Abandoned highways and other corpses of infrastructure

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
41

Here in the greater Boston area there are several places where there are interchanges for highways that were never finished. I’m thinking of 128 south of Boston, where 95 comes in…there is a cloverleaf there that is only half used, there was a highway that was going to go straight north from there that was never built but the ramps and such are still there. Similarly north of the city where Rte. 3 intersects 128, there are ramps to serve a Rte. 3 extension south that was also never built

Don’t forget the ramps to thin air north of Boston on I-93.

The Southwest expressway was cancled by Gov. Frank Sargent in the '60s, leaving I-95 in the dead end to the south of the city, the inner beltway was killed off, leaving the above mentioned air-ramps north of the city, and a big, already cleared scar through half of the city to the south. Further north, there is another orphened section of 95, so US-1 goes from 4 lanes in each direction, to a local two lane road, while berms run to nowhere in a swamp.

The already cleared land for the Southwest expressway became the right-of-way for the Orange line rapid (?) transit

South of the Park street T stop, the tracks split, with the main line going right, and a abandoned line going left, dead ending where they built the Mass Pike. This chunk may get reused as a part of the silver line bus way.

West of the Arlington St stop, the tracks split, to a sealed up surface portal.

Rhode Island is famous for not removing abandoned bridges, although they did just blow up the old Jamestown bridge.

There is a 3/4th mile long chunk of interstate road/bridge connecting Providence and East Providence. The rest of the road was never built.

42

In a former life, I worked in environmental consulting, and was my office’s go-to gal for environmental site assessments. A number of these were on abandoned properties that people were considering developing. I loved these properties – old factories with deserted train spurs, parcels of land that looked totally overgrown until you stumbled upon a crumbling road (or once, a basketball court) in the middle of the woods, an old tannery with sketchy mounds nearly obscured by weeds, an old department store with no working electricity but random racks and even numbers for the changing rooms… Not only did I get to (have to!) walk the entire property, but I often also got to do things like order historical series of aerial photos and maps and research the history of site use in the library and town offices. It was so amazing to see the site change over time.

I could never understand why everyone else didn’t find this absolutely fascinating.

43

Heh, somehow I failed to remember that there’s a small example literally on my doorstep. The pavement outside my house is what used to be the road, which ran down to a ford across a small river, but a bridge was built alongside, some time around the 1920s/30s. Once you get down to the river, it all gets rather overgrown, but some day I might go a-clambering and see if it’s still possible to get through. http://i52.photobucket.com/albums/g3/owainsutton/road1.jpg

44

It amazes me how little commercial property is worth, once it is written off. Buildings that once cost millions are abandoned or torn down. I remember a small strip mall was torn down before it ever opened for business. what a shame-contrast that to houses,which appreciate in value-tho NOT if your town is dying.

45

Here in Reno, we have the Kings Inn Casino, which has been abandoned since the 80’s, I think. At the time I took these pictures several months ago, it looked like they were finally going to tear it down , but we went downtown last weekend and nope, still there.

If you walk around back, you can see that all the rooms are still furnished with lamps and everything, decades later.

I’d love to take a tour of it sometime, even though it gives me the heebiest of jeebies, but the smell is unbearable. I had to hold my breath to get close enough to take these pics.

46

The elevated west side highway in NYC is interesting, snaking around building and through them,.

47

When I lived in Eastern Oregon there was a place called Hot Lake that has been abandonded various times in it’s existance. I believe that in it’s last incarnation it was a nursing home (before the guy who’s site I linked to bought it) and it was definately a creepy place that has suffered many deaths over it’s years. The land also has hot sulphur springs which cause the entire property to be covered in a rotten egg smelling fog. The inside was totally abandoned, and there were files everywhere, old rickety looking wheelchairs and overturned bath tubs all over the place. It was watched by the cops 24-7, but we did sneak in to take a look. I wish I’d taken pictures.

According to local legend there were also something called the “Chinese Tunnels” under town. The story went that it was illegal for the Chinese railroad builders to be out and about, so they made a whole town underground, but nobody I talked to knew how to find an entrance. There was a huge dip in the Safeway parking lot that was said to have been caused by the collapse of one of the tunnels.

Finally, in the town I lived in there was an old place that housed what was a nice steak house at one point and time, and went in and out of business as a bar for the years I was there. There was a secret passage in the kitchen behind one of the food shelves that went to an appartment directly above. The appartment was outfitted in total 1960’s whore house, with velvet wall paper, sound proof sliding glass doors, huge velvet curtains, wall to wall shag carpeting, a stripper pole in the living room etc. Through other secret passages hidden you could go to any room in the entire building, and even to a hidden exit down the block. This was by far the coolest find of all of my searches.

48

The old abandoned power plant is situated a block from my house. Here’s a not-very-good picture of it. It’s a brick building, with big gaping holes where the bricks have crumbled away, and is a haven for bats. There was talk that someone had bought it and was going to turn it into apartments, and last summer there was power to it - the very top, which is windows all around, was lit up every night - but it’s so delipidated I don’t know if it can be saved.

49

Easily the most fascinating website the Straight Dope has ever steered me to is this:

http://www.kiddofspeed.com/

It was made by a young woman living in Kiev in the Ukraine. She likes to take her motorcycle to a place about 90 miles north . . . called Chernobyl.

The photojournal on her site is of probably the only abandoned (in modern times) city on the face of the earth.

50

In the 60’s you would walk over grates in the down town sidewalks. They were part of tunnels used for deliveries of coal, and merchandise in the cities distant past. The city poured cement over the light and air vents, and left them. They have been cut into pieces over the years as road work has been done. I would have loved to have seen it whole and at least get into the remaining parts for a look.

Do the underground streets, and first floor entrances to houses still exist in San Francisco under the current level?

51

Wow, what a great thread.

Although not normally one of my personal photographic subjects, I’ve long been fascinated by abandoned infrastructure. The first thing I thought of when I saw the thread title was the section of PA Turnpike east of Breezewood, which of course was what the OP specifically mentioned. I recall scrambling up an embankment from a state highway and stepping onto the pavement of the abandoned section, just a couple of hundred yards from the entrance to one of the tunnels, which had a huge steel plate with a door in it covering the entrance. As I was looking at this sight, I heard something behind me and turned to see a couple of deer crossing the road just a few dozen yards away.

There’s abandoned infrastructure just about every direction within a few miles of my ancestral home of Johnstown, PA, including the moldering remnants of a huge Bethlehem steel facility in the town itself. Other nearby points of interest include:

– Sections of the Allegheny Portage railroad, which carried boats of the Pennsylvania canal over the mountains between Johnstown and Altoona. Staple Bend Tunnel (the first railroad tunnel built in the US) just upriver from Johnstown, and the remains of a series of inclined planes (funiculars) above Altoona are at relatively accessible points.

– Down near Meyersdale, in Somerset county, there is the huge Salisbury viaduct that carried the now-gone Western Maryland railway over the Baltimore and Ohio line down in the valley. If one knows where to look, the WM route can be traced as it winds above and around the B & O route most of the way from there to Cumberland, MD.

– Lastly, there are dozens of former coal-mining company towns dotting the region, often with a decaying minehead or tipple as the centerpiece.

More recently, last October I made a trip out to survey some of our operations in far west Texas, and happened to come across a true ghost town: Orla, on the road that connects Carlsbad, NM with Pecos and Fort Stockton, TX. I had stopped there to take a couple of photos, including an old gas station with a sign saying “You’re a long way from anywhere in Orla” (you got that right). I thought I was completely alone when all of a sudden a Mexican truck driver popped up out of nowhere asking for a ride in Spanish (his rig had broken down somewhere up the road). 'Bout gave me a heart attack.

OK, I’ll stop rambling now.

52

The Lemon House (the inn at the head of the Altoona area inclined planes) and the area on both sides of the summit is now a National Historic Site (under the Park Service), so there’s a decent place to make a day base from to explore all of the portage railbeds in the area.

Incidentally, the portage railroad is the reason for some of the more obscure place names in the region. Foot-of-Ten and Foot-of-Eight are named such because they were built at the foot of No. Ten Plane and of No. Eight Plane respectively.

53

More so than Paris, more so than happiness, more so even then the top of Raquel Welch, my body wants to visit Elobey Chico and Elobey Grande, two islands off the coast of Equatorial Guinea.

The Spanish first occupied Equatorial Guinea way back in the day, when most rich white and richer, darker white men found slavery to be a Very Good Idea. Elobey Chico became the colonial capital, and served as a major sea port and median between various slavery stained destinations.

Now, it is completely uninhabited. An entire colonial capital, the upper spleen of the tremendous Spanish empire, entirely deserted. Imagine going to an island with all this old, colonial infastructure, and being completely alone. I can’t even begin to think about it, the idea is so crushingly brilliant for me.

What’s more, the internet doesn’t tell us much about just what is on the island. One supposes that it is amazing, but no pictures can say one way or another.

There are other islands, like Howard and Marshall that the US own that are abandoned, but none that have infastructure like the Elobeys.

54

One famous temporarily-abandoned highway was the “Bridge to Nowhere” in Milwaukee, now known as the Hoan Bridge, and immortalized in the film Blues Brothers as the unfinished bridge that the car chase goes over. The bridge had gone unfinished due to public dispute over their freeway system.

(A not-quite-ontopic anecdote about issues with funding hamstringing a road project, this one in Chicago: Due to the amount of time it took to buy up land and build the project, the Elgin-O’Hare Expressway in the Chicago area goes neither to Elgin nor to O’Hare! The road itself is far from deserted these days, but you can see areas near the ends where obviously land had been prepped to extend it, but the suburbs in the rest of the region had grown up and into the proposed pathway in the intervening time.)

55

Ghost intersection: In Southern Michigan, on M-52, just North of where it crosses US-12, there is a complete graded cloverleaf intersection bordering the road (grade only with no pavement or bridges) with cattle grazing on it and trees growing in the middle of the “lanes.” My guess is that, at one time, someone intended to widen US-12 to be a four-lane, limited access highway, the intersection got graded, and then the funds got pulled because I-94 was built a few miles North to handle the Detroit-Chicago traffic, replacing US-12.

When I was living outside Middlefield, OH, I noticed a strange landform beneath a phone or power line that came up at an angle to Georgia Rd so that, had it continued across the road, it would have run through the rental house where I was living. About that time, I happened to pick up a remaindered book on the interurban systems that used to cross Northeast Ohio. I was intrigued to discover that the landform was the roadbed of one of the old interurban lines. (South of Georgia Rd., the line was still visible while the bed had been torn up when the property where I was living had been developed.)

I then began noticing all the places where the old tracks (abandoned around 1925) kept crossing my route in to work in Euclid. In the ensuing 20+ years, I have noted nearly the entire routes of three separate abandoned lines. There are stone walls flanking ditches where the line used to cross small brooks. There are several miles of embankments along Bell Street and Rapids Road, passing through all the front yards of the current houses. There are places where the line went cross country and the bed now serves as driveways to houses or lanes into larger properties. In Gates Mills, the old iron truss bridge still spans the Chagrin River. At the corner of Pekin and Auburn, someone built a house right in the center of what had been an embankment where the line curved to avoid the swamp across the road.

I got so proficient at recognizing old rail beds, that when I started communting down into Northern Portage County, I discovered what appeared to be another one. At first I dismissed the idea, since there were two separate rail lines within a few hundred yards of my discovery, (crossing Seasons Rd, between Ravenna Rd and the parallel railroad line), but I finally got curious enough to dig up a topo map and discovered that there actually was a third, now abandoned, rail line that came through that exact location.

Great geek fun.

56

No, you’re thinking of the High Line, an elevated railway shut down since the early 1980’s. It is planned to become an urban park.

Most of the elevated West Side highway was torn down in the late '80’s. I used to work in a building on 12 Avenue around then, right where the last standing parts were (it ended between 43 and 44 streets back then).

57

Turns out her account of speeding through Chernobyl on a hot bike was “crafted.” But, of course, the reality of the ghost city remains quite compelling.

58

Lagomorph writes:

I remember the Rochester subway from my days there. They basically put it down in the depression left when they diverted the Erie canal from downtown so that it crossed the Gennessee just below the University of Rochester. The bridge is still there, with its subway stop, by the Rundel Public Library. I’m told that the Gannett newspapers still use parts of the track tyo deliver the big rolls of newspaper without disrupting street traffic.

The problem is that the old Canal bed didn’t really go anywhere that people wanted to go. It went nowhere near Kodak or Bausch and Lomb or the Eastman School or the museums. It was nowhere near the airport or the zoo. I hear that the train used to stop when animals crossed the track (most of it wasn’t so much a “subway” as a depressed rail line). Lack of ridership kiled it. Rochester’s the only city I know that had a subway and got rid of it.

59

Not a swamp exactly, but a tidal marsh. Most of the sand that had been piled onto it for the roadbed has since been removed to replenish Revere Beach, but the berms are still high enough to cause drainage problems for the neighborhood on the landward side. There are still orphaned ramps from the Copeland Circle in Revere to where I-95 was planned to run.

Yes, the Orange Line was rerouted there off of the Washington Street elevated, which was a major cause of urban blight. There’s a rumor that the elevated tracks were routed right in front of Holy Cross Cathedral as a slap against the Irish Catholics, but that’s no more fact-based than the story about NINA signs. There are still remnants of the northern section of the Orange Line elevated, on the North Washington Street bridge, but there’s nothing I know of left on the Charlestown-Everett section.

When city streets get rebuilt in the area, it’s common to see old cobblestones and trolley tracks exposed when the old asphalt is removed. Cobbles are no fun to drive on, of course, especially in the rain, as you can find out for yourself if you go by one of those projects.

Many downtown Boston streets are built on top of old wharves that were covered over in a series of landfill projects (and that pattern, not cow paths, explains downtown Boston’s chaotic street layout). India Street used to be India Wharf, for instance. The Big Dig uncovered a lot of old pilings, and even some colonial-era wooden water pipes - they’d hollow out logs and stick them end to end.

60

I should also mention that it’s common to see abandoned railbeds used as ATV tracks in the summer and snowmobile tracks in the winter up here. Why not, they’re perfect for it.

But the most jarring sights you’ll see in the northern New England woods may be stone walls running through the middle of the woods. Those were the borders of old farm fields that were abandoned decades or even centuries ago, and have gone back to forest. Oddly, what had been nearly-homogeneous pine forests before being cleared tend to refill as mixed conifer/hardwood forests, with plenty of maples and beeches mixed in with pines.