Boom Town Gone to Dust, Doniphan, Kansas

The second ghost town I researched was Doniphan.  To date, it remains one of my favorites.  A place lost in time, so incredibly lost with no one left to care.

Located near the Missouri River, the one-time boom town, five miles north of Atchison, once boasted 3,000 people.  Numerous steamboats stopped there, unloading freight and passengers on their way up and down the Missouri.  As with many river towns on the Missouri River, Doniphan collapsed during the Civil War for a number of reasons.  They were unable to attract a railroad.  They were isolated.  A depression in 1857 eventually left them financially bankrupt.

I first visited Doniphan in 1974.  There are some navigation items to note.  First of all, the river road that runs to Doniphan from Atchison literally crosses the old bed of the Missouri in the last 2 or 3 miles before arriving in Doniphan.  This was the Missouri River of the 1850s.  The channel has changed but it is easy to see where the old channel was.  The river road that runs through what is left of Doniphan was actually the primary main street.  Many of the side streets still exist as gravel roads.  The town runs at least a mile further.

I have a hard time visualizing a town of 3000 people.  I can visualize a town of maybe 500-700, which is still significant but not the size promoted in early accounts.  A schoolhouse exists now, but it is not the original schoolhouse.  It is on the main street.  The cemetery is very remarkable but it is hard to find.  Take a gravel road up a high hill about 1.5 miles into town off of main street.  It is not easy to find but worth it.  It is totally deserted.  It sits on a beautiful bluff where you can see for miles.  The old Catholic church is just as hard to find but it can be seen on the left side of main street about a half mile into the town.  Check out the carvings on the soft brick.  It is usually locked, which is sad because in 1974 it was deserted and unlocked all the time.  It is not in good shape, and it won't be around much longer without restoration.

The Kuchs Store existed in 1974, and another adjoining building.  They are gone but they were nearly gone in 1974.  There are no steamboat buildings left, no original stores, it's all gone and empty.  But stores existed immediately when you enter main street.  The old railroad depot for a railroad that existed many years after the boom town was prosperous.  In 1974 it was there, now it's not.

A few old homes exist from the 1850s, but not many.  Vestiges of the 1850s town are few and far between.  It is worth a visit, though, and it is a haunted, lonely, lost place.  It might be worthwhile for those looking for artifacts to concentrate on the exact point where the road meets the bluff.  This would've been the steamboat landing.

Doniphan could very well have been the Atchison of the region.   As luck would have it, things didn't work out after 1861.

Doniphan County is a lost county with many deserted towns.  Doniphan is a great one to start with as you tour many of the deserted back roads.

Uniontown, Kansas (Spook Central Kansas)

May I say, without hesitation, that Uniontown (the one in Shawnee County) is spook central.  There is not a more tragic place (with the exception of the site of the Marais des Cygnes Massacre) in the entire state.

Uniontown was founded as an Oregon Trail stop and an annuity payment location for the Pottawatomie Indians as early as 1848.  This was six years before the state was even a territory.  In a short time, the population was estimated at 300 and 60 business buildings lined the one main street through town.

Tragedy hit early.  In 1849, a cholera epidemic decimated the town and the surrounding countryside.  The Pottawatomie tribe was decimated.  Uniontown was abandoned and burned to the ground.  The cemetery soon filled up with unknown graves of pioneers and emigrants.  A mass grave of at least 33 Pottwatomie Indians became part of the town cemetery.  Bodies were strewn everywhere, many not even buried.

The town came back in 1850 and developed for about 10 years.  Then it was abandoned again for good as Manhattan and nearby Topeka grew in prominence.  Oh, and the town was burned down again.

The cemetery remains.  A park across the road, the Green Wildlife Refuge, contains original ruts from the Oregon Trail and at least 2 buildings from the Uniontown era were once there.  At night, the site comes alive with endless reports of ghosts wandering around, mysterious voices, cold spots, and rustling grass.  So many reports, in fact, that they defy explanation.

This is where I began my study of lost towns back in the 1970s.  The place still astounds me.  Here are some pictures from a recent night time visit back in 2012.  I brought digital recorders, cameras, and covered lots of ground.  I captured yet more voices and other weird happenings.  Here are the pics.

Yemassee, South Carolina: A Tale of the Old South and a Haunted Church

Yemassee, South Carolina:  A Controversial Church in the Old South

Merge Old South with spooky lore and the ruins of a church and you have Yemassee, South Carolina.

Yemassee is located off of I-95 just north of the Georgia-South Carolina line.  The town itself seems so isolated that you feel like you're back in the Old South.  Yet, it is just a couple of miles off of I-95, so civilization is not that far away.

Besides downtown, check out the deserted ruins of the spooky Old Sheldon Church just a couple of miles down a dark two lane road.  The church is part of a state park.  The ruins have been stabilized, but the tombstones around the cemetery have somewhat fallen into disrepair.  Here is the legend about the church-- General William Tecumseh Sherman on his March to the Sea supposedly used the church as a hospital and eventually burned it to the ground.  However, there is also rumor that it was never burned down by Sherman and that it burned down shortly afterwards but not by Union soldiers.  Who knows who is right, but the marker next to the cemetery blames the Union Army.  Here are the pictures.  A great town and a great place lost in time.

St Augustine, Florida...When the Spooks Come Out at Night

OK, most of St. Augustine is a progressive town.  However, the ancient city is definitely everyone's definition of "lost."  This is my photo essay of Castillo de San Marcos, the spooky 16th century fortification on the edge of old town.  These photos were taken with my Canon digital around midnight on a cold November night just before Thanksgiving, 2012.  I will add more photos later because I love taking pictures of St. Augustine.  Hope you enjoy them.