The lost city of industrial decay

mANVIL

During WW2 the US built what was to become the largest explosives manufacturing facility ever made. Spanning 10,000 acres the complex contained over 1,000 buildings, 190 miles of interior roads, 80 miles of rail, and employed 30,000 people. Post cold war the need to stockpile arms diminished and the facility shut down. Since then large tracts of land have become state park or sold to private industry. However a good bit of the original facilities still remain.

schmoo

Nice to see you finally delurking!

The masses will be crying for more.

Chrissiebeez_NL

:cry more!!

no seriously... these are great!

Awais Yaqub

Wonderful !

Aaron Jors

Very interesting shots, where is this place?

SirArmstrong

Great shots, looks like you could spend days discovering. With some of those signs though, I don't know how much I would want to find.

gus

Very cool I have to get out & try this. Is any mercury clean I love the old loco.

The US built a lot of stuff around here in northern australia also. There is even a barbed wire perimeter fence still visable from the roadside 7 hours west of here in the bush where the US military dug out caves in the hills for munitions storage. I know the farmer that owns the land now & he uses the tunnels for hay storage.

I even rescued an old card playing table built in the 40's by the marines from an old US built shed near by.

saurora

Great series!!! The shots just get progressively better (to me) as I went through them. Love the shots of the old locomotive....the lighting is sweet in those. Also like the vine-covered wheels on the old carts. Some very interesting (and scarey! Mercury!) signs. Great stuff.

JenGrace

Looks like a really interesting place. You did a really good job photographing it.

mANVIL

Thanks for the compliments.

Gus - that is very cool you were able to salvage that table. Most people do not take advantage of what their environment has to offer.

Lex

one must be careful nosing around places like this, for more than 1 reason. Health hazzards of course, at top of list. nice pics though here. Interesting.

DaddyO

Very nice docu shots. I've gone through them several times.

pathfinder

What a great series of images.

Fort Detrick or nearby perhaps??

I wonder if the mercury was used for making mercury fulminate - a potential ingredient in most primers.

It is hard to imagine manufacturing and shipping high explosives - TNT, gun cotton, RDX etc by the train load. Not by the pound or ton, but by whole train loads. Wow!

ian408

New Almaden (South San Jose) was a pretty good sized mercury mining
area. It's a park now as well as residential area. Neat place. I can see
how the products mined there might make it to this place.

These shots are pretty cool. I like the story they tell.

mANVIL

Thanks for the compliments everyone.

Pathfinder - explosives by the trainload is a scary thought, luckily this place was far removed from any residential areas. When I was a kid I was fascinated by trains and always wanted to be a conductor...not so much anymore.

pathfinder

The funny thing is that modern high explosives, like TNT, plastique, and others, are really pretty stable as long as you do not have a primer with you.

That's why trainloads of the stuff could be shipped at once - literally thousands of tons of it. ( One boxcar typically carries 50 to 100 thousand pounds of stuff)

Trains are very cool - I can still see the appeal of the steam locomotives and the steel rails.

cwphotos

Very very nice. We dont have cool stuff like that by me.

mANVIL

cwphotos wrote:

Very very nice. We dont have cool stuff like that by me.

CW - don't be so sure!

I see from your website you're from Wisconsin. You have Milwaukee to your north and the wonderful cities of Chicago and Gary, Indiana to your south. Gary has the headquarters for the US Steel corporation and the largest operating steel mill in the country. Milwaukee has the former Pabst Brewery (was the largest brewery in the country at one time) which is over 20 acres on industrial buildings and is currently being converted into residential units. While on-site access to these may be off limits or very difficult to obtain, you can still get some great shots at nearby vantage points.

jziegler

mANVIL,

Some great shots here. I've looked a couple times now and finally got around to replying. What an amazing complex to just abandon. And surprising that the locomotive is still there, I'm surprised the army didn't take it with them. But, it makes for a great shot. The closeup on the horn is nice, don't see anything like that very much.

CW,

mANVIL is probably right, there's probably more around you than you think. Pick any small town that once had any big industry that it has lost, and there will be some remains. Perhaps nothing as big as this, but at least some old warehouses, and old factory, or maybe just an old train station. I'm noticing more of it all the time, because I'm looking for it more now.

Regards,
James

tobers

Wow! That looks like an excellent explore.

You should post on the urban exploration forum www.28dayslater.co.uk