[ birds chirping and wind blowing ]
- People that go by wonder about the place.
How old is it?
What kind of families lived in it?
How much longer the place is going to stand.
- This place, I think it's just inspired
a lot of people and photographers.
This abandoned house
is probably one of the most, if not the most, iconic
abandoned house in Oregon.
When I first saw photos of it,
I decided I had to come here for myself.
And this was the first abandoned house that I ever photographed,
and so it sort of started me on this obsession
of photographing these places.
- You get all these places before they're gone?
DANIELLE: Yeah.
Because they don't last forever.
[ metal creaking and banging ]
The things that I love the best
I find on the less traveled roads.
There's this thrill of anticipation
of what am I going to find,
because it's almost like a treasure hunt.
One of my favorite things to do is to pack up my camera
and hit the road.
Sometimes I don't even know where I'm going.
[ shutter clicking ]
I have seen so much more of the state
simply because I want to drive for five hours
[ chuckles ]
to go photograph one house.
Friends and family probably think I'm a little bit nuts,
I'm a little bit obsessive, but to me, it's worth it,
because it's not just the house.
It's also the journey to get there
and it's what I might see along the way.
It's what I might experience along the way.
So this is one of my absolute favorite places to come.
It's just so iconic.
A lot of the photographers I know
just refer to this as the Orange Crush gas station.
It's one of those places
that really just gets my imagination going.
Imagine muscle cars pulling in here,
imagine farm trucks pulling up to get gas.
66 cents per gallon on gas.
[ shutter clicking ]
I love finding little details --
the patina and the peeling paint.
I might see the bigger picture first
and document the building, but it's all these little things
that really tells this visual story
of the history here, what was here.
I'm not just this crazy girl
out there taking photos of abandoned places.
There's actually a whole giant group of us that --
all over Oregon, in fact, all over the world --
that just really, really enjoy these places.
"Abandoned Oregon" is a page
that was created by a friend of mine
that I help to admin.
We really had no idea how big it would get,
but it is up to almost 24,000 members now.
Here's an old logging tunnel that's been abandoned.
Here is an abandoned train car, all boarded up.
Here's an old schoolhouse.
[ birds chirping ]
A lot of the time you'll pull up,
and there's huge "No Trespassing" signs.
- Well, I think this is what you were looking for,
and I appreciate you calling
and asking permission to come in here.
DANIELLE: It's a real treat when you're able to track down
a property owner and actually ask permission.
And, you know, you get that permission from them
and you get that okay, and you're like, yes!
[ door clattering ]
Watch your step.
It falls down just a little bit more every year.
[ debris crunching ]
It looks like Judy was here and did a self-portrait.
You know, that's been there probably 60 years.
We had all these one-room schools, and they would be K-8,
and they would ride horses or whatever to get there.
You had to be basically an hour or two's horseback ride,
and that's why they're dispersed everywhere.
DANIELLE: This is a little piece of our history.
This is a piece of Oregon's history,
and it needs to be documented.
[ camera shutter clicking ]
It really makes you think about times past
that are really important to our history,
stories of the Oregonians who came before us,
our ancestors, our Oregon history.
- Let me see if I can get this undone.
I'm going to guess it's been a couple years
since that's been undone there.
There we go.
Quite honestly, I've never peeked in here before.
We've got Firestone tires.
Oh, there's the old washing machine.
DANIELLE: Look at all those old papers.
Well, that one says July 26, 1913.
Wow.
DANIELLE: Sometimes there's something really beautiful
about filth -- the cracked linoleum.
Sometimes you find old newspapers in the walls
that they used to actually insulate.
Sometimes you find old square nails.
You find these little pieces of history.
I don't just look at it as rotting wood
and peeling paint and decaying wallpaper.
I look at it as a life, a life that was once lived.
[ door creaking ]
[ wind blowing and wood creaking ]
A long time ago, when I first really got into photography
and got into photographing these places,
I did share locations on Instagram and Facebook.
But as time has gone on, I've come to understand
that it is a really important thing for us to recognize
that these are places that need to be respected and protected.
It's become harder and harder with social media
to keep lesser-known places just that, lesser known.
There are a lot of them that have been vandalized.
People go in, they leave their trash.
They may leave their graffiti mark.
The glass is smashed out.
There's beer bottles.
There's things you probably don't want to know about.
This is a pretty cool place
with some really interesting backstory.
This was a hotel that serviced
the old mining towns in this area.
I can only imagine some of the things that took place here,
probably things I don't want to know.
But that's still compelling in its own right.
And unfortunately, the place is trashed.
This is one that people haven't respected.
[ birds singing and crickets chirping ]
- They took a picture of me on the front porch,
November 1929.
This is the stairwell window here.
The front porch was right here.
DANIELLE: The people that remember these places
and the people that remember what took place there,
those people are fading away slowly.
- No electricity in those days, no.
The cook stove was here and the hot water tank.
And then there was a bathtub that sat here.
We always had a lot of chickens for the eggs and the meat.
And the cows for milk, butter.
And I would sit on the little footstool
and I would churn the butter.
[ Danielle laughs ]
Yep. [ laughs ]
So this was the big dining room.
DANIELLE: Meeting someone who physically lived there
or physically went to school there
is incredibly amazing to me,
because I actually get to walk in their shoes for a minute.
I get to see what they saw.
I get to experience what they experienced.
It's really cool to have you back here, you know?
That's really great.
- I'm glad I could come, yes. - Yeah.
What a view.
- Isn't it, though? - Yeah.
[ insects chirping ]
DANIELLE: Whatever happens to it,
this could be my last chance to be here.
This could be my last chance
to document this piece of history.
[ radio static ]
- (on radio) This is OPB. I'm Kate Davidson.
The Substation Fire burning through
the heart of Oregon's wheat country
is now the nation's top-priority fire.
Only a few weeks after getting back from my road trip,
The Dalles Substation Fire broke out,
and the Nelson house is gone, just like that.
I can't even describe to you how I felt.
It was devastation.
There's nothing left.
I captured this piece of history that is now just history.
It's gone, except in the record of my camera
and other photographers that have come through
and looked at it as more than just a decaying house.
I'm sort of building this collection
of all these little pieces of the past
that will one day just fade away.
But for now, I do what I can to sort of save them
the only way that I can.
[ camera shutter clicks ]