The Artful Engineer

As part of our quest to explore as many roads as possible in Colorado, my wife and I spent a day on a long drive—I think is was about a 400-mile loop—that took us east across the bottom of Colorado to within about three miles of the Kansas border, followed by a return through the Oklahoma panhandle and then northeast New Mexico. None of these areas have a lot people, but the route was sprinkled with small towns and the remains of small towns. Las Animas, in the far southeastern corner of the state, is one of those small rural towns that is struggling to survive. The large school building, above, was once impressive, but now is barricaded and abandoned. The building on the right looks to be relatively new and in use, so perhaps it is just this old building that is awaiting some restoration funds. The large expanse of dry grass in the bottom half of the frame could be cropped out, but I think it adds to the feel of the image.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen architectural pillars in such bad need of a paint job as these. The badly-weathered wood of the bases of these Ionic columns might be too far gone just to paint over, too.

There is something sad about old, net-less basketball hoops. I suppose it is easy to mentally conjure an image of children happily playing and contrast it with this lifeless one. The fact that the sign above the door is for the “maintenance shop” is, of course, ironic, as is the fact that the sign itself seems to be the only well-maintained thing in the scene.

The following three images were all take a few miles outside of Trinidad the following day. The front of this next building was unusual and out of place, but interesting:

In this next image, the abandoned house, dead winter grass, and leafless scrub trees all contrast strongly with the bright blue sky, pretty cumulus clouds, and snow-capped peaks in the distance. It’s almost as if there is a beautiful world out there that the house is no longer a part of. The fact that the back part of the house looks to be constructed out of adobe is an interesting detail, too.

Having driven past this abandoned restaurant early in that long drive the day before—far too early to already be stopping for photographs—I made it a point to drive over the next day. I would have loved to have worked this scene a bit, and maybe peek in the broken window on the right, too, but Dusty had clearly promised the dog next door some table scraps to keep an eye on the place. That was annoying enough, but when a few of his friends showed up as reinforcements, they were somewhat emboldened. I am fond of dogs, but don’t trust their mob mentality. Retreat was in order. I only ended up with three images, including this one:

Much like the first image in this post, one could argue for cropping away some of the foreground, but I think the empty parking lot is part of the story.

I hope you enjoyed tagging along on my quest to be shunned by tourist boards everywhere. I appreciate each of you who follow my adventures. Please share my blog with any friends that you think would enjoy reading it.