Dearfeild Ghost town #1

At the beginning of the semester in my photo class we were given our final project with the intent that we would work on it all semester long. For our final project we have to make a photo book, it could be of any subject, black and white or color, there were very little restrictions on our projects. I thought and I thought and I thought but I couldn't think of an idea that I liked for my photo book, there were a few that I started shooting for but I scrapped the ideas pretty quickly. Then one saturday I was out taking photos and just kinda exploring and I ended up at an old fort that was in the process of being restored for tourism. After going through there and the near by ranger station I began thinking about more historic colorado. This train of thought eventually led me to the idea of going to ghost towns all across the state and taking photos.

So I began to research about ghost towns across the state. The more I looked into it the more excited I got about doing this as my photo book project. At first I was just making a list on a piece of paper of all the towns I wanted to visit, but quickly this became unorganized and rather messy. So to make it more organized I put up a map of colorado in my room and put a pin on each one of the towns and then attached a piece of string connecting the towns to their names.

this map is probably epic than you will ever be

It was time for my first trip out to a ghost town. I more or less chose at random but ended up on deciding to go to Dearfeild. Dearfeild was established in 1910 by a wealth business man who wanted to make a community solely for blacks.

After driving for a good 45 min more than I needed to I finally reached Dearfeild.

One of the first buildings that you see as you enter Dearfeild

As soon as I got out of the car I began snapping photos. With in the first 5 minuets of being there I had already shot one and a half rolls of film.

A hanger was left among the rubble

Unlike the rest of the buildings I did not actually go inside the first building.

because it looked like this and I thought i might die if i went in

There were still four houses still standing as well as a few barns/ garages/ sheds. The final house that I went into was the most interesting. In an effort to keep the buildings more preserved someone had done some restoration work, this included putting boards on the windows of this final building.

Because there were boards on the windows I was not able to take photos inside due to the lack of light. I was also not able to venture into their basement which was a great disappointment. How ever I did learn that on future adventures I should bring flash lights as well as other gear on these adventures.

Looking at the last building from the other direction

Looking west out of Dearfeild.

the rest of the photos can be found here