Archives: Locations

This is a gallery of abandoned and forgotten communities in West Virginia.

The abandoned lime kilns at Eagle Rock, Virginia were operated by a series of entities between 1878 and 1954.

The former Ashland Oil and Refining Company Home Office was located at the corner of Winchester Avenue and 14th Street in downtown Ashland, Kentucky. After being abandoned for a number of years, it was demolished in 2022.

Tri-County Mall was an enclosed shopping mall in Springdale, Ohio. It opened in 1960 as an open-air shopping center and enclosed in 1967-68. Tri-County is being redeveloped into a massive mixed-use residential and commercial project that will leave portions of the original mall intact.

Briceville is a former coal camp developed by the Knoxville Iron Company in Anderson County, Tennessee.

The Tibbals Flooring Company (and later Armstrong Flooring) is a former parquet and residential hardwood flooring manufacturer in Tennessee.

The abandoned Tunnel Nos. 3 and 4 along the Cincinnati, New Orleans, and Texas Pacific Railway is located near Burnside, Kentucky.

The 3.9-mile Cincinnati & Southern Ohio River Railroad (C&SOR) was completed from the Cincinnati, Indianapolis, St. Louis & Chicago Railway (CISL&C) in Lawrenceburg to 3rd Street in Aurora, 1 in 1886 at the cost of $80,000. 3 4 It was originally projected to parallel the Ohio River and reach Jeffersonville or New Albany, but the line was undercapitalized from its initialization and never finished to its intended destinations. 4 Despite this, the C&SOR was able to serve local industries in Lawrenceburg and Aurora despite paralleling the Ohio & Mississippi Railroad its entire length. The C&SOR was sold to the Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago & St. Louis Railway (CCC&StL) Big Four) on December 15, 1913, becoming its Aurora Branch. 3 The Big Four was officially folded into the New York Central Railroad (NYC) in 1930. In that same year, the last passenger train operated over the line. Penn Central (PC) then owned the Aurora Branch after the NYC and Pennsylvania merged in 1968. In 1976, PC’s Aurora Branch was folded into Conrail’s L&A Running Track. 5 Conrail abandoned the branch between Lawrenceburg and Aurora in 1979, and from Lawrenceburg Junction to Lawrenceburg in 1991. 2 5 In 1994, 9 a rail-to-trail project was proposed for the former Aurora Branch between Lawrenceburg and Aurora, starting at Lawrenceburg’s Levee Park and proceeding west, crossing Tanners Creek on a restored truss bridge, over Wilson Creek over a rebuilt wood trestle, over Hogan Creek via the existing George Street Bridge, and terminate at Lesko Park in…

The Norfolk & Western Railway Pocahontas Branch is an abandoned 4½-mile coal-hauling rail line near Pocahontas, Virginia.

In Ohio, many abandoned houses stand as silent witnesses to the state’s industrial decline and population shifts, their empty frames and crumbling facades marking the passage of once-thriving communities. These structures, scattered across rural landscapes and urban neighborhoods alike, offer poignant reminders of economic cycles and changing American dreams.