Abandoned in part Lamy Train Station in New Mexico
Even in very, very small towns in New Mexico, one can still find active train stations picking up and carrying passengers in a more relaxed way of traveling long distances. Such is the case with Lamy Train Station that still has two Amtrack trains stop by each day. However, much of the station is now abandoned and is the final resting place of rusting train cars, engines, and cabooses. I have long enjoyed exploring abandoned places, or haikyo, so it was a very pleasant surprise to get to glance through the window of an old train car and wonder when it was last in service, and as always, what stories would it be able to tell?
Almost exactly two years later, I returned to Quarai Mission Ruins for a second visit (see first visit photos), this time as part of a drive with the BMW Car Club of America, New Mexico Chapter. I actually did not know for sure we would be stopping at these ruins, so it was a nice surprise for me to see them again. A lot has changed in two years, as I did not have the car i drove their in then, and I was still shooting with a DSLR camera, not the most advanced Sony mirrorless camera there is. One thing that did not change, though, was Quarai itself. Still not a single cloud in the sky there to enhance my photos, so I used the sun to create lens flares to add drama to the tall stone walls of the mission. Have you been to Quarai? Let me know in the comments below.
My work as a rural land real estate photographer takes me to some very, very out of the way places in New Mexico. You may have seen many of these photos on Jason Collin Photography before. On one such recent trip, it took me past Trementina, New Mexico, which like many tiny towns in name only, the one thing they have is a post office. Next to the post office I saw this ancient, abandoned gas station. I have a long history of photographing abandoned things, which I learned to be called haikyo, from my time first exploring them in Japan in the 00s. I even had an exhibition featuring those photographs. Let me know in the comments below what year you think that gas pump last filled up a car? Or maybe just a tractor??
Not quite a ghost town, not quite totally forgotten, but Lowell, Arizona is certainly in the past. Walking down its main street (and only street), Erie Street, you pass storefronts full of dust covered merchandise, classic cars, a Greyhound bus waiting for no one, pool halls, and a gas station that is not exactly full service anymore, even if you were willing to pay more than 22 cents per gallon! This place fascinated me. In front of the Greyhound bus I just sat right on the sidewalk for 20 minutes trying to listen to the stories coming through the cracks of the sidewalks, the walls, the signs.
Atlas Obscura is a great resource for finding odd places to stop when traveling between places. In this case, we were driving from Sedona, Arizona to Tucson and made a 40 minute detour to see the Domes of Casa Grande. Atlas Obscura describes these domes as being built around the late 1970s for computer manufacturing, but were never actually completed as you can see in the aerial drone photos below. What are the rumors for what happens in the domes and its tunnels now? Nothing less than maybe satanic worship. The area is totally fenced off with no trespassing signs as they have been slated for demolition, but still stood as of January 2020.
A place long past its hey day, Bombay Beach, for the curiosity seeker, can still hold a lot of interest. The beach itself looks like the wasted remnants of a beautiful sandy beach. Even the rock jetties and wooden posts have fallen into an eerie decay. It feels like a place that has suffered a horror, and that feeling is tangible to the visitor. Stride away from the water and come across a ghost ship, a mysterious cube suspended within a cube, and other assorted random forgotten things made into art or just forgotten memory. Bombay Beach is no longer a vacation destination, but definitely a place to seek out, experience, and then get out before one becomes part of the lost landscape.
I spent three hours roaming the desert in Socorro County, New Mexico on a rural land shoot. I had five properties to get to criss crossing along a 7 mile path. My very last stop was back at the first stop, where I returned to get some sunset and twilight photos of the property. On the drive in I noticed this funky colored school bus up on a small hill. After I got the shots I needed for my client, I trekked a bit across the desert and up the hill to see if I could get a decent photo of the bus. It looks to be not so long ago abandoned from the quality of the signs still, but there are shrubs growing under and around it already.
