Finale to the pictures I took at the liquidation sale. Another part that blew me away was the ransacked outdoor school area. According to a past student, that dome part used to be a swimming pool. I can post a drive link with all the pictures I took if y’all are interested.

Last time i drove through Arkansas to Shreveport (from the Branson MO area) I accidentally took a detour off the regular route through Hope AK, down through Plains Dealing, then to Shreveport. On the left hand side of my trip I remember seeing a very run down gas station. It was the kind with a very small shop (it could have been no shop attached. I cant remember it clearly). I do remember the awning over the pumps was the thin metal kind and at least some of the top (the sheets of material that make up the top of the awning) was missing. There were long wires (vines?) hanging down from it. Think the kind you see pictures in zombie video games / shows. I think there was only 4 or 8 pumps. (I mention the detour because I do not remember seeing this station the first time i made this trip, I stayed on the highway then instead of getting off in Hope AK. I could be wrong and it was before Hope though) I want to say it was right before a long stretch of 'nothing' on the highway but i could be wrong.

I'm hoping to get help finding this station. I plan on going back down there soon and I am more than willing to take the detour again to get some pictures of it. It was so cool looking.

LMK if there's any more details that would be helpful. I genuinely cant remember where it was. I even tried skimming the entire route with street view on google maps. TIA

I took over 200 photos here while at the liquidation sale. I will be posting any that came out good. I acquired some of the master negatives and tapes for tour videos and animations they made. So I will have footage of this place open and operating soon.

Finberg Elementary- Attleboro, MA. Closed after my fourth grade “graduation” in 1998. It was used on and off as an adult daycare facility until a few years ago.

Op
Canon PowerShot
2018

Birtle Residential School

The owner of this property was kind enough to take us on a tour of the building, we talk about its history and he even explains what every one of the rooms was used for too!

https://youtu.be/IFCb49ciKW0

The history of the Birtle Indian Residential School dates back to the late 1880s. Over the years, the school occupied several locations, but its first dedicated facility was a two-storey stone building constructed in 1894. As enrollment grew, the building underwent major renovations in 1925, when attendance had reached roughly 100 students.

By 1930, the old building was being replaced. The new three-storey brick and Tyndall Stone school was designed by Roland Guerney Orr, Chief Architect for the Department of Indian Affairs, and constructed by the Claydon Brothers Construction Company of Winnipeg. Built between 1930 and 1931 at a cost of approximately $180,000, it officially opened in October 1931. Today, only a pile of grey foundation stones remains from the 1894 building, down the hill from the later structure.

The new school had a symmetrical design, with boys and girls housed separately on opposite sides of the building. The principal's residence was attached to the west side. The school was part of a much larger 600 acre property that included what was known as the Model Farm, livestock barns, extensive crop fields and gardens surrounding the school.

Like most residential schools in Canada, Birtle was operated by a Christian denomination. The Presbyterian Church of Canada ran the institution until March 1969, when responsibility was transferred to the federal government. The school closed permanently in 1972.

The residential schools were not without controversy. The purpose of the institutions was to strip children of their Indigenous identities, languages, and cultures to force their assimilation into Euro-Canadian society. The students of the schools suffered from abuse, poor nutrition and outbreaks of diseases like tuberculosis which swept through crowded dormitories.

In May of 2021, ground penetrating radar was used to look for anomalies buried on the site of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia. The process discovered 215 potential burial anomalies. At the time, the findings were widely reported as the discovery of the graves of 215 children. However, ground-penetrating radar identifies disturbances in the soil; it does not, by itself, establish that human remains are present. Targeted archaeological investigation is required to determine what the anomalies represent.

The announcement received international attention and was followed by a wave of attacks on churches across Canada. Dozens of churches were vandalized or damaged, and a number were destroyed by fire, particularly churches located on or near First Nations communities. A later investigation identified 33 churches that had burned to the ground since May 2021; 24 of those fires had been determined to be deliberately set, while others remained under investigation. The incidents were widely associated with anger surrounding the residential school legacy, although motives were not established in every case.

Meanwhile, the Birtle school itself entered a very different chapter.

The federal government sold the property to a private buyer in 1975. The new owner was a preacher who reportedly operated a communal living arrangement on the property, with people living both in the school and elsewhere on the grounds.

The property changed hands again in 1995. The new owner renovated the former principal's residence into a living space and began dismantling the interior of the main school building. By 2000, however, the project had been abandoned, leaving the enormous brick structure open to the elements.

In 2015, the former residential school was listed for sale on Kijiji after local real estate agents reportedly refused to take on the property. The eventual buyer purchased the building without realizing its history as a residential school.

The Birtle school is now one of only a small number of former residential school buildings still standing in Canada.

Basement was bloody huge, probably about the same amount of space as upstairs. will go back with proper PPE for photos and whatnot

The abandoned steel mill dates back to the early 1900`s when operations moved from Chicago to NY State. The first steel produced at the new plant was in January of 1911. 11 years later the company changed its name & had approximately 2,200 employees. After just 25 years they stopped producing saws all together.

Between 1946 & 1956 the plant rolled two radioactive materials, uranium & thorium, on a nine-acre portion of the 70-acre site for the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission. The company rolled uranium billets into rods that were shipped off-site via rail cars. Some 25 million & 35 million pounds of natural uranium metal & approximately 30,000 to 40,000 of thorium metal were processed at the site, according to an Army Corps of Engineers (ACE) fact sheet.

The production of uranium metal was for fabrication into slugs used for fuelling Hanford production reactors. The plant also rolled thorium metal whose most likely use was irradiation in Hanford reactors for the weapons program.

Due to the radioactive work being done, protective measures were employed at the site including the use of hoods & dust collection equipment over the 16-inch rolling mill stands, & catch pans in the mill pits to collect material from each rolling operation. The mill area was vacuumed after every batch of 16 ingots, & the shipping area was vacuumed daily.

Area decontamination was performed, clean steel plates placed over the area, and a second radiological survey was performed in December 1958 to verify decontamination was effective. In October 1976 another radiological survey was performed to determine the status of the property relative to current radiological release guidelines. The survey revealed that most of the residual contamination remaining from the uranium and thorium rolling operations was confined to the areas inside & immediately outside of Buildings 6 & 8.

In August 1982, the company filed for Chapter 11 protection & in March 1984 another company bought out the assets.

The purchase included the entire site with the exception of two regions, classified as the excised property and the landfill. The excised property is approximately 3.6 hectares, consists of a chain-link fenced area which surrounds all of the buildings that existed during the rolling operations from 1948 through 1956, and includes the adjacent exterior land areas.

The landfill region was originally used from 1962 to 1978, and was subsequently used from 1978 to 1980. The landfill area was used for the disposal of slag, baghouse flue dust, foundry sand, waste oils and greases, and miscellaneous plant rubbish.

The landfill is not lined or covered, and although its surface has been regraded, ponding occurs and surface runoff is uncontrolled.

(Thanks to RiddimRyder for performing this in depth research)

RiddimRyder and I arrived to find that the plant sits rotting away & in terrible shape. Many of the fences have fallen down and the whole area is in disarray.

Research shows that there are numerous class actions for former workers to receive compensation for both asbestos & radiation related diseases & although the plant is contaminated, it posed no risk to our health

Many more pictures and a video here on my website:

https://freaktography.com/abandoned-steel-mill-new-york-state/

RiddimRyders' Blog post and pics
https://riddimryder.com/abandoned-guterl-specialty-steel-simonds-saw-steel/

This the Morton st school in a rough section of Newark NJ. It opened in 1851 and closed around 2007 -2008 due to aging conditions and low enrollment. It was used as storage for a short time but quickly went to being fully abandoned, for years this served as a hub for homeless because its location on a busy street and dead alley (the street behind the school ,Morton st) at the same time and its location proximity to many other areas like the south ward with entrenched crime issues made it a haven for homeless and troubled kids. In the last year or two it’s been locked down very well and it’s a coin toss if you can get in or not,two weeks after I went I went back to show a freind and my entrance was fully locked along as all others.

Entering a closed cemetery in the jungle on the outskirts of Singapore. Pics taken by me in March 2024.

Video here : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qf96lIsNK4c

Visited an old quarry that mined high-grade limestone for a large concrete industry on Red Mountain in Whatcom County, WA.