Cheddarpecker

My favorite route at present takes me out to an old ghost town and back. Really, it's the remains of a truck stop, a few shops, a cafe, and some tanks. There are far more tanks out there than structures, some of them made of wood with old glass sight tubes on the side. Other than oilfield service companies, the only business to draw people in is a quarter mile drag strip, so it's not the most pleasant ride on Friday and Saturday night some weeks. Here's some stock photos from the internet.





I get a lot of strange looks from people out there because it's the middle of nowhere and I'm not in a car. The nearest store is almost ten miles west. I'll take some pictures this evening when I ride out there and post them here.

Do you ride through a ghost town?

CrowSeph

This is cool!
Sadly in my city we don't have those "ghost town" , in a place near my house there are some very old houses but nothing special.

Cheddarpecker

Old houses are nothing to scoff at. There could well be a Dollar Generic there instead.

1242Vintage

I am racing in the historic ghost town of Bodie next month. Bodie was a mining town and now a state park.



About - Bodie Bowl

Should be a fun event.

OldsCOOL

I love sites like this. We have them throughout Michigan.

chedarhead

Does the ghost town have a name? Where is it near?

Cheddarpecker

This is Penwell, between Odessa and Monahans, Texas.

May not get out there tonight, but I try for more nights of the week than not.

10 Wheels

It was Hot and they had No ice..

I-Like-To-Bike

Lots of ghost sites like this in Detroit and other ghost cities too.
The Packard Plant in Detroit:


More info, articles and pictures of the Ghosts of Detroit at: The Abandoned City of Detroit - Photography: Zach Fein

OldsCOOL

The photos of Detroit are haunting and stunning, to the point you can almost feel them. I have a friend that rode the streets on MTB taking photos. His goal and accomplishment was riding every street. Amazingly, he survived.

Cheddarpecker

Been to Big Bend NP, Presido, Redford, etc plenty of times. Never stopped in Terlingua. Never been to the chili cookoff, either.

I didn't get to ride, but I got important things accomplished otherwise. I'll try for better pics from Penwell tomorrow.

jon c. 

No ghost towns around here, but a surprising number of abandoned houses and other structures. Many can only be seen in late winter, when there is the least amount of foliage in overgrown areas. Some probably last saw use 30 or 40 years ago. Others are just shells that perhaps have been idle for a century.

GravelMN

Cheddarpecker

Neat stuff, y'all. Especially those hidden in foliage, I can only imagine.

10 Wheels

Cheddarpecker

The only thing that could make that picture better would be knowing you were headed to the hot springs.

Miele Man

Used to be a ghost town on Parry Island (near Parry Sound, Ontario Canada) but it'd pretty much gone now although the base of the old roundhouse is still there or I should say the foundation is still there. Only problem now is you need permission from the natives on the reservation that is Parry Island in order to visit it.

Cheers

sail

Just off the trail about 12 miles out.

Cheddarpecker

Love the additional supports on that porch, it was once a nice place for someone.

Juan Foote

By strictest definition I am not really sure we have any "ghost" towns, since people still live in them...but since the downturn in 07, riding in the far Eastern and Southern parts of the state you go though a lot of "closed down" towns where none of the commercial district survived. I honestly don't know what the people who live there do for work or shopping without driving a long way or (dialup) internet.

corrado33

Growing up on the east coast (and now living in Montana), I find "ghost" towns and abandoned buildings on the east coast much more interesting. They're simply older. Ghost towns in the midwest are really only decades old, where as on the east coast there could be buildings hundreds of years old. Same comparison goes between the US and most of europe.

My friend took me through a local "ghost" town near where I am now. I was excited to go, but in the end it was just a bunch of somewhat old buildings that have been kept up for the sake of tourists. Honestly the ghost town was probably more populated (with performers and maintenance people) than anything within a 50 mile radius.

With that said, I have been through some truly creepy ghost "towns" back on the east coast.

Cheddarpecker

I remember this place from years back, because the large capital letters in the sign at the crossroads visibly spelled T I T S from a distance, before you could read the much smaller letters in between which made Texas Interstate Truck Stop. I remember it as far back as maybe twenty years, and I want to say I went in it once when it was in operation. Maybe once, otherwise it's been closed for as long as I've been aware of its existence. There's a good possibility that it's been closed for much longer. The Joker has stood in my memory for a long time, always as an abandoned building.

The sign for the truck stop disappeared a few years back, and the site is a total loss. An old welding shop remains and appears maintained but pretty much dormant. Lots of neat old equipment around. Tanks outnumber houses 60+:1, as there's maybe three or four houses. Maybe. Four is a stretch. Remaining businesses are on the highway south of town, but the whole area is oilfield.

The Interstate goes over it at 75mph.

VegasTriker

Every big city has some outstanding building worth seeing. I haven't lived in the Chicago area for a long time but remember an abandoned auto dealership on Ogden Avenue (might be in town of Cicero or just inside Chicago) with a large Rocket outside the building for the Rocket 88 Oldsmobile symbol. It had the feel of 1950s or earlier. That area has seen hard times and about the only businesses still open seemed to be bars. It was obvious from the area had once been a viable commercial area as there were separate access roads for parking along side that part of Route 66. It wasn't an area I would feel comfortable riding a bike. I often wanted to stop and take a picture but never did. The one time I did stop to walk around I didn't have a camera. A missed opportunity. I wonder if it is still there.

italktocats

there is no such thing here

Altair 4

I lived in the Philadelphia area in the mid '80's and had a job that had me on the road a fair amount of time. North of the city, maybe in Montgomery or Bucks county, there was an old abandoned factory that ran right along side the road that had that "ghost town" feel to it. My memory fails where exactly, but I'll bet that it's either been torn down or possibly been converted into something that I couldn't afford to either live in or shop at. A couple of times I drove by it in the early morning when the fog was still up...it would have made a great set for a movie.

There's a "ghost town" rail trail here in PA in Indiana County. Ghost Town Trail History | Indiana County Parks and Trails

It runs from Black Lick to Ebensburg. There's some remnants of the early iron production days of Pennsylvania with a couple of old stone furnaces:


but I think all of the remains of the towns served by the railroad are gone. I plan to ride the trail this summer, but haven't gotten to it yet.