High in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado is a small town clustered around one of the largest zinc mines in America. You see it first coming around a bend on Highway 24, houses and buildings clinging precariously to the side of Battle Mountain. The road to the town is gated, padlocked shut to passersby on the highway. As they get closer, the buildings below start to look different: the windows are shattered, the paint on the outsides peeling, the streets they line overgrown. This is the town of Gilman, and it's been vacant since 1984.
Read Morefeatures
Anchors Aweigh!
Deep in the bowels of the SS Jeremiah O’Brien, Shipkeeper Chris Friedenbach speaks tenderly of the sixty year old vessel he maintains. The cavernous space he stands in, thick with the smell of the oil covering every mechanical surface, is still much the same way as it was when the O’Brien was launched in 1943. The O'Brien is a survivor of a class of WWII cargo ships that has all but vanished.
Read More
Epilogue: The Closing of the Gary Library
Gary, Indiana is a city that is no stranger to loss. Its once thriving steel industry now stands as only a shadow of its former self, and with its decline came a still-rising tide of blight. The city’s once glittering Broadway is now lined with boarded up storefronts and crumbling buildings. Now, as Gary struggles to reinvent itself, it faces yet another painful loss: its central library.
Read More