Abandoned/derelict sites
- Thread starter Martinjmpr
- Start date
BritKLR
Kapitis Indagatoris
Straight out of a zombie movie.Came across this one on our hike today. Located in Bolinas, CA
a peek inside
Cabrito
I come in Peace
AbleGuy
Officious Intermeddler
While I love human history and am often completely held in awe of the incredible creations of man, my cathedrals have always been the wild ones I find in nature.
Yesterday we took a 3 1/2 hour hike exploring this island, first going through very crowded woods where we soon stumbled upon what was left of one of the original settler homes. The place had burned down long ago, and like many old burned cabins, the only remaining structure standing was the brick fireplace. Everything else had fallen to earth and been overgrown by bushes, shrubs, vines, and trees, becoming one with the soil… and there was no trace of the old orchard anymore either.
After exploring the old derelict Homestead, we broke through the forest onto the rocky shore of the south end of the island. We next were going to take advantage of the accessibility of the beach created by low tide and hike along this narrow tongue of land to try to find the remnants of an old brick factory we had been told about.
We wound up struggling along the slippery, rocky shore of the island, which was only temporarily accessible at low tide, scrambling over, and crawling under and through thick tangles of big Douglas fir trees that had fallen into the surf due to the undermining of their roots caused by the constant destruction of tidal erosion eating away at the shoreline.
We had to be very, very careful climbing over these obstacles to not tear up our clothes or our skin because of the danger posed by razor sharp barnacles that had attached themselves to and thoroughly coated the fallen trees’ bark during the higher tides.
Once we got around the point of land sticking out into the bay and we were able to look to the east, this is the incredible expansive view we were treated to:
Attachments
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AbleGuy
Officious Intermeddler
After we successfully navigated around the obstacle course forming the point of the peninsula, by hiking further along on the narrow crowded shore we found what was left of the site of the old failed and abandoned brick factory. There was nothing remaining of any of the original structures of the factory, or of the long timbered dock from which newly baked bricks were barged over to Seattle and Tacoma, except for various jumbled piles of old discarded brick and broken cobble lying on the floor of the forest and crowding the tide line.
Once, briefly, this was a thriving enterprise built hurriedly in response to fires that had burned down large portions of Seattle by quickly torching the wooden homes there. In response to those fires, a renewed interest in less burnable brick homes took root and brick kilns popped up in numerous locations around the Puget Sound.
But this small factory wasn’t able to survive the competitive economics of the time. Other than the piles of discarded brick, the only thing that remained was a small historic sign posted in commemoration. There was an odd ghostly sense to walking through the woods here and trying to imagine that this abandoned empty site was once a place of such active commerce, full of the noise of men and horses and heavy machinery, belching, thick wood smoke up and into the otherwise clean salt air.
The shoreline from here on became dangerously muddy with warnings of the quicksand like nature of the tidal flat here. It was either hike through the mud, hike at the edge of the shore through wild tangles of prickly blackberries and stinging nettle and poisonous oak, or navigate back into the and through the thick woods to find the forest trail and head back home.
So we opted, of course, to cut up into the woods and find the original trail back to where we parked. We stopped numerous times along the meandering way back to our camper van to pick fresh blackberries and wild evergreen huckleberries,
which we took home and promptly cleaned.
Later last evening, my wife baked the most wonderful huckleberry and toasted pecan muffins, topped with a coffee cake crumble and similarly a huckleberry coffee cake.
I'm having one of the muffins right now with a cup of coffee as I sit out on the porch in the 59° damp morning air and look out into the green, green dripping woods behind our house (and soon the pan that the coffee cake sits in will be another temporarily abandoned, and derelict site, hidden back up in the drawer under the stove). 😁
Once, briefly, this was a thriving enterprise built hurriedly in response to fires that had burned down large portions of Seattle by quickly torching the wooden homes there. In response to those fires, a renewed interest in less burnable brick homes took root and brick kilns popped up in numerous locations around the Puget Sound.
But this small factory wasn’t able to survive the competitive economics of the time. Other than the piles of discarded brick, the only thing that remained was a small historic sign posted in commemoration. There was an odd ghostly sense to walking through the woods here and trying to imagine that this abandoned empty site was once a place of such active commerce, full of the noise of men and horses and heavy machinery, belching, thick wood smoke up and into the otherwise clean salt air.
The shoreline from here on became dangerously muddy with warnings of the quicksand like nature of the tidal flat here. It was either hike through the mud, hike at the edge of the shore through wild tangles of prickly blackberries and stinging nettle and poisonous oak, or navigate back into the and through the thick woods to find the forest trail and head back home.
So we opted, of course, to cut up into the woods and find the original trail back to where we parked. We stopped numerous times along the meandering way back to our camper van to pick fresh blackberries and wild evergreen huckleberries,
which we took home and promptly cleaned.
Later last evening, my wife baked the most wonderful huckleberry and toasted pecan muffins, topped with a coffee cake crumble and similarly a huckleberry coffee cake.
I'm having one of the muffins right now with a cup of coffee as I sit out on the porch in the 59° damp morning air and look out into the green, green dripping woods behind our house (and soon the pan that the coffee cake sits in will be another temporarily abandoned, and derelict site, hidden back up in the drawer under the stove). 😁
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Cabrito
I come in Peace
On our annual Thanksgiving hike we always pass this and I wonder what it was like when you were on guard duty. Location San Francisco Presidio former Army Base
This is the building / bunker that the guard shack was for
Technically the buildings are not abandoned and look like they're still in use for something.
This is the building / bunker that the guard shack was for
Technically the buildings are not abandoned and look like they're still in use for something.