Abandoned Southern Virginia: Reckless Surrender

Have a glimpse of the ruined and the doomed. Visiting abandonments is seductive and boosts the adrenaline for the urban explorer. A new form of art emerges from the forces of nature once structures shutter. Mother Nature claims its prey and wraps an abandoned site with vines and commands the acceleration of rust. From the once-mighty regional industrial giant, Dan River Mills, to a haven secreting the amusement park cast-offs of twenty-foot-tall concrete busts of presidents, to St. Alban’s Sanatorium perched on its mountaintop like a looming sentry, see the forgotten–often hiding in plain sight. Other forsaken Southern Virginia chapters include schools, churches, an isle merging Southern Virginia’s earliest history with natural beauty, industrial cast-offs, vintage trucks, opulent manors, quaint general stores, old-time diners, and several homes. Even though these sites are shuttered, they are not forgotten with this photographic record for posterity. Embrace the essences of once loved and revered places before nature mandates its final claim or the wrecking ball forwards the last kiss.