Forgotten Lands, Places and Transit

Across the American landscape, the physical remnants of infrastructure often outlast the memories of the people who built it. Rail alignments fade into forests, canals become property lines, and tunnels persist long after their original purpose is forgotten. Few sites better illustrate this imbalance between enduring infrastructure and erased labor than Hawks Nest, West Virginia , a place where industrial ambition, hydroelectric power, and human catastrophe intersected inside a mountain. I first heard about this disaster on a podcast called Lawless Planet , which goes in depth into environmental disasters and general criminal activity as it relates to the clean energy transition. I highly recommend it as far as podcasts go, and that's coming from someone who typically dislikes the true crime genre. It should be noted that non-fossil fuel based energy sources are nothing new; and the Hawks Nest Dam project, were it constructed today, would likely be labeled as a clean energy project...

Nestled along the eastern shore of Utah Lake, beneath the looming presence of the Wasatch Mountains, the Geneva Steel Plant in Vineyard, Utah stood for decades as one of the most consequential industrial sites in the American West. (Location on our Ghost Towns map) For much of the mid to late twentieth century, Geneva Steel was not just a factory. It was a place that reshaped landscapes, transportation networks, labor patterns, and the daily rhythms of Utah County. Its rise and decline reflect a broader story of wartime urgency, postwar optimism, and the slow unraveling of heavy industry in the interior West. Geneva Steel Mill in 1942. Image by  Andreas Feininger - Library of Congress Geneva Steel was a product of World War II. In 1941, the federal government recognized a strategic vulnerability in American steel production. Most major steel plants were clustered in the Midwest and along the coasts, leaving them exposed to potential attack and supply disruption. Utah offered some...

In the context of railway infrastructure, "Transcontinental" typically refers to the original Transcontinental Railroad , particularly in the United States. But very few pieces of infrastructure can truly be considered transcontinental.  One that can be considered is Egypt's El Ferdan Railway Bridge  ( Google Maps ), which is a dual swing bridge that spans the Suez Canal , connecting Africa with Asia. The bridge opened in 2001, and is (or was) the longest swing bridge in the world. Between 2001-2015, it served the Egyptian National Railway . Between 2015 and 2024, it was out of service, partly due to the Suez Canal's reconstruction and expansion, but was reactivated and expanded in late 2024 to once again reopen. This blog was originally posted in between that time frame, so context has been added to reflect the fact that it is now once again in service. Railway bridges over the Suez Canal have had a tendency to not last very long, as it was the fifth bridge over the ...

The Dodge City Montezuma & Trinidad Railway was a short-lived railroad operating between Dodge City and Montezuma, KS. ( Right of Way )  Looking at a modern rail map of southwest Kansas, one might reasonably assume that Dodge City and Montezuma have always been connected by the same railroad. After all, the two towns remain linked by rail today.  Photo: City of Montezuma, KS But this apparent continuity hides a short-lived and politically motivated predecessor: the Dodge City, Montezuma & Trinidad Railway; a railroad whose entire existence was born out of a county seat dispute and whose abandonment reshaped the geography of Gray County. Original alignment. The Montezuma we know today was not the original town to bear that name. The present-day community was platted by the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway in 1912, nearly twenty years after the first Montezuma had already faded into obscurity. That original town, now a ghost town, briefly flourished thanks ...

I try my best on this blog to stay out of current political matters and almost always stay out of social issues. That said, I cannot stay about the threats to the rails to trails movement as we know it. Across the United States, there are old rail corridors that never quite disappeared. We have visited many of them on this blog: lines where rusted steel and weed-choked ballast once marked an ending, now quietly repurposed into trails filled with movement and life. These are the rail-trails , places where locomotives once thundered and where today you are more likely to hear conversation, bicycle chains, or the crunch of gravel underfoot. They have become connective tissue for places long left on the margins, stitching together urban neighborhoods, suburban downtowns, and rural villages that lost their rail service generations ago. In doing so, they have offered something rare in modern infrastructure: a second chance at connection, memory, and renewal. Walking the Wabash Railroad Righ...

At first glance, there is nothing remarkable about Roy Hoppy Hopkins Drive. It cuts a clean arc through southern De Soto Parish, Louisiana, serving industrial traffic that moves between the parish’s plants and the industrial park. Or at least, it would if there was any actual activity in the Ward II Industrial Park , which as of late 2025, appears completely barren. Yet this road surrounds a much more interesting and historic place; quietly fenced and immovable, lies a small cemetery that predates the road that now encircles it. As is the genesis of many of my discoveries, I came across a cemetery located in the middle of a roundabout while looking somewhat-aimlessly at Google Maps: Harrison-Harrell Cemetery on our Abandoned Cemeteries Map This roadway is part of an industrial/logistics corridor that was constructed in the early 2000's according to aerial imagery. The cemetery was only accessible via LA 170 to the east before Hopkins Dr was both extended and improved to connect to ...

Tucked off a narrow, unpaved dead-end road just south of the hamlet of Dover Plains in Dutchess County, New York , lies a place that seems suspended in time, and drenched in myth. That place is Oniontown . Despite being only roughly 1½ hours by car from the bright lights of New York City , it sits in what feels like a remote no-man’s-land of folklore, suspicion, and social neglect.  Richard Wilcox Home, 1947 . Getty Images Having recently driven through the Hudson Valley between New York and Boston, the area that I'd first heard about from Atlas Obscura came to mind again, especially with how rich of an area I drove through in comparison to the zeitgeist surrounding Oniontown. If you imagine a more neglected corner of the Hudson Valley where the trees close in, the pavement ends, and a single strip of gravel leads you toward the woods, well your imagination is going to be pretty close to Oniontown. The paved road ends, and beyond it you’ll find trailers, modest ranch-style house...