County. It thrived during a brief gold rush from 1896 to 1900.

Beaver Lake from Chesaw Road, southeast of Chesaw

Continuing south and east from Chesaw, I drove through the beautiful Okanogan National Forest. This is quiet country with infrequent traffic (and only intermittent cell phone coverage).

 

Brodie house

Log cabin, Brodie

Bodie fixer-upper house

Bodie was another gold-mining town that thrived for about 20 years starting in 1888. The mines played out, and the town finally closed completely in 1934. I arrived late afternoon and wish I had more time to explore.

Serious driveway, Toroda Creek Road, Wauconda (135mm ƒ/3.5 SMC Takumar lens)

Wauconda Cafe & Store, 2423 State Rte 20 - closed for good?

Wauconda Cafe & Store

A pay phone! Alas, kaput.

I thought I'd buy a snack, but the Wauconda Store & Cafe appears to be closed permanently. The buildings looked recently renovated with fresh paint. In this lonely terrain, these wayside stores are far apart. To be cautious, I always made sure I had plenty of gasoline in the car because stations can be far apart. From Wauconda, I headed east on State Route 20 towards Republic. To be continued....

I took these photographs on Kodak Portra 160 film with a Pentax Spotmatic F camera and various lenses. 

2024 E. Washington Road Trip 02 - Molson

 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. 

Empty farmhouse, Molson Road south of Molson (50mm ƒ/1.4 SMC Takumar lens)

Molson's historic buildings are now clustered together in the Old Molson Ghost Town Museum. A local man, Harry Sherling, formed the museum in 1960 in remembrance of the rich pioneering history of the town.

Walker & Odell office, 1906

1896 Poland China & Molson Gold Mines assay office

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.

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. 

2024 E. Washington Road Trip 01 - Tonakset, Nighthawk, and Oroville

Dear Readers, Happy and Prosperous New Year to you all!  

Thank you for reading my blog. I started this blog in 2010, so this is the 16th year of trying to find and photograph the detritus, decay, and abandoned remnants of our modern world. We will start the new year with a series on eastern Washington. Later, we will see Greece, Turkey, New York City, Olympia, and more. Comments and suggestions are always welcome.

Packing enough stuff? (No, never!)

Background

By late summer (2024), my wife and I had spent months remodeling, cleaning out junk, sorting paperwork, and setting up life in a new home in the Pacific Northwest. I was restless and wiggly. She wanted me out of the house. And I had not driven through eastern Washington in 49 years. My 1981 car needed some serious highway miles and exercise. Time for a ROAD TRIP!

With a week-long itinerary and a generous offer to stay with an old college friend in Spokane, it was time to pack and set off. Traveling by car, I could take a tripod and both medium format (Hasselblad plus 4 lenses) and 35mm (Pentax Spotmatic F with 5 lenses). And I stashed spare water, tools, motor oil, munchies, a battery jump device, and car parts. Pack heavy? Who cares with a car. 

For the next few articles, I will show some of the 35mm Kodak Portra 160 frames in the order of my trip. They progress through small towns, so look at a map of Washington if you are interested in the exact locations. I learned about some ghost towns from web pages that list such oddities and places to see. And I stopped when I saw a lonely farm or other interesting urban decay feature. Click any picture to see it expanded to 1600 pixels wide. 

Tonasket

Aussie Antiques, Tonakset

Wow, old time Jerry Cans

Good stuff! I love these home-grown antique/junk stores full of treasures. I don't need any in my life, but it is great that someone recycles these remnants of an older age.

Tonakset is a quiet town north of Omak, where I spent the night. Tonasket had a very nice coffee shop right across the street from the Aussie Antiques. 

Trailer with a view, Loomis-Oroville Highway (50mm ƒ/1.4 SMC Takumar lens)

Heading west on the Loomis-Oroville Road toward Loomis, and you get into rolling hills with some agriculture mixed with cattle pasture. It was dry in late summer, the grasslands brown.  

Nighthawk

Former Nighthawk general store (?)

Nighthawk is a ghost town, but there are homes and residents, so it is not truly deserted. At the turn of the 20th century, Nighthawk was a booming mining town as well as a supply center for other mines in the area. The Great Northern Railroad came through this valley. Companies extracted copper, gold, lead, silver, zinc, and antimony from the surrounding area, but most mining ended in the 1950s. There is not much to see here any more, but the scenery is sublime.

Similkameen River northeast of Nighthawk (35mm ƒ/3.5 Super-Takumar lens)

Oroville

Similkameen River west of Oroville

The Girder Bridge (built 2010) carries the Similkameen Trail, a rail-to-trail conversion. The Great Northern Railroad once carried ore and minerals along this line into Oroville and further. 

Chevrolet truck looking good on Central Avenue, Oroville

Skeleton Man on patrol duty on Chesaw Road, Oroville

From Oroville, I continued east on Chesaw Road towards the ghost town of Molson. To be continued...

These photographs are from Kodak Portra 160 film exposed with my Pentax Spotmatic F camera with various lenses, but mostly the 50mm ƒ/1.4 and the 35mm ƒ/3.5. I scanned the film with a Nikon Coolscan 5000 film scanner.

Another Look at Tower 26, Houston (TX 11)

My wife and I revisited Houston in March (2023). The weather was too wet to visit NASA, so I suggested we revisit the Fifth Ward. She is very patient with my photographing grungy neighborhoods and industrial sites. The light was soft and gloomy, my favorite for urban decay exploration. 

Tower 26 Railroad Junction

Lyons Avenue view north

Tower 26 diamonds

Tower 26 junction view west from Mary Street

Waiting for the light to change, Mary Street

View east from Mary Street

Tower 26 was once a 2-story railroad control tower. There is no building any more, but three railroad lines still cross here. Google Maps shows the location. Early in the 20th century, this was a complicated network of intersecting rail lines, all manually controlled. 

Tower 26 in the early-1950s (from Texas Railroad History)

Note the handsome wood construction. "The tower architecture gives unmistakable evidence that it was built by Southern Pacific (SP), resembling many other SP towers,"

Brooks Street cottage (Gold 200 film, Kodak Retina IIa camera)

A group of cottages on Brooks Street formerly had their backs to the railroad tracks. I photographed them in late 2022. As of March, they had been totally removed and the land was freshly graded.  

I took the railroad photographs on Kodak Portra 160 film with a Pentax Spotmatic camera and the Super-Takumar 35mm ƒ/3.5 lens. Takumar lenses were top grade in the 1970s and are still totally usable on film and on digital. The Spotmatic camera's light meter works in stop-down mode, meaning the viewfinder darkens as you stop down. For best results, be careful to avoid large areas of bright sky in the measuring area. I still have the correct mercury (mercuric oxide) V400PX batteries for the meter. The camera and lenses are reliable and compact, well-suited for urban decay. 

Tragedy in Rolling Fork, Mississippi

March 24, 2023, tornado path (from AccuWeather via Yahoo)

On Friday, March 24, 2023 around 8:00 pm, a tornado rated at EF-4 tore through west central Mississippi. It touched down just southwest of the small town of Rolling Fork before moving northeast toward Midnight and Silver City and then continuing toward Tchula, Black Hawk and Winona. 

Tornado path within Rolling Fork (from 25ABC)

In Rolling Fork, the terrific winds flattened many blocks of the little town, flipped cars, knocked down the water tower, and shredding trees. The storm killed 26 people that night in Mississippi, with 16 in Rolling Fork. It is a town of fewer than 2,000 residents. Muddy Waters claimed it as his hometown.   

The town was a real mess. We could not drive on the side streets away from US 61, but that was enough to show the damage.

The truck's horn abruptly started beeping when we were next to it. Some power company employees climbed up to it and thumped the body. The horn stopped.

Power company crews repairing electric lines

Scott Petroleum at 19840 US-61 (Samsung phone photo)

Highway 61 had already been bulldozed clear by March 28. 

Have a seat, Hwy 61

The State Police were routing through traffic on Hwy 1 around Rolling Fork. But US 61 was open for repair trucks, supplies, and ambulances.

Snapped tree, Race Street

Note how the tree has been shattered but the nearby house was intact. Astonishing.

Deer Creek

Deer Creek starts in Bolivar Lake and winds its way south through the Mississippi Delta. I have taken pictures in Onward, Leland, and other small towns through which Deer Creek flows.

The water truck (Samsung phone photo)

Water donations at Sharkey-Issaquena Academy

The tornado tore through the Delta while my wife and I were in Houston. We drove home via Shreveport, Louisiana. We bought water in Shreveport to donate because we thought most bottled water supplies anywhere near the disaster zone would be gone. But as of Tuesday afternoon, March 28, there was plenty of water on pallets. Still, the volunteers were glad to have our packages. 

The tornado knocked down Rolling Fork's water tower. I do not know the status of a repair. 

For more photographs of tornado damage, Reuters posted an excellent collection taken from drones and by news reporters on the scene.

I hope the residents can rebuild and put their lives back together. 

The little town of Silver City was also devastated. I have not been there for post-storm pictures. But I have photographed there in 2020 and 2022 (click the links). 

I took these photographs on Kodak Portra 160 film with a Pentax Spotmatic camera and the 35mm ƒ/3.5 Super-Takumar lens. Dwayne's Photo developed the film and I scanned it with my Plustek 7600i film scanner.