I grew up hiking with my dad and it was not unheard of that we would occasionally come across abandoned structures and explore them together. I assume, for me, this is how it all started. Sometimes it was old wrecked houses, sometimes it was industrial structures, sometimes we found old cattle-ranching infrastructure. We always found it fascinating to explore things and speculate about what things might have been used for, and we both found the run-down aesthetic appealing for reasons neither of us could really articulate.

By my late teens, I would go on my own hikes and explore abandoned buildings in our local area from time to time, without really being aware that it was substantially more dangerous. I also made friends online with other people who liked to explore abandoned buildings and even a sub-group of them who, like me, also enjoyed photography. So this was how I was introduced to “urbex” or urban exploration.

This exploration of the local abandoned pipe company was one of my favorite explorations, although it was cut short after I accidentally triggered an alarm system and had to flee. I think I honestly got better photos from a lot of the other places I looked at over the years–in these early years my skills were still pretty rough and I was only really being deliberate about maybe 50% of my shots, but the ghostly abandoned feeling to this place was creepy from start to finish, and I felt unsettled and as if I was being watched the entire time I was there.

Entering the property through a hole in the fence in the northwest corner, the immediate area had basically been reclaimed by nature. I’m assuming the pond out there would have been drained by the pump I got photos of, but since it was no longer operating that section of the property had flooded. I really liked the look of the industrial stuff overgrown with plant life and I wish I’d spent more time getting some shots of this.

Lots of wandering and getting shots of random details I found.

I thought these offices were really fascinating. One of them had already been thoroughly broken into, but the smaller of the two was only accessible via a very small window about 5 feet high on the door. Naturally I had to climb inside. In climbing back out the broken window, my arm got caught and I almost broke/dislocated my shoulder. Luckily I was more flexible then than I am now or else my little adventure would have ended right then. The last photo is my stupid face after hurting myself. I guess I felt compelled to document the face of a man who makes bad decisions. Oh, and the nifty safety glasses I found on a desk.

More aimless wandering, and also a photo of my arm where it had gotten stuck in the window. Brutal injury, I know.

I had seen this tall structure from far away for over a decade, so I was pretty excited to finally have a chance to climb it, but this area of the facility felt really unnerving, and it smelled awful. The dark pit that the ladder descended into smelled like death, and I can only assume that if a body hadn’t been dumped there, either a homeless person fell in and died or some kind of coyote or stray dog or something. That pit had the unmistakable smell of a rotting carcass, which is a smell you never really forget if you’ve smelled it once. My first time I was about 8 years old and found a butchered sheep or goat or something of about that size on the side of the road while walking around near my neighborhood as a kid; it had been wrapped up in a carpet and us stupid kids decided we should find out what was inside so we unrolled it to reveal the grizzly horrors inside. It was summer and it had been sitting there in the sun for God only knows how long.

The pit down beneath this structure I climbed on smelled exactly like that carcass did about 10 years earlier. I had no interest in locating the source of the smell and I left without thoroughly exploring this area.

More wandering. I also learned that certain older types of fire-extinguisher can’t just be “tested,” once you pull the trigger they apparently expel everything from inside. Or maybe the one I had was sort of broken. I couldn’t say. I found one and thought I’d pull the trigger for a second to see if it still worked, but then it wouldn’t shut off. It was probably not great to be breathing in all that dust.

I really enjoyed exploring these old abandoned workshops, but they gave off kind of a sad, oppressive air I couldn’t really make sense of. Also, I LOVED all these old safety signs and I wish I had stolen them all.

Did I mentioned I REALLY loved all these signs? Especially the THINK signs, I love the typography and kind of blunt language.

And yet more signs. Did I mention I really liked these signs? So, the workers’ areas started to creep me out a little more. I started seeing more and more personal items that it seemed strange would have been left behind. Stuff in people’s lockers. One locker had a lunchbox in it full of rotten food. It seemed strange, like everyone left suddenly without being table to take everything.

This bike was another thing that made me uneasy. Who would have left their bike behind? But it had been there long enough for the tire to go flat. And when I saw all those keys in the window and realized the office still had a ton of paperwork in it, I got a little too nosy/confident and decided to lift one of the windows out of the rail so it could be removed without damaging anything (thanks for teaching me how to fix windows, dad). Removing the window was fine, but when I tried to enter I set off motion detectors and a very loud alarm, so I sprinted across the property and back to my car, parked outside the hole in the fence.

As I understand it, what I did here this day would be classified as both trespassing and breaking and entering, however the statute of limitations for either crime is 3 years and this was over 20 years ago, and my intent was never to steal anything or cause any damage of any kind, merely to walk around and take photos. I think the only damage you could claim I did was when I stupidly used up an entire fire extinguisher, but that was out of my ignorance and impulsiveness rather than any deliberate attempt to be destructive (and intent is relevant here because as I understand CA law, intent of theft or damaging property is pertinent).

To be clear, the only thing I took that day were photos and scrapes from that window. That said, I still wish I’d taken some of those signs before this place got torn down.

I think I had other “urban explorations” that resulted in better photos, but something about this one really helped me fall in love with it. Perhaps it was the implicit mystery of “why was so much left behind? Why did it seem like everything got stopped in the middle of a workday and then just never started back up?”

I never learned any answers to these questions, but I have always remained curious about this place.

They are currently developing real estate over where this place used to be.