PLACE PORTFOLIOS - various travels over the years

---

Before the days of interstate highways and motels, travel between towns and cities was a much more drawn out process and not as widely practiced.  Travelers in stage coaches would stop for the night at stage stops along trails like the Smokey Hill or Cherokee Trails.  Four Mile House was one such stop and was established around 1859. I took my student Cole Tucker to visit the site last week and got some lovely photos of the place. Camera was a Nikon F3 w/85mm lens on Kodak Tmax 3200 film. 

In the winter and summer of 1987 I made two extended trips to Sylvania and Bowling Green, Ohio, to visit my extended family of Grandparents, Aunts & Uncles, and Cousins. This area has been called the "Victorian Midwest" and it clearly shows in the architecture and décor. My family didn't live in actual Victorian mansions, but there's still a clear expression of that sensibility. I remember putting a great deal of effort into this project, but I've only exhibited two of the photos.  Looking back at these images from 34 ago, I'm seeing them more as a historic record of a distinct time and place. The portfolio is pretty large, with about 175 images. 

In June of 2004 and 2005 I vacationed in New England and visited some cool historic sites towns including Yarmouth, Newburyport, Gloucester, Boston, Salem, and more. I visited some of the oldest homes in North American. I didn't take nearly enough black and white film photos, but here are a few.  

In October of 2019 I traveled to Arizona to photograph an archaeological site for the National Park Service. I decided to make a side trip to this amazing ghost town called Ruby.  It's about 16 miles from the nearest town in a mountainous area just three miles from the Mexico border.  It was the largest and most intact privately owned ghost towns I've ever seen or heard of. 

From 1942 until 2008 this large property located northeast of Denver functioned as a United State military production and storage facility for chemical weapons, bombs, and rocket fuel. Habitat restoration and demilitarization efforts on the site started in the middle 1980s, and in 1992 Congress passed the Refuge Act.  By 2004 the Rocky Mountain Arsenal Wildlife Refuge was open to the public under the administration of the US Fish and Wildlife Service. I've visited the site about five times since 2015. It's an odd mixture of history and nature that's worth visiting. 

My family lived in Montreal, Canada, in 1975-76 when I was 10/11. I remember thinking the architecture and history was cool, but I hadn't gotten into photography at that point, so there are only family photos from that time. In April of 2004, the Society for American Archaeology held their annual meetings there and I was fortunate to attend and present several papers. I was also able to visit Old Montreal with it's historic churches, and St. Helen's Island with the site of the 1967 World's Fair. I didn't get to do much shooting, but I got a few cool images. 

In the summer of 2018 I surveyed this early 1900s mining site.  The mine primarily extracted gold and silver, as well as high-grade mica during WWII. It was a relatively small operation with one intact cabin, a stone fireplace suggesting there was another cabin, or kitchen area for a set of tents, several wooden outbuildings, stone retaining walls, and several mine adits.  Places like this are pretty common in the Colorado Front Range mountains. They are fascinating yet somewhat ephemeral and fragile. They tell stories of the boom and bust economies that have characterized much of Colorado since the late 1800s. 

In July of 2018 I traveled to Yellowstone National Park to photograph a historic fire tower on the top of Mount Washburn. I also gave myself a day to photograph some of the parks famous natural beauty. Nothing can fully prepare you for the almost other-worldly scenes. You will see there are two parts to this portfolio, the architectural photos and the artistic landscapes.

Since the early 2000s, the Montezuma Valley in Southwestern Colorado has been experiencing something of a rebirth of the apple growing industry. The Montezuma Orchard Restoration Project has been surveying and promoting conservation efforts at many historic orchards. In 2015 I had the pleasure of getting a tour of the Neal Family farm. It was amazing, and I even got to eat several heritage apples straight off the tree.