When I was a kid growing up in Kentucky, I would travel around the state with my father as he inspected the fire departments around the state for insurance ratings. As I grew older I became amazed at his knowledge of the small towns and counties around the state of Kentucky. He was an encyclopedia. I am discovering in my old age, apples don’t fall far from the tree. This apple has since relocated to Colorado but the tradition my father started has stayed with me.
You may have noticed that I’ve been posting frequently about a few of the ghost town’s I’ve photographed, and that will probably end up consuming my attention for the next month or so, at least until I have to make a trip to Florida in late April.
At the moment, I am knee deep in working on my Colorado Ghost Town project. Road trips are planned for the near future. I’ve been bugging my photography buddies to join me (so far so good.)
The ghost town project is a big challenge. Not only have I been photographing them, but I’m also researching them in some detail. That means I spend a lot of time in my office at the computer, browsing the Internet. To date, I have documented 32 different locations and I have a to-do list of 51 remaining locations that I’ll try to visit and photograph. Plus, I will also need to write about those locations when I’m done. And, the list keeps growing. I’m finding new locations all the time, so I add them to the to-do list. It’s a project that should keep this old man busy for quite a few years, assuming I live that long.
My original plan was to include the ghost town stuff in a photography book, but I’m finding that I have enough information right now that it would overwhelm any book, so I’ve decided to make it an online subject via my website.
What you see on the blog right now is just a start. The plan is to create a more specific photographic feature with details at a later point. Not that this is an original idea. Ghost towns are a very popular subject here in Colorado. But, a lot of the information I have come across is fairly sparce on the photography and on the descriptions too. I hope to make it a good reference for those history buffs out there.
In the background, I’ve created dozens of documents about the ghost towns. I am also pinning exact locations on Google Earth so I can create travel routes and precise geographical coordinates of where these places are located.
The bottom line is that I’m a Colorado photographer and amateur historian and the ghost towns around the state are a very good look into the history of Colorado. I plan to do the subject justice.
