Orewinners and Deadmen: Lead Mining in Swaledale

Guest Post Series

Photos & Words by Guy Carpenter

Swaledale at the start of the 21st century is known mostly for its beautiful countryside: A long and deep glacial valley running from Keld at the western end, to Richmond at the eastern end, where the valley opens up into the Vale of York. Rugged and wild, with barren uplands of peat moorland where the hardy Swaledale sheep roam and graze, giving way lower down the hillsides to the slightly more fertile soils around the river Swale’s path through the valley. The famous and popular coast to coast walk passes through Swaledale, and the Tour de France had a stage running through it (and over its hills) in 2014.

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Specter of St. Peter’s Seminary

Sometimes Interesting

St. Peter’s Seminary is an abandoned Roman Catholic education facility near Cardross, Scotland. Built near the banks of the Clyde River and located just a half-hour outside of Glasgow, it was intended to be Scotland’s National Seminary. The radical shape was penned by a now-legendary Scottish design firm, and paid homage to one of architecture’s greats. While the building won multiple design awards, it failed to reverberate within the ranks of the church in transition. The architecture was striking, but so was the building maintenance. Combined with escalating operating costs and a decline in enrollment, St. Peter’s closed just fourteen years after opening – and it has been abandoned ever since.

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Ghosts of the Duluth, Missabe, and Iron Range Railroad

Sometimes Interesting

Northern Minnesota’s economy has been powered by locomotives for over one hundred and thirty years. The ensuing boom after the nineteenth-century discovery of iron in the Mesabi and Vermilion Ranges ushered in a period of growth and prosperity for the operators of the Duluth, Missabe, and Iron Range Railroad. However the rail operator’s fortunes turned sour by the end of the mid-twentieth century, when ore extraction costs began to eclipse the commodity’s retail prices. Communities along the western shoreline of Lake Superior were devastated as port activity dwindled. Jobs were cut and rail depots – like the one in Two Harbors, Minnesota – shuttered. For fifty years the depot and roundhouse in Two Harbors sat abandoned, reminding of an era driven by coal and iron. The site was eventually razed, but not before photographers Dan & Cynthia Traun were able to visit and capture the buildings as they appeared in their final days.

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The Disappearing Aral Sea

Sometimes Interesting

Over one hundred ships are mysteriously abandoned in this desert in central Asia. You rub your eyes, but it’s not an optical illusion; no water as far as the eye can see. This desert is like any other, aside from the empty landlocked fishing ports, rusted ships frozen in sand, and former island with abandoned biological weapon facility. Actually, fifty years ago this “desert” wasn’t a desert at all. It was the fourth-largest lake in the world and supported a fishing industry that produced 50,000 tons of catch and fed over 100,000 people across nine countries. But after five decades of abuse, the ecosystem collapsed and the water retreated. Entire cities watched their economies vanish as the ships ran aground. Then the residents fled. Today the Aral Sea has lost 85% of its volume. In its place: A toxic and unforgiving new desert.

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Abandoned Venice: The Ospedale al Mare

Sometimes Interesting

This once proud hospital served the people of the Lido for over seventy years. The Ospedale al Mare was a product of alternative thought in medicine with an Italian twist. An innovative healthcare center, it was the only tuberculosis treatment center in the world which offered patients hydrotherapy, heliotherapy, beaches, and operas. While fine arts and ocean spray may have helped patients, they couldn’t help the hospital. By the turn of the century a lack of funding and the condition of the now-antiquated facilities were key factors in its ultimate closure. Files and records were left behind when it was improperly abandoned in 2003; over a decade later, it still hasn’t seen use.

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Buried from the public: Hart Island, New York

Sometimes Interesting

At first glance this modest island in New York appears unremarkable. The 131-acre dark speck of land has crumbling buildings, is off-limits to the public, and has not been occupied for the last forty years. Area residents might know of Long Island Sound’s Hart Island, but few are familiar with its long-standing mission as the largest – and least visited – burial ground in the United States.

For one hundred and fifty years the island has also been home to a prisoner of war camp, an insane asylum, a quarantine facility, a tuberculosis sanatorium, a boy’s reformatory, a disciplinary barracks, a Nike Ajax missile base, and a narcotics rehabilitation center.

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Abandoned Nuclear Project: Marble Hill, Indiana

Sometimes Interesting

Thirty five miles northeast of Louisville, Kentucky on the Indiana side of the Ohio River, a 987-acre property with crumbling structures sits abandoned. The land is the former site of the Marble Hill Nuclear Power Station, an unfinished plant which would have been the only operational nuclear power-generating facility in Indiana. But construction was halted – then completely abandoned – in 1984. Skyrocketing construction costs ultimately doomed the project. A change in social attitudes toward nuclear energy, increasing liabilities for the operator, and an internal scandal all helped contribute to the largest failed capital spending project in Indiana state history.

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The Dome Home of Cape Romano, Florida

Sometimes Interesting

Five miles south of Marco Island near Naples, Florida, six igloo-shaped buildings appear to slowly march into the sea. The deteriorating domes of Cape Romano have been rumored to be the work of extra-terrestrials, a community home of a secret cult, or a clandestine research facility protected by guards with machine guns. In truth it was a cutting edge home, designed and built by an enigmatic visionary with an eye for the eco-friendly and a goal of minimizing his carbon footprint. Abandoned in the early 1990s, Cape Romano’s Dome Home has endured several hurricanes and tropical storms – but it has been unable to win the war against erosion.

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