Back to the ghost town

Ghost town Gleeson, originally uploaded by torri_g.

I'm pretty sure that I mentioned in my first posting about the ghost town, that finding out what some of the remains of buildings may have been is difficult at best. So I'm going with what the majority of sites that I found said they possibly were. Which means going with that thought, this may have been the school building, or at least that is what everyone now thinks it was. When you look at what remains of the original structure it really looks like it could have been any number of things. Now it is just lost and collapsing like so many other things in the town. Looking for information and finding pictures that were taken maybe 20 years ago, there once was an arch over the columns. There were pictures that I could compare with my own and see just how much collapse has happened in the last 20 some years. Whole walls that stood in the pictures I found are now just piles on the ground in my own photo's. I've found it interesting to compare all of the pictures that I took to one's that I have found from several years ago. I'll say it again, this tiny town is fading back into the desert quickly.

Fading back into the desert...Gleeson

Gleeson Saloon, originally uploaded by torri_g.

This picture overall is just a huge mistake on my part, but one that I love none the less. Shooting through the glass window trying to get a picture of the mural painted on the wall of the saloon, because the building doors are chained and locked up tight. First I had to fit the camera through the bars on the windows, which meant I had no way of being able to see just what I was going to be focusing on. There was very little in the way of light going into the building so setting the camera to use every drop of it was interesting and I didn't come as close to it as I would have liked to. Remembering the fact that I was shooting through a window and would risk getting pictures of reflection seems to have been forgotten. All that said though I like how the pictures turned out. Always kind of funny to me when I can look at a picture that is a series of mistakes and like it better. The reflection is of what was behind me while standing on the porch of the saloon, but how it blends with the mural on the wall is what I like the most about this picture. It is the fading back into the empty desert look that I like.

Ghost Town Gleeson Arizona

Ghost Town Gleeson Arizona, originally uploaded by torri_g.

Moving on with the day trip last Saturday. If you want to see ghost towns I think Arizona is a great place to head to for them. In doing a search for information about Gleeson and the long abandoned buildings that I photographed, I hit site after site with just lots of ghost towns listed. The sad thing is that a lot of the history of what was there is just some what of a guess anymore. You can find the basic information about when and just why the town started, and the when and why of what lead to them moving into the ghost town category. But then you find a lot of back and forth guessing about just what certain building was. There are a lot of buildings in Gleeson the look like they have been bought up and someone is trying to recreate their original look and maybe give this old mining town a chance at living on in history. Even in their completely broken down state, the buildings in this town are still fascinating to me though. To walk through any area that goes back in history has always been interesting to me. I loved while we were in Augsberg Germany, walking on the old Roman wall, the church where Martin Luther nailed his notice, and the very first Luthran church that sits at the opposite end of the street from The Dom where he nailed it. We all walk where other have before us, and should take some time to learn about them and the places that they called home. Some just happen to be ghost towns now, and in time even that may not be there anymore.

Cool thing about saving the ghost town pictures till today means that this coming week I will be able to alternate between them and pictures of rodeo that we are going to today. Cowboys and ghost towns sounds like a good theme for this next week. I hope that everyone has a great weekend, and if you can get out and enjoy.