Abandoned Psychiatric Hospital

I definitely feel as if I’ve missed the glory days of exploring abandoned psychiatric hospitals. While psychiatric hospitals still exist to some extent today, the widespread use of medication to treat mental health issues was the final blow to many hospitals that had already seen a steady decline in their populations and resources over the years. This particular hospital, located in upstate New York, opened in 1924 and closed in 1994.

The site was originally planned as a penitentiary, but nearby residents complained, so the buildings were repurposed as a psychiatric hospital. I’m not exactly sure how that swap pacified concerned neighbors, but the hospital operated for 70 years before closing due to budget cuts. The property was sold and several plans for redevelopment have been made throughout the years, but most of the buildings still sit abandoned.

The unique thing about exploring abandoned psych hospitals is that—like prisons—they were built specifically to keep their residents inside. The windows are barred, the heavy metal doors often lack windows and if you do manage to get inside, good luck keeping track of where you are or finding your way back to where you started. I joked that we needed to leave a trail of breadcrumbs, but it really is a small miracle that we found our way out without them (or accurate GPS readings).

The 900-acre campus once contained nearly 80 buildings, and included a golf course, baseball field and dairy farm. In the facility’s heyday, a staff of 5,000 cared for 5,000 residents. Experimental treatments practiced in this hospital included insulin- and electro-shock therapies and this was the place to get a frontal lobotomy in New York state, most likely administered by the infamous ice pick lobotomist—and owner of the Lobotomobile—Walter Freeman.

The hospital was built in the Kirkbride style, a plan devised to allow the patients fresh air and sunlight. Buildings are separated by courtyards and connected by partially underground tunnels, so once you’re in one building you can access several others from a central spoke. The central building contained a large kitchen (which was coated in a thick layer of ice, including the operating instructions for … the ice machine) and several dining areas.

Common areas are always my favorite to explore because they always seem to have more stuff—and hints of life—left in them. By far the best part of this hospital is its bowling alley, a common feature in psychiatric hospitals, but a surprise find nonetheless. In addition to being relatively graffiti-free, this two-lane alley had adequate light, which is rare—usually recreation areas are relegated to dark basements. The whimsical murals and ball left mid-roll makes the space feel as if it was just a few moments—instead of a quarter century—away from having been enjoyed by patients.

Abandoned Hotel

This hotel was one of the oldest resort hotels located in Sullivan County, New York. What began as a boarding house in the early 1900s, eventually became one of the most successful hotels in an area—known as the Borscht Belt—that was once a hugely popular summer destination for (mostly Jewish) families from all over the East Coast. In 1992, the hotel became part of the Best Western Hotel chain and it closed for good in 2000 after a fire gutted the main building.

Despite the smoke and water damage to many of the guest rooms, a corporation agreed to pay $4.25 million for hotel in 2004. The new owner had plans to build a 70,000-square-foot hotel on the site, investing an additional $3 million into rebuilding a 250-room hotel employing as many as 100 people. But those plans obviously never materialized, and when we visited last year the hotel still sat nearly empty and crumbling, much of it structurally unsafe.

Amenities included indoor and outdoor pools, outdoor tennis courts, ice skating on a 20-acre lake and snowmobiling. The outdoor pool now sits in a wonderful state of rust and decay, chair cushions, life preservers and buoys still floating in the murky water. The hotel also offered bocci courts, shuffle board and ping pong tables affirming my belief that these all-inclusive Catskills resorts (featured heavily in the second season of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel) were basically cruises without the ship.

Most of the famous resorts of the area have been torn down or are in the process of being redeveloped, but there are still hints of the region’s heyday if you look hard enough. It’s a life goal of mine to spend a night at the Cove Haven, a couples-only resort in the nearby Poconos. The Pocono Palace Champagne Tower suite comes with a seven-foot-tall Champagne Tower whirlpool bathtub (which is, as you may have already guessed, quite literally shaped like a champagne glass) and a heart-shaped swimming pool.

Monticello Manor

In 2008, the New York State Department of Health ordered the closure of Monticello Manor, an adult home located upstate in Sullivan County. Health inspectors found several violations in the for-profit home, housed in a former hospital building, and ordered that all of the residents be evacuated within 24 hours.

Safety violations included roof leaks that caused ceilings to partially collapse, peeling plaster walls, rusting steel supports, mold and bed bugs. The operator of Monticello Manor, Charles Benson, owned an additional nursing home located about 30 miles away in Roscoe, New York. The DOH order barred Benson from moving any Monticello patients to Roscoe Manor, which he closed voluntarily in 2009. But Roscoe Manor wasn’t much better than Monticello—that home was cited for 149 violations of its own since 2001, and left unsupervised, two patients wandered away and died.

Considering the shape it was in when it closed, I’m surprised that anything remained of Monticello Manor when we visited last year (despite my paralyzing fear of bed bugs). It was definitely one of the more structurally unstable buildings that I’ve ever explored, and the area appears to be frequently patrolled by the police.

Without knowing it at the time, we also visited Roscoe Manor (after exploring the Dundas Castle nearby) but that building was in even worse condition—the floor was partially collapsed so we just peeked in a window and left. The horrible conditions discovered in both homes are probably far too common—especially in for-profit care institutions—and I can only hope that the remaining residents eventually found the peace and safety they deserved.

Merchant Marine Cemetery

Down a gravel path in the woods behind Ocean View Cemetery in Staten Island, is a hidden cemetery sometimes referred to as the ‘forgotten acre.’ Nearly 1,000 men who served in the Merchant Marine were buried here after they died in quarantine at the U.S. Public Health Service Hospital in the Clifton neighborhood of SI (now Bayley Seton Hospital, part of which is also abandoned).

The Marine Hospital, dedicated to the care of sick and disabled seamen, was established in the 1880s. In the early 1900s, it became the U.S. Public Service Hospital and they would take in and quarantine sailors who fell ill as their ships passed Staten Island’s shores. A section of Ocean View Cemetery was purchased in 1901, after burial space became limited on the hospital grounds, and burials continued here until 1937.

There are people from all over the world buried here, some who died in their teens or well into old age. The small cemetery is surrounded by houses and several other cemeteries, but judging by the “no trespassing” signs posted around the site isn’t technically open to the public. There is a gravel access road at the northwest corner of Ocean View, and on the path through the woods I passed several rusted cars, small ponds and a herd of white tail deer.

There has been some dispute over the years as to who exactly is responsible for this overgrown plot of land, and on Veterans Day in 2011, volunteers cleaned up the site and placed a flag on each of the graves. Today you can see remnants of the tattered flags beneath the brush and leaves, and it once again seems to be living up to its name as the ‘forgotten acre.’

Dundas Castle

The Dundas Castle, sometimes called the Craig-E Clair Castle, is an abandoned, medieval stone castle-style mansion located in Roscoe, New York. Originally home to a summer lodge built by Bradford Lee Gilbert in the early 1880s, the land was sold in 1911 after Gilbert passed away. In 1915, Ralph Wurts-Dundas acquired the property and began to construct his castle, but he died in 1921 before it was completed. In 1922, Dundas’s wife was committed to a sanatarium and following a series of misfortunes the couple’s only daughter, Muriel Harmer Wurts-Dundas, was committed as well. No Dundas ever got the chance to live in their eponymous castle.

The property cycled through a variety of uses, including serving as host for a children’s summer camp, before it was purchased by a group of Masons to use as a retreat. Although the Masons still own the castle, it currently sits empty, with open windows and peeling paint, vulnerable to the destructive nature of the elements and local vandals.

The Dundas Castle was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2001. There is a main access road to the castle but there is a private house near the entrance and its inhabitants are not amenable to visitors. The property is also accessible by parking on a side road and hiking up a steep hill, but I’d caution against actually trying to get inside of the house (I’ve never tried so hard to get inside a structure with so little payoff).

The draw of a grand, fairytale-like castle rotting away in the woods is obvious, and despite the abundant ‘no trespassing’ signs this is definitely the most popular of all the abandoned buildings I’ve visited. There were several other couples and groups of people exploring in and out of the house while we were there, silently acknowledging each other as we explored various points of entry. Despite—or perhaps because of—its popularity, the castle appeared to be newly secured, complete with security cameras, several satellite dishes and what appeared to be a working internet router in one of the empty rooms.

Because I was sure that we were being monitored, we didn’t spend too much time inside of the castle. The bones of the house have some interesting architectural details (I love those arched doorways), but because it was never properly inhabited the interior isn’t as interesting as I had hoped. Picking through the stuff left behind is my favorite part of exploring abandoned spaces, but there isn’t much here besides fixtures such as radiators, bathtubs and a cast iron stove.

Abandoned Trailer Park: 2018

I first visited this abandoned trailer park in 2017. Kaylah of The Dainty Squid generously offered to show me and a friend around some abandoned spots in Ohio, but this trailer park was by far the highlight of our day. When I realized that my friend Shannon and I would be driving right by it on my recent trip back home, I couldn’t not stop.

The trailer park is in a pretty remote location, and honestly, I have no clue how you’d ever find it without being told exactly where to look (thanks again Kaylah!). Despite its seclusion, the cabins and trailers had much less stuff inside of them than they did a year ago, and everything was significantly more damaged.

The only thing of note still remaining is that perfectly spooky stack of books (minus, intriguingly, The Nixon Recession Caper). I took a nearly identical, if not better, photo of it back in 2017. My favorite is still Hearse Class Male, which I know for a fact is available on Amazon, because I just sent a copy to my friend JMP as a joke (but also, consider me intrigued—honorable mention goes to Uneasy Lies the Dead).

I still can’t find much information about this park, or why it appears as if everyone picked up and left at the same time without taking their possessions. Isn’t that the point of owning a trailer, that you can take it with you when you go? Most abandoned places have a post-apocalyptic feel to them, but this place even more so. To make matters even more mysterious, there is an active trailer park located very close by, and I’d imagine that this waterfront property was, at least at some point, considered desirable.

The contrast between what was obviously a once-vibrant vacation community and the twisted, rusty metal hulks that remain is staggering. Several of the cabins appear to have been set on fire, most have collapsed roofs, doors hang open and glass is shattered. I always wonder how places like this decay exactly—is it simply nature wreaking havoc, or do people seize the rare opportunity to destroy without consequences, taking out their frustrations by toppling refrigerators and smashing TVs?

It’s thrilling to explore off-the-grid places like this park, of course, but there’s sadness as well. Human touches like the stack of books or personalized trailers like the Serenity or The Escape Hutch allude to the lives once lived here but leave us only with questions—were the people who lived here happy, were they part-time residents, where did they all go, and most importantly, why did they leave in the first place?

Having the opportunity to revisit abandoned locations is not something to be taken for granted. The very nature of abandoned spots demands immediacy and there are no guarantees of what you’ll find (if anything) when you return. Documenting the way a spot evolves and changes is just as interesting to me as exploring a place for the first time and I can only hope that I have a chance to see this park again in the future.

Woodland Cemetery

I love exploring abandoned or forgotten places, but they’re hard to come by in New York City. Land is such a premium that nothing sits empty for too long and almost nothing about the city feels like a secret. As I was watching the (excellent) documentary, The World Before Your Feet, I was surprised to see Matt Green—who is in the process of walking every single street, park, bridge and cemetery in the five boroughs—walking through what appeared to be an abandoned cemetery. Luckily, it was identified in the film and I made a note in my phone, knowing that I had to see it for myself as soon as I could.

Woodland Cemetery is located just off of Victory Blvd in the Silver Lake neighborhood of Staten Island. It’s only a 20-minute bus ride from the St. George ferry terminal, but inspired by Green, I decided to walk. This turned out to be a mistake because—as I always seem to forget until it’s too late—Staten Island is very hilly. I’m not exaggerating when I say that almost all of the hour-long walk to the cemetery was uphill. I did take the bus back to the ferry terminal, but in the future I’ll do the opposite (bus there, walk back).

Woodland was established in 1854 by John King Vanderbilt, first cousin of Cornelius Vanderbilt. John King is buried at Woodland, while Cornelius is buried four miles away in the Vanderbilt Family Cemetery and Mausoleum, a private cemetery located within Moravian Cemetery and not regularly open to the public.

The ten-acre cemetery is still technically active, and there have been more than 22,000 recorded burials. While not considered abandoned, the grounds are definitely overgrown and in desperate need of attention. A group of volunteers is currently working to help preserve the historic cemetery but it’s a big, never-ending job.

Bayside Cemetery is a more notorious abandoned cemetery within city limits but I think Woodland is even better than Bayside. You also get three cemeteries for the price of one—adjacent to Woodland is the similarly shabby Jewish burial ground, Silver Lake Cemetery (1893), and next to Silver Lake is the well-maintained Silver Mount Cemetery (1866).

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Woodland Cemetery
24-32 Highland Avenue
Staten Island, NY

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Join me as I attempt to visit every cemetery located within the five boroughs.

Graffiti Highway

Centralia, located in Columbia County, Pennsylvania, became a virtual ghost town due to a coal mine fire that has been burning underneath the town since 1962. It is the least-populated municipality in Pennsylvania and in 2013 Centralia had just seven permanent residents. The USPS discontinued Centralia’s ZIP code in 2002 and in 2013 an agreement was reached with the seven remaining residents allowing them continue living in Centralia, with the stipulation that after they die the rights to their houses would transfer to the state.

The first mines opened in Centralia in 1856, and the town’s population peaked in 1890. World War I and the stock market crash of 1929 contributed to a decline in coal production through to the 1960s. And in 1962, when a fire in the town landfill, located in an abandoned strip-mine, was not properly extinguished, it spread into a maze of abandoned mines beneath Centralia. I was told that warmth from the fire can still be felt today through cracks in the pavement, and I think I felt something, but it’s probably more pronounced in the colder months.

In 1981, 12-year-old Centralia resident Todd Domboski fell into a sinkhole that appeared in his backyard. He was pulled out by his cousin, but it was discovered that the hot steam emanating from the hole contained a lethal level of carbon monoxide. In 1983, the government provided more than $42 million to relocate Centralia’s remaining residents, with more than 1,000 people accepting the offer while 500 buildings were demolished.

In 1992 all of the remaining property in Centralia was condemned and the fire spread beneath the nearby village of Byrnesville, which was also abandoned. A section of Route 61 was permanently closed in 1994 because of severe damage from the fire. In 2018, the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation ruled that it could never be used again as a highway and turned ownership of the three-quarters of a mile stretch of road—now known as the Graffiti Highway—over to adjacent property owners.

This change in ownership means state police are no longer issuing citations for trespassing, and word must have spread because on a Sunday afternoon the “abandoned” road was full of families adding their own spray-painted designs to the cracked and buckled pavement. While it wasn’t quite the desolate place that I was expecting—I could have done without the bros on four-wheelers—it was still a great place to get out of the car and stretch our legs amidst a colorful, post-apocalyptic backdrop.

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Graffiti Highway
Runs parallel to the current PA-61 (there is parking along the side of the road)
Centralia, PA 17921

Middletown Psychiatric: Kleiner Center

The first building we explored on the Middletown Psychiatric campus was the Solomon Kleiner Center. The modern brick building was used for occupational and recreational activities, but closed in 2006 along with the rest of the Middletown Psych Center.

Middletown opened in 1874 but The Kleiner Center came later, dedicated in 1968. The building was named for Solomon Kleiner, clinical director at the psychiatric center for 30 years. In 2015, a building on the Middletown campus caught fire—arson or a lightning strike, the cause was never determined—and when the flames threatened the nearby Kleiner Center firefighters doused the building to keep it safe.

Used for recreational activities—as opposed to patient housing or medical treatments—the Kleiner Center has a gym, bowling alley and art rooms. Signs still posted listed directions to various areas and when I saw “bowling alley” I thought it was too good to be true. A psychiatric hospital bowling alley has been on my exploring wish-list forever—at least since I saw one in Girl Interrupted. I was most surprised to find so many shoes in relatively good condition in the shelves and a few bowling pins, balls and bags laying around.

The gym has wild, undulating, massively buckled wooden floors that I’ve seen in photos of other abandoned schools but never experienced in person before Middletown. We were surprised at just how much stuff was left in the Kleiner Center—especially when compared to the relatively empty Tuckerman Hall. I’m sure the well-meaning efforts to save the building from fire inadvertently did more damage with a few fire hoses than 12 years of abandonment ever would have.

The Kleiner Center is one of the buildings (along with Tuckerman Hall) that is slated for redevelopment by the city of Middletown. In addition to all of the abandoned buildings, the campus currently includes a small mental health facility and homeless shelter. But the city of Middletown has encountered some complications, including the fact that 100 of the acres that the city wants to redevelop are actually owned by the town of Wallkill—with the dividing property line running right through the middle of the Kleiner Center.

Middletown Psychiatric: Tuckerman Hall

Middletown State Homeopathic Hospital, or Middletown Psychiatric, opened in Middletown, New York in 1874. It was the first hospital in the United States to use homeopathic techniques to treat mental disorders and probably for good reason—homeopathy is not based on actual science, and as it turns out, is has never been proven to be an effective treatment for much of anything.

Middletown also touted physical activity as a treatment course, and in 1888 a baseball team—called the Asylums—was formed, comprising patients, staff and local amateur players. Just a few years later the team was playing teams from the New York City region and in 1892 the Asylums only lost twice, both times to the New York Giants (the team that would become the San Francisco Giants after a 1958 move).

When it opened, Middletown only had 69 patients. The complex eventually grew to include more than 100 buildings housing nearly 4,000 patients in the 1960s. Through the years more mental health services were offered on a outpatient basis, and Middletown only had 80 patients when it closed officially in 2006. In 2015, one of the oldest buildings on the Middletown campus mysteriously burned down and several others are securely boarded up or completely empty.

Other buildings on the 232-acre complex have already been repurposed as part of the Middletown Community Campus. An article from January of this year states that the city has purchased more of the property from the state (for $1) with rehabilitation in mind, including the two buildings we explored: Tuckerman Hall and the Solomon Kleiner Center (deserving of its own post).

The photos in this post are from Tuckerman Hall, which appears to have been used for patient housing and medical services. There wasn’t much left inside of the building, but we did see a dental x-ray machine, lockers, medical cabinets labeled “treatments,” “lab supplies,” and “urine collection kits.” The walls have more peeling paint in muted institutional greens and pinks than I think I’ve seen in any of the other buildings we’ve ever explored and surprisingly few spray-painted dicks.

The small patient rooms are usually the saddest part of a place like this and when combined with the caged stairwells, I see little difference between Middletown and Eastern State Penitentiary. Attempts were made to personalize some of the rooms, but there’s no amount of colorful murals, floral curtains or uninspired artwork that can mask the suffering that inevitably occurred within these walls.

Meteor City Trading Post

Along Route 66, In between Flagstaff and Winslow, Arizona and after Twin Arrows and Two Guns is another abandoned trading post, Meteor City. Meteor City, named after the nearby Meteor Barringer Crater, has been a stop along the Mother Road since it first opened as a Texaco gas station in 1938. The original geodesic dome was built in 1979 and the post was once home to the nation’s largest dream catcher and a 100-foot map of Route 66.

I was frequently pulling over on our trip to photograph weathered and decaying billboards, but the three leading the way to Meteor City were some of my favorites. Meteor City—more than any of the other trading posts that we visited—made me wish that I could go back in time and see it during its glory days. The dream catcher is in tatters, the map is long gone and the name is barely visible underneath a load of uninspired graffiti.  

In 1990, the original Meteor City dome burned down and was replaced by the structure that stands today. It was then briefly shut down in 2001 and new owners painted over the map of Route 66 in the early 2000s. The trading post was put up for sale for $150,000, but no buyers were found. In 2012, like so many other once-thriving businesses along Route 66, Meteor City was abandoned. 

In March of 2017, Joann and Mike Brown purchased the property and began the slow process of cleaning up and protecting the site from vandals with the hopes of eventually revitalizing and reopening the post. We didn't see much evidence of Meteor City coming back to life when we visited in June, but I'm glad that such an iconic piece of Route 66 history has been saved from demolition, at least for now. 

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Meteor City Trading Post
40440 Interstate 40 Wb
Winslow, AZ 86047

Buffalo Central Terminal

Before our trip to Buffalo I reached out to a few people asking for any hot tips on abandoned spots to explore. There's a tendency in the "urbex" (I hate that word) community to keep spots secret, which annoys me even though I logically understand the reasoning. The Buffalo Central Terminal came up in conversation and while I was researching, I discovered that—while it has sat "abandoned" for some time—it's been owned and cared for by the Central Terminal Restoration Corporation since 1997. Once a month they offer tours for $15 and we were lucky that the tour fell on our last day in town (although we did have to leave early, ironically, to catch our train).

Although the idea for Buffalo Central Terminal was in the works for more than 40 years, construction began in 1925 and the terminal officially opened in 1929. The 17-story, Art Deco-style station was designed by the same architect that designed Grand Central Terminal, Alfred T. Fellheimer. The complex comprises several interconnected structures, including concourses, an office tower, baggage building and mail building. A Pullman Company service building, an ice house, a coach shop and a power station were torn down over the years to lower property taxes. 

The terminal hosted trains from the New York Central Railroad (its owner) as well as from the Canadian National Railway, Pennsylvania Railroad, and the Toronto, Hamilton & Buffalo Railway. Right after opening it was servicing 200 trains daily, although almost immediately the Great Depression and the rise of the automobile led to a decline in train traffic. In 1956 the terminal was put up for sale for $1 million. 

With the creation of Amtrak in 1971, service was restored to Niagara Falls and Toronto via the Maple Leaf, but the station was simply too big and expensive to maintain. In 1979 Amtrak opened the much smaller Buffalo-Depew station, and the last train departed the Central Terminal at 4:10 am on October 28, 1979.

The terminal was sold to Anthony T. Fedele for $75,000, but when he defaulted on his taxes in 1986, the property was put up for auction and sold to Thomas Telesco—the only bidder—for $100,000. He had plans for a banquet hall or to return train service to the building, but those fell through and the building transferred hands once again. Anything of value was taken from the structure and sold for scrap, aiding in its decay. The building wasn't secured and vandalism was rampant. At the beginning of the tour, our guide asked people to raise their hands if they'd previously visited the terminal, and when he asked "how many of you came here when you weren't supposed to?" most of the hands stayed raised. 

The Central Terminal Restoration Corporation has done a lot over the years to rehab the terminal, but a lot of work remains. In 2005, the concourse clock was found in an antique shop, purchased thanks to a public fundraising effort and returned to the terminal in 2009. Repair and restoration of the roof was completed in 2015, signs are being repainted and fixtures are slowly being found and returned.

In 2016 the terminal was a backdrop to both a Goo Goo Dolls music video and scenes from the movie Marshall, the production of which contributed $90,000 in cosmetic improvements to the concourse. While I would have loved to explore it on my own back when it was truly abandoned, I'm always happy when a grand old ruin gets a second (or third, or fourth) chance.

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Buffalo Central Terminal
495 Paderewski Drive
Buffalo, NY 14212

Abandoned Church

Before we explored the abandoned Wonder Bread factory in Buffalo, we started the morning by going to church. I wasn't raised religious and I've only attended church services a few times with my grandma, but the chance to explore a grand, crumbling abandoned church is something I obviously couldn't pass up. 

It wasn't immediately obvious what denomination this church was built for—at least not to me, someone who knows absolutely nothing about religions. I always try to research the buildings we explore afterwards, and I discovered that this was a Roman Catholic Church. The parish was founded in 1908 in an area heavily populated with German Catholics. The Romanesque style church, modeled after the Cathedral of Aachen in Aachen, Germany, was built from 1911-1928 with Ohio sandstone. 

By 1914 the congregation had nearly 1,500 members and the 170-foot-tall church could seat 1,200 people. Changing neighborhood demographics caused membership to decline through the years, and the last Catholic mass was held here in 1993. In 1998 the building was sold for $22,000 to World Wide Bible Deliverance Inc., a religious group that neglected—and eventually abandoned—the building.

Beginning in 2006, the church was sold or acquired by several different people over the years, during which anything that could be ripped out of the building (radiators, copper flashing from the roof, etc.) was sold for scrap. The church has been listed in the city's yearly tax auction for several years, but remains for sale. 

Because the church has had such a tumultuous ownership history, there isn't much left inside, but it's still a beautiful building to explore (and surprisingly light on graffiti). There are a few small stained glass windows that remain partially intact and large plaster angels stand guard from the edges of the domed ceiling. A beautifully hand-painted safe stands to the left of the altar in a side room, only remaining because it was obviously too heavy to think about moving.

The choir loft is still accessible and has one remaining wooden pew and the remnants of an organ. There is a skinny, rickety wooden ladder that looks as if it could deposit you onto the roof or into the bell tower, but the stairs were caked in mounds of pigeon droppings so we decided not to risk the climb.

A lot of the abandoned buildings and properties we explore are technically for sale—either by private owners or the city—but I always wonder if any of them eventually sell and avoid demolition or collapse. The optimistic real estate listing for this church claims that this property "has amazing possibilities!" and that it "could be converted for use as community center, apartments or office space." It concludes with a warning to not "let this wonderful example of architectural history pass you by!"

Two Guns

I had already been planning a road trip out west when Kaylah and Jeff invited me to their wedding. They got married at the ghost town, Two Guns, which was conveniently already on my road trip list (thanks to Kaylah, of course). After the short ceremony, JMP and I stuck around to explore the ruins and I can definitively say that it was the best wedding I have ever been to (and I don't see how any future weddings can possibly compete). 

Two Guns is located 30 miles east of Flagstaff, Arizona on the rim of Canyon Diablo. In 1878, it was the site of a mass murder when Apaches hid from their Navajo enemies inside of a cave on the site—a fire was lit at the cave's entrance and 42 people were asphyxiated inside. This cave, now called the Apache Death Cave, is still accessible by a rickety ladder but we were totally fine admiring it from above ground (and via Kaylah's badass wedding photos). The Canyon Diablo Bridge opened in 1915 and was used until 1938; in 1988 it was added to the National Register of Historic Places.

In 1922, Earle and Louise Cundiff purchased the land and built a store, restaurant, and gas station. Three years later, Harry Miller leased the property from the Cundiffs and added a zoo, gift shop and post office, and began offering tours of the cave. In 1926, the highway that passed by Two Guns was renamed Route 66, and Miller shot and killed Cundiff during an argument (although Cundiff was unarmed, Miller was acquitted). 

In the late '60s a motel, tavern, new zoo exhibits, Shell service station and a KOA campground were added to the site. The service station burned in 1971 and the site has sat abandoned ever since. My favorite part of Two Guns was the kidney-shaped swimming pool, which is now covered in colorful graffiti.  

Two Guns is a great place to explore (or attend a wedding at) because you can travel through time via the ruins of all of its past lives. There are rumors that the site also contains buried treasure and more than one dead body, and the only person we saw while we were exploring was a (live) man slowly passing over the desert landscape with a metal detector.

Abandoned Wonder Bread Factory

When David and I were in Buffalo recently, we had great luck exploring two abandoned spots in one day—an abandoned church in the morning and the Wonder Bread factory in the afternoon. The 180,000-square-foot Wonder Bread factory opened in 1923 on Buffalo's Belt-line. In addition to bread, the factory also produced Hostess brand snacks.

Wonder Bread was one of the first breads to be factory sliced and the company guaranteed freshness in every slice or your money back. Hostess introduced the Twinkie in 1930, and since then they've only been absent from store shelves for ten months—from November of 2012 until July of 2013—when Hostess filed for bankruptcy. Despite their reputation as a post-apocalyptic snack, Twinkies actually only have an official shelf-life of 45 days.

The East Buffalo factory was shut down in 2004 and the building has been for sale for $800,000 since 2010. Abandoned factories aren't high on my list of places to explore because they're generally sort of boring and often heavily vandalized. I didn't expect much from such a well-known spot, but it's relatively secure and still has a lot of stuff left inside.

I think the fact that it was not just a bread factory but Wonder Bread specifically, is what made it such an interesting place to explore. There's just something so optimistic and American about Wonder Bread and there are enough remnants of the brand scattered around the factory that you can almost imagine the smell of baking bread. 

The mostly-intact employee locker rooms add a human touch, with stickers and handwritten messages still decorating some of the lockers. Sometimes it's hard imagine these buildings when they were operational, but notes like "The torture is over!! I'm free!!" or "Prison life would have been easier," really give a sense of what the workers' lives were like (I'm guessing not great). 

Visible from the roof is a smokestack with "Ward's Bakery" spelled out in contrasting brick—the Ward Bakery empire included three independent companies: General Baking, Ward Foods and Continental Baking, makers of Wonder Bread. But the crowning jewel of this factory is its rooftop sign, constructed of huge, red metal letters that once announced to everyone passing that Wonder Bread was produced within—a fact that surely their noses had already suspected.

Twin Arrows

The Canyon Padre Trading Post was built in the 1940s on Route 66, but the name was changed to Twin Arrows after the construction of two, 25-foot wooden arrows on the property. Business picked up after the arrows began directing motorists to the gas station, diner and gift shop. Like so many other Route 66 businesses, Twin Arrows suffered after the construction of I-40, and it closed for good in 1995. 

The trading post is located between Flagstaff and Winslow, Arizona, on land owned by the five-year-old Twin Arrows Navajo Casino and Resort. We actually stayed at the resort the night before we attended Kaylah and Jeff's wedding, which took place at the nearby ghost town, Two Guns. In 2009, the arrows—made in part from telephone poles—were restored through a collaborative effort by members of the Hopi tribe and Route 66 enthusiasts, but the rest of the buildings have been left to crumble. 

I've seen fairly recent photos of Twin Arrows and it seems to be going downhill rather quickly. Some of the graffiti is thoughtful (or funny, like "Nothing Else Mattress") but other pieces are just unnecessarily destructive. I especially wish that the beautiful dimensional "Twin Arrows Trading Post" lettering hadn't been partially tagged over, and I would give anything to have visited this incredible little diner in its glory days. 

Twin Arrows was our first of many abandoned (or still-operating) trading posts that we visited on this trip, but it's probably my favorite. It had been on my list but I somehow forgot about it until we were magnetically pulled off the road by the two huge arrows, like so many Route 66 travelers before us.

Abandoned Diner

One of the things I love most about living in New York is that I never have to drive a car—but one of the things I love most about road trips is that I do get to drive, which means I have complete control over where and how many times we stop along the way. On our recent trip out west, I had wrested the wheel away from JMP (she caught on to me immediately but graciously allowed me to assume the reigns for most of the trip) and pulled off the highway to photograph some decaying billboards. As I was about to pull back onto the main road, I noticed a sign for the Pancake House Restaurant, and decided that it at least looked worthy of a quick photo.

When we pulled into the parking lot, it was immediately clear that the restaurant was not open and hadn't been for some time. The Pancake House was once part of the Fort Courage trading post, which was built to resemble a frontier fort and inspired by the 1960s show F-Troop. The trading post also included a gas station and a souvenir shop.

The entire trading post is for sale, but something tells me there hasn't been much interest. The trading post closed for good in 2014, but from the presence of Christmas decorations and a calendar on the wall, it appears that the Pancake House Restaurant closed sometime around November of 2005. There is also a Taco Bell Express sign on the outside of the building, but the inside looks as if it was operating as "Ortega's Tacos" before it closed.

The vinyl booths and kitschy light fixtures are still intact, and the inside is in surprisingly good condition for a building that has sat abandoned for thirteen years. There wasn't much left in the kitchen, but we did find some dishes, coffee pots, cups, fake plants and flower arrangements. The circular building with triangular details is beautiful on its own, and it's sad to see it just crumble. 

There was very little graffiti or overt vandalism, and much of the damage seems to have just happened passively. We did find piles and piles of poop and then I nearly stepped on what I assume to be the origin of these piles—the flattened skeleton of what I thought was a coyote but was probably just a regular dog. 

I didn't think there was anything better than diner breakfast at a classic diner, but we both agreed that exploring a surprise abandoned diner in the desert off of Route 66 was the highlight of our trip. I can research and make plans and Google maps, but sometimes you just need to pull off the road and have faith that the road trip gods will deliver you something unexpectedly perfect. 

Sailors' Snug Harbor Cemetery

Sailors' Snug Harbor was established on Staten Island in 1831 as a retirement home for sailors. Noted sea captain Robert Richard Randall—in a will drafted by Alexander Hamilton—bequeathed his property for the creation of Snug Harbor, one of the first retirement homes in the country. The only requirement for the self-sustaining community was that residents have five years of maritime service for the US, or ten years for a foreign country. 

Peak population of the community was more than 1,000 in the early 1900s. By the '70s the population had dwindled significantly—the home was moved to North Carolina and the property was transferred to the City of New York as a cultural center. I have been to Snug Harbor a few times in the past few years, but on my most recent visit I finally found the cemetery. 

The cemetery appears on Google Maps, but on my last visits it had eluded me. The L-shaped graveyard is located beyond the south gate of Snug Harbor, off of Prospect Avenue, right next to Allison Pond Park. The cemetery itself is enclosed by a brick wall, and when you peek through the (locked) gate it just looks like a big open field. In fact, the six-acre site actually contains the graves of 7,000 mariners who died at the Snug Harbor between 1833 and 1975. 

Each grave was once marked with gravestones bearing four-digit numbers, and then metal plates were used when the cemetery began to get crowded. These plates eventually deteriorated and other marble stones were removed and put in storage for their protection. You can see examples of the four-digit marker stones on display in the Noble Maritime Collection (housed on the grounds of Snug Harbor).

What I didn't know when I first tried to find the cemetery is that there are a handful of tombstones left on the property—they're in the back of the cemetery, in an area that the Snug Harbor residents referred to as "Monkey Hill." I'm not sure if this cemetery is ever "open" to the public, but I walked back into the woods of Allison Pond Park and easily found a way over the brick wall. The grass and weeds were nearly knee-high and I was skeptical that I would even be able to find the remaining stones, but I eventually located a few (and emerged with neither ticks, nor a poison ivy rash). 

The Trustees' of Sailors' Snug Harbor retained ownership of the cemetery even after the retirement home was relocated, and as I was getting ready to hop back over the wall, I did see a man at the front gate beginning to mow the lawn. I hesitate to say that this cemetery is truly "abandoned" but it may as well have been for how hard it was to locate and how forgotten it feels.