John,
As a member of the Claunch Club you will enjoy this article in New Mexico magazine from March 2016:
http://www.nmmagazine.com/article/?a...9#.WEpP8-s8KrU
Scroll down a bit and you will see your car is still there !
John,
As a member of the Claunch Club you will enjoy this article in New Mexico magazine from March 2016:
http://www.nmmagazine.com/article/?a...9#.WEpP8-s8KrU
Scroll down a bit and you will see your car is still there !
I know just enough to be dangerous !
Assimilation
Assimilation refers to the concept of the church and trees of the forest becoming one (visually). Found this moment one late afternoon in Cades Cove, TN (Great Smoky Mountain NP) - Zone Vi 4x5, 120mm Nikkor, on FP4 dev in PC-TEA. Critique welcomed.
Nice composition and subject. I'm drawn to that little (but all important) building in the background.
Dennis, thanks for the article link, very interesting.Originally Posted by DennisD
For you and John, another photograph from Claunch, 1968
4x5 Calumet, Plus-X, D-76
Hi Merg,
Thank you ! That really captures the character of the place !
Glad you liked the article.
Interesting that it appeared so recently - that the town would actually be on the radar & featured in such depth.
I know just enough to be dangerous !
Your post brought this to mind - another "assimilation" :
Assimilation refers to the concept of the church and trees of the forest becoming one (visually). Found this moment one late afternoon in Cades Cove, TN (Great Smoky Mountain NP) - Zone Vi 4x5, 120mm Nikkor, on FP4 dev in PC-TEA. Critique welcomed.
I know just enough to be dangerous !
Good article, but the car has been moved. I'll swing by next summer and make a final run at it.
I got my sheets back from Citizen's Photo yesterday, and scanned them. They came out OK. The photo I should have used more exposure to compensate for reciprocity was pretty faint on the negative, but it ended up scanning nicely (the stairs.) All in all, I'm happy with what I got but will start using Acros for this.
I started 4x5 in 1995 with a Cambo monorail, and quickly moved to a Shen Hao folder. It was abandoned farm houses that got me started with LF. There are thousands of abandoned houses and even larger buildings on the Northern Plains. I still have a great interest in them! Never know what you're going to find inside.
In 1907 the Chicago, Milwaukee, & St. Paul railroad was building two tracks towards the Missouri River. The southern one went west from Yankton, SD. It ended up stopping at Platte, SD after the decision was made to cross the river on the northern line at Chamberlain, SD. The southern line slowly faded as passenger traffic was lost, then packages/shipments, the cattle business was lost to trucks in the 1950s, and there just wasn't much grain grown along this line. The tracks are now dormant. In 1907 the railroad built a very large three story brick hotel in Geddes, SD and named it the Padley Hotel. At that time the thinking was the tracks would cross the river near there, replacing the ferry boat. A hundred years ago Geddes seemed destined to become a regional city. The hotel did a steady but not very profitable business with traveling salesmen from the railroad, and it had a very fancy dining room used by locals. The manager of the hotel was William Kinser, a somewhat shady charecter. In July 1914 he contacted an employment agency in Sioux City, IA to send him a cook/maid for the hotel. A young Sioux City woman named Francis Wilmott was sent by train. Soon after arriving, she was told by Kinser that the hotel wasn't profitable enough to pay her, and if she wanted any money she had to be a prostitute to the traveling salesmen. The deal was she kept the first six bucks, and after that the "house" got a buck per fuck. She wasn't having any of it and turned him in to the sheriff. Kinser was arrested on the 1910 federal Anti White Slave Act for transporting women across a state line for immoral purposes. He was convicted and did time in a federal pen.
A few years later the hotel was purchased by a Dr. Fyle, who turned it into a hospital. Apparently he was a very good surgeon and the hospital prospered. Fyle became very wealthy. He would often stay at the hotel overnight, in room No. 8. One December night in 1924 he disappeared on his way home from Sioux City, IA. He was not found until the following May by boys fishing in a small river. Fyle had missed a curve and drove into a deep pool. He never got out of his 1923 Ford convertible. The building became a hotel again, with a secret Prohibition Bar in the basement. It went through several owners and names, ending in 1964 as the Castle Hotel and owned by two women. The locals said it was a swinging place in the 1920s, mostly because of the bar. There were still traveling salesmen staying there in the late 1950s but that began to peter out as farms became more mechanized and there were fewer farmers to sell to, and ultimately the railroad stopped passenger service. The hotel has been abandoned since 1964. There were attempts to bring it back, as recently as 2002 by the state historical society, but what can you do with it? It's large, hard to heat, and there is no known commercial purpose for it. (Unless you possibly turn it back into a bed/breakfast/titty operation.) It's in rough shaped now, and much of the roof is no longer functional. I gingerly made my way up to the third floor and walked a little ways down a rotten hallway, but quickly turned back when my foot went through the floor. All the floors on the hotel are so dicey that I was afraid if I went through the third floor, my momentum would carry me through the second & first floors and into the basement. I will not go in there on a windy day.
The population in Geddes is about 200. In 1904 it was 1,200. I do plan on going back--better hurry before it falls in! I want to explore the basement a little, and take a photo of Frances Wilmott's room #11. I admire her courage!
Kent in SD
In contento ed allegria
Notte e di vogliam passar!
Interesting story and nice images, thank you!
I love old places, too.
They are full of history!
Forgot to mention that I was using a Chamonix 045n with vintage lenses 1922 Dagor 3 5/8 inch (Compound) and 1914 Dagor 240mm (early Compound), and Ilford FP4 @ 125.
Kent in SD
In contento ed allegria
Notte e di vogliam passar!
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