Ghosts Long Gone
The Washington Post has an article that will fascinate history buffs. It is about the ghost towns of western Maryland, far up the Potomac river. Towns that once had houses, schools, churches and people but now are completely gone. They died when the coal mines closed, some lasting until the 1960s but absorbed by the forests now. Some people are trying to capture the histories of these places before the last of their former residents die.
VINDEX, Md. You could say that this old town is just a memory now, but even that might be giving it too much credit.
Actual memories of the place, from back when it had a school, two churches and a row of flimsy houses built by the coal company, are scarce now. The people who saw it that way are almost all gone.
And here, even in the center of Vindex, there are almost no traces of it left. The tallest standing structure is a short flight of concrete steps, which once led up to the company store. They now sit, odd and alone, in the middle of an Appalachian forest.
"This is it," said Dan Whetzel, a local historian, whacking through underbrush to reach them. "This is the heart of town."
Vindex is a Potomac River ghost town, one of about 11 coal-mining villages that sit abandoned near the river's headwaters in Western Maryland and West Virginia. They make for scenes that don't seem to belong within a few hours' drive of Washington: foundation holes, broken-backed bridges, mossy stairs that look like part of a jungle ruin.
Historians have begun trying to record the stories of these lost places while former residents are still around to tell them, holding on to a culture that might otherwise disappear. The researchers' fear is that the towns will soon become something worse than just dead: They'll be forgotten completely.
"People lived here until the '60s," Whetzel said, looking at the woods that have grown up in place of Vindex. "It's unbelievable, isn't it?"
There's an old ghost town in the Adirondacks called Tahawus. Most of it is gone now, abandoned after their iron/titanium mine ceased operations. There are pictures from a few years ago, but the Wikipedia entry mentions that those may all be gone now.
By feeblemind, October 3, 2007 @ 8:21 pm
There are probably 100s of such towns on the Great Plains.