First there was a Mountain..

This blog has been free from controversy for  while but that might change with today's post.
You're probably wondering what could be controversial about a mountain, it's not the mountain itself which is the issue, but  our old friend geographical renaming.
The McKinley/Denali naming dispute is quite complicated but I'll try my best to write about it.
For some reason I always believed that Mt McKinley was given that name as a mark of respect after President McKinley was assassinated in but that is not the case.
It actually got the name unofficially in 1896 when McKinley was only a presidential candidate, not becoming president until a year later. It became the official name in 1917 ,16 years after McKinley died. The was also the year that the National Park of the same name was established. 
Prior to 1896, the mountain had a number of names locally. To the Kuyokon people it was known as Denali, to the Dena'ina people it was  Dghelay Ka'a and during the Russian ownership of Alaska it was Bolshaya Gora, these translate to "The tall one" and "the big mountain" respectively, appropriate names as Denali is the highest mountain peak in North America.  It was also briefly named local Densmore's Peak after a gold prospector who praised the mountain fulsomely.
There were always renewed efforts to rename the mountain to Denali which was the name commonly used by Alaskans and Mountaineers. The national park was unofficially renamed Denali in 1975 but people would have to wait another 40 years until the mountain followed suit.  The renaming to Denali was officially announced on 6th September 2015 by President Obama during a climate-change focussed visit.
This caused a lot of controversy with people believing it was an insult to McKinley and his native state of Ohio, incidentally McKinley never visited Alaska. Not surprisingly, Donald Trump was one of those opposed to the name change and vowed to revert back to McKinley if he got elected. However, when he became president, the two Alaskan senators , one of whom, Dan Sullivan is married to an Athabaskan (the language group to which Koyukon belongs)   stated they did not wish this and so the mountain remains Denali.
Strangely, postcards with the mountain labelled Mt McKinley seem to be easier to find than those with Denali but that may soon change.
The particular postcard is not dated though the back mentioned that it is was on the newer national parks. It is quite difficult to date scenic postcards but at a guess I'd say 1930s.

Hotel Farr - Dream vs Reality

Have you ever had a grand plan in your mind  for something which hasn't worked out, but what you did end up with was more than satisfactory only for that to eventually come to an end?
I know I have, and John S Farr has too.
Who was John S. Farr? We'll he was a coal operator who envisaged a 14 storey, 250 room hotel in Huntingdon West Virginia.
A drawing of his plan can be seen in this vintage card below. 

However World War I meant that constructions costs increased and the hotel finished up half the size as was planned, but was still rather nice.

Just days after the end of WWI, a pottery salesman became the first guest of the hotel, setting a precedent as the hotel proved popular with travelling salesmen in the decades which followed.
The hotel  changes hands and went through a number of name changes in the 30s and 40s before closing in 1965 . From the 1970s until 2014 the building had been used as offices, business as well as apartments, but has remained empty since July 2014 when a fire damaged most of the building.
The building does actually still stand, and the original Hotel Farr sign is still visible but I'm not aware of any plans to renovate the building. In fact it's very hard to find any information about the place at all, but thanks to postcards and postcard collectors it is not truly forgotten.

Bingham Canyon - Destroyed by Success?

The first blog post of the year brings you a card from a bona fida lost place, Bingham Canyon Utah.
The card is not dated but is though to be from the 1920s.

Bingham Canyon Utah was once a busy little town which attracted a workforce from all over the world. So what happened to turn it into a ghost town?

 
The Beginnings
As with a couple of the other North America towns featured here, Bingham County was a mining town .  It's named after Thomas and Sanford Bingham the brothers who founded the town in 1848. Initially the area was farmland until gold and silver ores were discovered there in the 1860s, the building of a railway a decade later, plus a switch to mining copper helped expand the mines and consequently the town grew too.

The Boom
The early 20th century saw the Bingham Canyon continue to grow, at its peak in the 1910s  the town stretched for about 7 miles and the ethnically diverse population numbered around 15,000. It was considered a true melting pot with communities from all over Europe making up the workforce of the mine. 90% of which was born outside of the USA.

The Decline
Bingham county faced two problems. The first  being that the geography of the place made  urban development difficult. Other  townships were set up and the population of Bingham Canyon began to move out.
Ironically, it was the success of the mine itself which caused the biggest problem for the town. As it became more successful and expansive it encroached on the residential settlement also mechanisation rather than human resources were increasingly used meaning fewer jobs and fewer reasons to stay in the area. This downward its 31 inhabitants voted in favour of disincorporation.
A year later the remaining buildings were razed.


Today
Bingham Canyon Mine is still in operation. In fact it  is the largest man-made excavation in the world and is considered to have produced more copper than any other mine in history it also National Historic Monument Status.  
All land once occupied by Bingham Canyon has been consumed by the mine and no trace of the town exists today making it a genuine lost place.  
  

Buffalo Central Terminal 1929 - 1979

Some of you may have seen picture of today's subject matter in something of a sad and sorry state on a few websites which detail abandoned buildings.
This blog likes to redress the balance a little and show the places "in happier times" although I'm not sure if there were that many happy times in the timeframe of the station's existence.  The glorious Art Deco building (you must know by now about my fondness for those) can be seen looking shiny and  fairly new  on this 1940s card below.

Buffalo Central Terminal was a working station for 50 years, with around 200 trains a day coming and going in its busiest era . The station was opened on 22nd June 1929 and over 2000 guests attended. Services began the next day, only hours after the revellers had stopped celebrating. It wasn't particularly good timing for the station as the Wall Street Crash which happened only a few months later, followed by the resulting Depression had a negative impact on the number of people using the vast station. Increase in car ownership in the 1930s also meant fewer passengers travelled by train.
Activity picked up during WWII but soon declined again after the war was over. The station was put up for sale in 1956 but negotiations fell through and 10 years later dismantling of parts of it were already being dismantled.
Passengers did continue to use the station until 1979, the last train to depart from there was on October 28th 1979. Ironically ,at around the same time , in my home town 150 years of the Rainhill Locomotive Trails had just been celebrated.
The station was neglected and allowed to fall into disrepair during the 1980s and 1990s but repairs began in 2003 and tours of the place began.  Restorations have continued and many planned events are due to take place there this year. The first, the traditional Polish and Ukrainian Dygnus Day,  will be held on Easter Monday in  couple of weeks' time. 
I do hope that this is one story with a happy ending. I don't know if trains are likely to run from there again but I do like the idea of these gorgeous buildings being used for something.    
You can read about the restoration here
http://buffalonews.com/2016/06/25/central-terminal-is-given-a-temporary-face-lift-thanks-to-marshall-crew/
You can find out more the station here
http://buffalocentralterminal.org/

Gone but Not Forgotten- The Majestic Hotel, Hot Springs Arkansas

I've mentioned before that there are some postcards I'd like to be able to setp into and this is one of them.
I'd love to be able to see this beautiful building in its prime and I'm intrigued to know what the people on the left of the card all in white are doing.
Curiously, I've seen a couple of different versions of this same card but with cars or trams superimposed over the horse and carriages. The mysterious figures in white remain in all versions. What do you think they are doing?

The hotel, built in 1882 and originally named the Avenue Hotel had an interesting and varied life before sadly being destroyed in fire 6 years ago.
The hotel got its new name six years after being built and with the change of moiker came a lift, something new at the time.  Curiosly it's the second hotel called the Majestic Hotel to feature in this blog. I wonder if the name is cursed. I don't really beleive in curses but I might make it a side project to see how many places called the Majestic would be suitable for this blog.
The building as depicted on the card was actually built in 1903, replacing a wooden structure and becoming one of the first brick buildings in Hot Springs. Although not part of the famous Bathhouse Row, the hotel did receive many vistors who were in town to take the waters and trams would depart to and from the hotel every five minutes to guests to the bath houses.
The hotel rose in popularity in early part of the 20th century and famous guests included The Boston Red Sox, the Pittsburg Pirates and Babe Ruth.  Could the people on the card be playing baseball? I wonder. The Pittsburg Pirates did spring training here from 1901 until 1916 so that is a distinct possibility.
The sender of the card (postmarked 29th November 1910) doesn't mention meeting anyone famous, just that she wishes she'd brought warmer clothes.
Perhaps the most notorious guest was Al Capone's rival Bugs Moran. Capone spent a lot of time in Hot Springs too and the two formed a sort of truce while in town.  During WWII, the hotel was used as a redsribution centre for American soldiers, but it opened again as a hotel in 1945 and still attracted celebrity guests such as Humphrey Bogart and Liberace.
The latter half of the 20th century seems to have a been a rather uneventful period for The Majestic though a million dollar renovation did take place in 1982.  Guest numbers dwindled in the 1990s and the hotel was closed and abandoned in 2006.
Plans to renovate the building were discussed the following year but came to nothing and now sadly never will as the hotel was destroyed by fire 2010.
The hotel is still fondly remembered by many residents of the town.

Update

Here's another version of the card, with cars instead of horse and carriages taken from the abandonedar website. Looking at it again, I believe the people in white might be fencing.

Source  http://www.abandonedar.com/

Ukivok, King Island : The Inuit Stilt Village

Ukivok on King Island isn't the most northerly abandoned settlement, that would be Pyramiden in Svalbard but the Inupiat stilt village in Alaska must be a contender for runner up.
Hanging on a cliff face in the Bering Sea, 40 miles from mainland Alaska, it also has to be one of the most precarious and isolated dwellings in the world.
In the 19th century, several hundred Inuit families lived  there and made their living hunting, fishing and carving souvenirs.
By the early 20th century, the settlement's only school was closed, over concerns about rock slides, meaning the younger population had to move to  mainland making island life less viable. World War II and TB sadly also contributed to the dwindling population.
By the time the postcard above was produced in the mid 60s only 25 families remained on the island but even they had left by 1970. The village itself still remains and is in quite good condition probably because its isolated location keeps it safe from vandals.
The former residents still have a proud and distinct culture and some have returned to the island from time to over the past decade.

Update
Thanks to research done by CarolAnn it seems that the part about concerns over rockslides being the reason for the school closures was not true. Many pieces about the island refer to social and economic pressures forcing people off the island. It seems as if government bureaucracy, under the guise of Western modernisation, was the real culprit. The rock side never happened and families were torn apart and forcibly separated for no real reason, children were sent to boarding schools thousands of miles away from their families and were punished for speaking their own language and adults were sent to live somewhere not suited to their lifestyle and skills.
Would island life still be alive and well if the Bureau of Indian Affairs hadn't interfered? It's hard to say but considering there had been a community there with a flourishing language and culture for a long time I imagine it probably would.

Gilman, Colorado

Gilman, Colorado as with Centralia is a former mining town, also in common with Centralia it was abandoned relatively recently but it doesn't seem to be as famous as Centralia.

Now on private property it is strictly out of bounds without permission though some photographs of the town in its abandoned  and sadly vandalised state do exist.

It was founded in 1886 during the Colorado Silver Boom and centred on the now flooded Eagle Mine. The boom ended in 1893 and many towns became ghost towns in the period immediately afterwards. However, Gilman survived until 1984 even though it was nearly destroyed by a fire in 1899. As with Centralia, Gilman was quite a thriving town in its heyday with theatres, shops, hotels and schools.


The abandonment of the town was ordered by the Environmental Protection Agency due to toxic pollutions and contaminated water, but by this point the mines were not profitable either.

As you can see from the card (undated but from the 1907-1914 period) the town is rather high up. It sits at an elevation of  2,700 metres on a cliff of around 180 metres high.

The town today is relatively well preserved and includes cars and trucks left behind by their owners.

For photographs of the town today, as well as information on other ghost towns I recommend the below link.

http://www.ghosttowns.com/states/co/gilman.html

For a detailed history and some really cool photos check out the below.

http://substreet.org/gilman-colorado/

Grossinger's - The Dirty Dancing Hotel.

Grossingers Resort Hotel was a  family run affair in the  Catskill Mountains, a popular tourist spot for urban Jewish families and the starting point for many Borscht Belt style comedians.
It is said to have been the inspiration behind the hotel in Dirty Dancing, a film which premiered the year after Grossinger's closed.

It was founded in 1919 by married couple Asher and Malke Grossinger but really hit its stride in the 1950s and 60s when Jennie, their daughter, acted as hostess. The emphasis was on glamour but with a personal touch and it soon gained the nickname "The Waldorf of The Catskills"

The outside of the building as shown on the postcard below (sent in 1967 by someone attending a banquet for School Business Officials) is fairly uninspiring looking.

However, the site itself was very impressive with  35 buildings in 1200 acres of land which included its own airstrip and post office complete with its own zip code.

The card (written in 1965 to someone's mum, someone with handwriting so terrible that's all I can make out) below gives some impression of the size.

The rooms such as the Terrace Lounge and The Pink Elephant Bar were bright and colourful. The former was modernised by Morris Lapidus a name synonymous with 50s and 60s hotel architecture.

There were a variety of activities the guests could enjoy, they didn't even have to wait for winter to go skiing as the hotel became the first place to use artificial snow in 1952.

There was also an ice rink and indoor and outdoor swimming pools.

  

Jennie died in 1972 but the hotel did still attract guests until cheaper foreign air travel in the late 70s and early 80s and changing tastes meant that resort hotels fell out of favour.

It was closed in 1986 and thirty years later the buildings remain decaying and abandoned. That is all except the golf course which is still active and possibly one of the eeriest golf courses around.

More information including photos of before and after can be found here

http://joe4speed.com/grossingers.htm

The Rise and Fall of the Lee Plaza Hotel, Detroit

I would to take a look at something which may have a happy ending.

The Lee Plaza Hotel in Detroit was once the cities biggest apartment hotel. The 15 storey building was constructed in 1929 in the Art Deco style.

Although it was originally conceived as hotel, it spent much of its life as an upscale apartment block with hotel services. The cities rich and powerful who resided in the building could choose one of 220 rooms which ranged from 1 bedroom to 4 bedrooms. They could also take advantage of a concierge, Servidor, 24 hour valet parking, beauty parlour, games room, library and a supervised children's play room.

While some people probably did stay there long-term, and who can blame them, many more used the place as a temporary residence such as the sender of our postcard who stayed there in 1941 while her place was being decorated.

Sadly the good times were not to last. The hotel changed ownership several times, was declared bankrupt at least once and guests dwindled as residential hotels fell out of favour.

In 1969 it, along with other famous buildings in Detroit, became a senior citizens' complex. However its troubles were not over and when an elderly resident was murdered there in 1987 more residents began to leave and the place was finally closed in 1997.

This century the building has been seen by many as a symbol of Detroit's decline from prosperity to poverty.

The building may yet prosper again. A Detroit native by the name of Craig Sasser bought the building in 2015 and there are plans to renovate the building and develop the surrounding area.

This is not the first time hotels have been redeveloped from seemingly hopeless cases. The King Edward Hotel in Jackson, Mississippi was empty for 40 years before restoration began in 2007. Closer to home, another Art Deco masterpiece the Midland in Morecambe underwent expensive restoration to be returned to its former glory.

For now though, The Lee Plaza remains an example of an abandoned building and symbol of the turbulent nature of the past 80+ years.

More information about the Lee Plaza and other buildings in Detroit can be found at the excellent historicdetroit.org

Centralia, PA

The above image is a postcard of Centralia, Pennsylvania dated 1914. A postcard from a place which no longer has a ZIP code.

Centralia was a mining town in the sate of Pennsylvania and although never a bustling place, it did have a sizeable population with hotels, churches and, as seen in the postcard, shops and tree-lined avenues.
The 20th century was not kind to the town, as WWI raged on, young men who normally have been working in the mines were enlisted and mining declined, there was further tragedy in 1929 when The Wall Street crash resulted in five mines being closed.
Worse was yet to come when in 1962 a coal seam fire ignited and is still burning today. This led to the town being almost totally abandoned and most of the buildings levelled. In 2013 there were 7 people living in the town and once these people leave it is unlikely the place will ever have a permanent  population again, though it remains a popular tourist destination.