Years ago, I embarked on a nighttime hike to the Indiana Army Ammunition Plant in southern Indiana—a site renowned as the largest abandoned industrial complex in the United States.
Tag: Industry
I recently I visited the abandoned Hickling Power Station in the Southern Tier of New York on two separate occasions, and from my first visit early in 2017, not much has thankfully changed. Absent a camper’s fire in the turbine hall, nothing has been scrapped, nothing has been graffitied, nothing has been vandalized.
I piloted a drone over the abandoned Genesee Power Station in the Southern Tier of New York on a recent evening.
Along the southern harbors of Buffalo, New York are the ruins of several elevators. Some of those giants, such as the former Cargill Superior, and Canadian Pool, have been derelict for decades, but they can all point their decline to the development of the St. Lawrence Seaway and the unpreparedness of Buffalo’s industrial leaders as the reason for their closure.
East Liverpool, Ohio, once lovingly referred to as the “Crockery City” and the “Pottery Capital of the World,” is the classic definition of the Rust Belt. Much like Pittsburgh’s reliance on steel mills and Cleveland’s manufacturing plants, East Liverpool depended on the pottery industry because of ample natural resources, access to newly laid railroads, the Ohio River, and an untapped market.
The factory that produced the first welded steel pipe is partially abandoned. Wheeling Steel’s Benwood Works dates to 1884 when Riverside Iron Works, its earliest predecessor, became the second mill in the area to produce steel.
Several years ago, I was able to visit the former printing operation for the Crowell-Collier Publishing Company, once the world’s largest magazine publishing house, in Springfield, Ohio.
Before the completion of the Detroit Harbor Terminals complex along the Detroit River in Detroit, Michigan, most of the commodities and raw materials used in Detroit were shipped first by water to Cleveland, Chicago, or Toledo and sent to Detroit via the railroad.
The Fisher Body Company Plant No. 21, located in Detroit, Michigan, produced automobile bodies for General Motors (GM). The Albert Kahn-designed facility was constructed in 1919 to provide wooden automobile bodies for a variety of companies, later manufacturing exclusively for GM. As early as 1930, GM downgraded the status of Fisher Body’s Plant 21 as being inefficient. GM began moving body manufacturing from Plant 21 to other, more efficient locations. However, the limousine body assembly was moved to Plant 21 from GM’s Fleetwood plant in 1955 because its output was only about 1,000 cars annually. On November 29, 1982, GM…
Before diversifying into wholesale leather production in New Albany, Indiana, the Moser Leather Company primarily manufactured high-quality leather for harnesses and collar manufacturers.
National Acme, located in Cleveland, Ohio, was one of the largest manufacturers of machine tools in the United States. It began as the merger of two notable machine tool manufacturers, the Cleveland Twist Drill Company and the National Acme Company.
The Van Nattas Pumping Station, located in Ithaca, New York, was constructed by the Ithaca Light & Water Company in 1893. It was built on the site of the Van Natta & Jones Mill.
A few weeks ago, I revisited the Indiana Army Ammunition Plant (IAAP). This facility, renowned for manufacturing smokeless gunpowder and other ordnance, held the distinction of being the largest of its kind worldwide upon its completion.
Concluding a journey through the Rust Belt, the exploration of a temple, observatory, and factory en route to Cleveland, Ohio, provided a fitting conclusion to the trip.
The last remnant of the historic Stearns & Foster Company in Lockland, Ohio, came tumbling today as the smokestack was toppled over.
In an acknowledgment of an era passed, the twin coal-fired power plants at the Indiana Army Ammunition Plant in Charlestown, Indiana, met their demise.
During the Cold War, the United States led space exploration and research, but other nations, including Russia, have surpassed it. Over the years, various space launches and related facilities across the country have been used, abandoned, and left to decay.
Ghost towns along the New River in West Virginia are aplenty but what makes these three unique is that they lay within the New River Gorge National River. Prior to the creation of the national park in the late 1970s, much of the land was used for the production of coal and coke. Small, company-owned towns were developed for the miners and their families, and when those mines closed out—so did the communities.