Interior of abandoned building #1

There are many abandoned structures in this country. It is not so uncommon when you think of it, after all, we are a society of 'NEW' not of 'OLD". If you travel to Europe you will see the same building occupied that was occupied for centuries. Here a building may be torn down after only 30 or 40 years. But not all building and structures are torn down here, some are just walked away from. A good example of this are airports. there are many abandoned airports across this large country of ours. I often wondered if they are being checked to make sure that they are not being used by people like drug smugglers or terrorists? You would think that all the land that an airport occupies would be very valuable to people like commercial developers and home builders but there are a lot of cases where they just can't get their hands on the land, or don't want to, for different reasons.

An example of an airport that went out of business is Logan Field which is located in Southeastern Alabama. It didn't last too long as it was opened sometime in the 1960s and seems to have closed sometime around 2000 or 2001. The airport was a small private venture It didn't have many buildings and was only 3600 feet long, there certainly weren't any large planes landing there. But there are other abandoned airports and these were owned by the military. There is a growing movement in this country that suspects that the U.S. government has huge underground facilities that it uses. They also suspect that many abandoned bases are not abandoned at all but merely cover even larger underground facilities.

Interior of abandoned building #2

The U.S. government is said to own vast amounts of acreage in the midwest, Idaho and Alaska along with California. So if this is true, what is going on there? I really don't know for sure, but it has been reported that Genetic experiments are going on under the Mountains of Arizona. It is also said that all military communications must pass through Fort Huachuca in Arizona.

The only reason I mentioned the abandoned airports is because they are so big as are military bases. But there are many other abandoned structures in the U.S. Abandoned buildings are quite common in the big cities. In the Bronx, which is part of New York City, one has to pass many abandoned apartment house complexes while traveling out of the city on major highways. New York City is funny in a way. The buildings were eyesores so the city boarded up the windows. This was not so unusual except for the fact that the boards had pictures of people looking out of a window painted on some of them and flower pots on windows on others. It is quite startling to see them when you are driving by. For a moment you think that these are really people pleasantly observing traffic from their windows until you realize that way too many of the occupants are doing this and that the buildings are dumps and no one could live in them. In most cases the pipes have all been ripped out and sold for scrap and bricks are missing in many places.

Interior of abandoned building #3

Could business get so bad that an entire factory would be abandoned. Apparently it can. There are abandoned factories of every kind across this country. There are cement plants that look like that are ready to roll except for the fact that no one is in them. Unfinished buildings dot the countryside. I think that this is one of the saddest things to find, an unfinished building complex. Can you imagine starting to build a big complex and just running out of money for some business reason? I have even seen photos of a small abandoned radio telescope. This just boggles my mind. There are projects that have been abandoned that still have the construction cranes attached to the upper floors. The cranes are just rusting away.

Huge abandoned mental institutions seem to be located in almost every state. It seems that there was a push about 26 years ago to get most of the mental patients out of institutions and into programs where they could live at home. This left huge complexes empty and unused. Some of them seem to have been forgotten and are in a state of ruin. Paranormal investigators seem to love these places.

Interior of abandoned building #4

Here is a good one. Abandoned roads are not uncommon. Maybe a super highway was built that detoured most of the traffic from a small road somewhere or the road no longer went to anywhere significant since the communities it used to serve are long gone, but what ever the reason, the road is no longer serviced and is in ruin and has become abandoned. I guess if the government can abandon missile silos, then why can't the local government abandon a road? A very interesting abandoned structure is the last Whaling station in the U.S. Whaling was outlawed in the U.S. in 1971. The wharf had gone on fire and everything is charred. The station is being pulled down because it is leaking diesel oil into the bay. By the way, it is in Richmond, California.

Interior of abandoned building #5

Abandoned amusement parks are very interesting to see. Mountain Park in Holyoke, Ma. existed from about 1890 to 1987. The park attendance got less and less and finally the super parks put it out of business. But there is even a more fantastic relic of amusement parks past, it is the parachute jump from Steeplechase Park in Coney Island, N. Y. While the Steeplechase is gone, the parachute tower has been freshly painted and can be seen from the parkway as you head for the Verrazano Narrows bridge. It no longer drags chutes up to the top of its high tower with people clinging for dear life to the wooden plank that was used for a seat, but it is the highest structure in the area and dominates the Coney Island Skyline and is a reminder of the area's glorious past.

Yes this country is full of abandoned structures, many due to the recent downfall of manufacturing here, but aside from factories, there are so many other interesting structures to explore. Some colleges are now giving courses on industrial archeology. I wonder if some future human who discovers a factory buried under the earth will ever be able to figure out that it manufactured lollipops, or tooth brushes?