WSF is in a philosophical mood. You have
been warned.
This abandoned farm today made me think
about time, and changes, and economics, and human folly.
Located in the arid rain shadow of the
Rockies, this place lies a few miles south of the Pawnee Buttes National
Grasslands and Highway 14.
So many homesteads went under during the
Great Depression, and were abandoned, that “something had to be done”.
Occasionally the government gets it right (or more precise, government
employees) and the homestead were reclaimed, the buildings removed (with a few
exceptions) and the land allowed to return to nature. The result is Pawnee Buttes Grasslands. The
area North of Highway 14 was chosen.
A lot of hard labor was spent on this
farm. Someone carefully nurtured some fruit trees and berry bushes. The water
lifted by the windmills probably wasn’t the best tasting. Ground water in that
area usually is high in minerals.
The altitude there is about 5,000’ ASL. The
type of crops available weren’t well suited for high altitudes and dry land
farming.
Thirty miles further East things are
different. Out of the rain shadow, dry land farming works (most years). Years
of experimentation by the agriculture colleges have improved crops.
I do find it ironic three miles ESE of
this building is an inactive missile silo.
The house sits in the middle of a large
oil deposit with wells all around. Maybe the people were able to move to town
and live off the oil royalties.
11 comments:
Yep, I see some very old farm houses out here, all boarded up, and wonder about the people who lived in them.
I look at the real estate listing maps for my original home town back in Illinois, and see that my parent's second house, the house I lived in from age 5 to age 31, is 964 sqft. But that 964 sqft was my whole universe during those formative years.
We didn't have agriculture on the scale you did, and ranching (pig farms, mostly) was located well out of the city, so we got through the Dust Bowl pretty well, but got hit by the Depression like everybody else.
The Dust Bowl missed us, but the 70's killed us, turning the entire area from Milwaukee, down around the South end of the lake, and into Indiana, into The Rust Belt. Factories closed, Jimmuh Cahtah single-handedly killed Caterpillar Tractor, the bust-up of AT&T killed Western Electric, the steel mills went cold, and all the people that supported those industries got clobbered, too. It's the main reason I moved from Northern Illinois to Southern California, like some kind of "Oakie", I guess. No jobs I could find that paid what I was earning, and I was already on the low-end of that scale.
Don't mind the philosophizing at all. Do a lot of it, myself.
There are so many stories untold. The bones of those memories are scattered across the country and I join you in wondering how people lived, loved, and where their generations ended up. Likely scattered. The days when people lived their whole lives in one home, and did precisely what their parents did still exist in some farming areas, but usually ALL of the children are not accounted in that way. They move to the city and count beans for a living, or sell cars, or join the military and see the world (or maybe just Ft. Bliss if they're unlucky).
I had to get to Flagstaff AZ on an important matter yesterday and was exceeding the speed limit by at least double down a two lane paved county road when I ran into a mountain of snow - road closed- and a detour sign. It took me down a road less traveled and through the town of Mormon Lake. It's a small town, built on the shore of what used to be a large lake until a fault in the crust of the planet drained it over the course of a few days and most of the water went into the aquifer. Now it's a very large marshy area where elk graze and wild foul congregate. I think that there are some bass and possibly catfish that live in the remnants. I have no idea what people who live there do for a living. It's mostly vacation cabins and a summer trade, but there are year-round people. No store, no post office, no gas station. But there are stories. I'm sure of that.
drjim
LL
Think we do more introspection as we grow older.
I see old places like this and I wonder if it was a happy place or a troubled place? Did it shelter a big family or just am man and his wife? I do know how sad I was when they tore down the house I was raised in and the memories of my family there.
Good questions.
Those stories have been lost forever, but the bones stand in mute testimony that 'somebody' tried to eke out a living there.
Indeed. Wonder if their aren't graves somewhere in the weeds.
I sure hope they did and are happy with it.
But regardless, there's something haunting about these places and there's lots near me. Hill County used to be home to a lot of small farms/ranches not that long ago and now it isn't. Sometimes, beware of snakes, when you look inside the abandoned homesteads you can see everything still in place, as though the owners expected to return.
So I stand in these places, with a gun(!) and reflect on the lives that unfolded there, for better or worse.
I think we've lost something there.
It is sad, and the small towns that die when the farms die. I drive through them often. As a preference, I stay off the Interstates when I've no compelling time commitments. Little traffic and no verdamnit 18 wheelers passing each other with a 3 mph difference in their governed top speed.
Here in greater Northern Virginia, we see quite a few abandoned houses (build date circa 1945-1960). Developers have snapped up those properties, many of which have been "voluntarily" relinquished because of rising real-estate taxes. It takes forever to get the demo and rebuild permits. Meanwhile, the meth heads are stripping these houses for anything thing can sell.
In Northern Colorado, the City of Thornton (Denver suburb) has been buying up water right from small farmers for years. The local catch phrase is,"Buy and Dry'.
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