We thought about doing an overnight wander but I couldn’t decide where we should go. On top of that I couldn’t find any cheap hotels at the spots I was considering so we decided against it and did a shorter afternoon wander, checking in on some places we’d been in the past.
I love the picture at the top of this post because it is what small town Illinois around here is all about: railroads, grain elevators and little business districts, some thriving, some virtually abandoned.
Below is a house outside of Kansas, Illinois. I’d taken pictures of it a few years back and wondered how it was doing. Unfortunately, I was not there at an optimum time for pictures (damn sun) but it has had significantly more decay.
From Facebook, “Joseph Zink built the house and it was a “stop over” for the stage coach, (Coach Road) which ran east and west, and was a place where they changed horses. One of the barns is still there(partly).” Sounds likely in that Joseph Zink was born in Indiana in the 1830s and in Kansas by the 1850’s.
Below is a picture from 2019—you can see that although the roof had already fallen in, it still had the full, albeit crumbling, full facade. I don’t imagine it is long for this world.
Sometimes downtown streets of these little towns look empty but it isn’t until you go down the back alleys that you realize how very, very empty they are.
Onward.