North Texas Road Trip June 2013–Anna, Texas, Celina, Texas, Pilot Point, Texas, and Mineral Wells, Texas

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Back in June, I was able to get a few days off in a row. So my wife and I decided to take road trip on some old Texas back roads. After getting inspiration from one of my favorite local photographers, Dwayne Masters and one of his North Texas road trips, I decided to take a similar route and visit some of his spots and do some exploring off some of the old farm roads along the the way.

We decided to Start in Anna and take FM-455 to Celina, Texas then continue on to Pilot Point, ending up in Denton, Texas for dinner. Stopping along the way to explore community cemeteries, abandoned houses, cars, and building through the towns we passed through.

Throughout the trip, I realized there wasn’t much left on this route to shoot, and I was going to have to do more exploring on my next visit to Celina. After finishing up in Denton. We still had about four hours of sunlight to use. So we headed up to Mineral Wells, Texas to photograph Camp Walters and the Baker Hotel.

Part 1 – Anna, Texas to Celina, Texas

Originally, my wife and I planed to start our road trip in Anna, and explore downtown Anna. But we got a late start as usual. So we started our trip by stopping at the Coffeman Cemetery just off of FM-455 and Hwy 78. The cemetery was on lock down and well maintained. So I took a couple of document shots and went on down the road.

Next we stopped at small Cemetery down a gravel road called the Alexander Cemetery. It’s a small well maintained cemetery that even had a small sign offering that plots might be available. Once again, there wasn’t much to look at so, we got back on the main road and started looking for more interesting things to shoot.

What surprised me about this route, was that there wasn’t much abandoned structures or cars. We mostly saw old farms, new houses, and new neighborhood communities popping up a long the route. We did see a few old abandoned farm houses and barns that were bull dozed and left to be hauled off.

As we arrived in Celina, we found it to be a small and well taken care of downtown area. As we explored almost every yard including those that were abandoned were maintained. During this trip, we mostly stayed around the downtown area and found 3 abandoned places to visit.

Abandoned Grain Silo

The first place that caught my eye was this single grain silo. There really isn’t much to this site. Although the silo and elevator do not look as if they are operational, but the building attached to the silo ( not shown) looks abandoned. But as you can see, the surrounding lawn has recently been cut and there are recent tire tracks. On my next visit, I plan on getting a little closer and see if I can find out more about this site.

This image was processed with Adobe Lightroom 3 and Topaz Clarity.

Celina Ice & Cold Storage

Our next find, was this rare ice house. Although its been some time since this old warehouse has stored ice, its still standing and still has its original hand painted sign. What makes this old place so rare is, that most old ice houses, were stripped up there installation (most old ice houses used 1foot thick sheets of cork for installation) and the buildings were lost to time and city growth.

As for this old ice house, I have no clue as to when it went out of business and what its last function was. If this building has been left to elements, its must of have been recently. The building and the property is in good shape. Hopefully somebody is still using the building for at least some sort of storage. As to its history, I haven’t found anything, and I will have to research more on it.

These images were processed with Adobe Lightroom 3, Topaz Clarity, and converted to black and white with Topaz Black & White.

Abandoned Grain Elevator and Storage Silos

Just across the tracks from the Celina Ice House, you can see a small grain elevator with four storage silos attached to it. For this shot, I cut off the top of the elevator show the foundations of a long demolished building on the same site. These silos and elevators aren’t being used anymore. From Bing Maps images, the top of one of these old silos looks as if its collapsed. Also, at the edge of the property is an old single wide mobile home that was left to the elements. It looks like they might have been an office. And of course, there is no business name anywhere on the buildings. So this might be a private individual’s grain elevator.

This image was processed with Adobe Lightroom 3 and Topaz Clarity.

Just Outside of Celina

On our way to Pilot Point, we came across a large a field of Sunflowers. It was so large we couldn’t figure out how to get to the other end. So most of the images taken were of the Sunflowers facing east. The only roads near the fields were these deeply pitted dirt roads that we could almost get our little car down without bottoming out!

These images were processed with Adobe Lightroom 3 and Topaz Clarity.

Abandoned Farmhouse

A few miles down the road, we passed by this little abandoned farmhouse. I really do not know what caught my house about this house, but it made me turn around and check it out. As I was shooting from the street, I noticed that house was empty and salvaged. This old house has been truly abandoned will at some point will collapse on its self or be bulldozed like some many other old houses.

This image was processed with adobe Lightroom 3 and post processed with Topaz Clarity and Converted to black and white with Topaz B&W.

Pilot Point

After the abandoned farmhouse, we didn’t see anything worth checking out. However, there were a few country roads that looked promising and I will revisit those options on the next road trip out that way.

Once we arrived in Pilot Point, we drove around for a few minutes and then I came up with the idea that instead of exploring the area that we should go ahead and eat an early dinner in Denton drive out to Mineral Wells to do some exploring out that way. It was about an hour drive and worth the trip.

Although the images for the entire trip is processed, I have decided to break up the images into several articles.