Fayette County, Iowa
The two of us left for Fayette County fresh out of work on a Friday evening. The clouds were ominous and dark, but we thought we’d beat the rain in a steady foot-race there. No sooner did we pull into the Boarders Inn hotel did it start to downpour. Chalk it up to good timing, I thought. We checked in to our room and hit the hay with a vengeance. The three hour drive seemed endless at points, something that I find to be universally true when making a commute in the dark. Come morning, I thought, the rain would pass southward and we’d be left with a particularly humid day to traverse through the windy roads and hills of Fayette County.
I woke up to the same sound that I fell asleep to. A total downpour.
You know, I usually enjoy waking up to chaotic gusts on wind slamming against the window and the gentle pitter-patter of the rain outside, but it’s quite a bummer to wake up in a hotel that way with the knowledge that I would be out in it all day. C’est La Vie. What can you do? We packed up the car and hit the winding road toward the business district of the county’s namesake.
Fayette, Iowa is home to Upper Iowa University, but it doesn’t really feel like a college town in the way that, say, Iowa City, Dubuque, or Fairfield does. There were no stray beer cans on the sidewalk, no dormitories or laundromats, and barely any options at all as far as food was concerned (and if Domino’s Pizza is reading this, I feel compelled to let you know that your company is missing a huge market in this place).
Something about the house pictured above creeped me out. Maybe it was the thick layer of dust that sealed the front-door shut. Maybe it was the stripped paint along the aging, warped windows and the general quietness that seemed to consume the entire neighborhood. Maybe it was just the gentle crackling of thunder overhead. It was probably cumulative.
I was excited to photograph Wadena just to see the town that hosted the Iowa equivalent of Woodstock back in 1970. Over 30,000 people crammed themselves into this small community (that only had fewer than 300 residents even back then) and dropped out listening to the rock stars of the day. To make it even better, the promoters decided on Wadena, Iowa after the state of Illinois blocked them from performing in their state. I just love the whole idea of a traveling rock circus exploring county roads and playing these shows where no other band would have ever even considered going to. No huge venues. No price of admission. Just a traveling circus exploring the world in their own, unique way. I felt an instant kinship to that idea.
Sadly, Wadena didn’t house the ghosts from that festival. I didn’t feel them lingering there in any way, and even if they did exist there, the sounds were completely overwhelmed by the falling rain. Mostly, Wadena just seemed like another small Iowa town, tucked behind these lush hills and sharp pine trees. I enjoyed it, but I sat there longer than I would have. Just looking around. Wondering what it looked and felt like to be there in 1970.
Northeast Iowa feels less like the flat stereotypes that I’m accustomed to and more like Minnesota or Wisconsin. The trees resemble mountain ranges and this effect was magnified by the low-hanging fog that started to drape the horizon. I was suddenly feeling silly for being so bummed about the rain. It was making the entire place feel so magical. And that’s when we reached our first ghost town — Albany.
It was hard for me to imagine a community here at all. There were horse trails and a stray building foundation here and there, but nature had mostly reclaimed the entire area. The fog was a bit disorienting, so I took the drone out to get a better look.
Still wasn’t seeing it. The heartbeat of this community had been snuffed out and only the headstones from a local cemetery assumed their place. I really wanted to know their stories. They stayed suspiciously quiet.
Brainard might have been my favorite location of the day. Every last thing seemed to be completely swallowed by vegetation. I saw old tool-sheds, mailboxes, the skeletons of small farm houses, and old family cars just totally consumed by tall grasses and weeds. The fog had lifted just enough that I could make out the thin lines where machines met grass.
Elgin was smothered by sandbags. The river there was violently flowing downstream and had just started to spill over onto its grassy shore. You could feel the strength of its waves from the bridge above as it swayed back and forth like a set of faulty lungs.
The town itself is an “Iowa Great Place”, and considers itself to be the Switzerland of Iowa. This was the first town of the day that seemed to have a real identity. It was admittedly very hard to snap out of the nature and back into capturing these communities. It took a while.
There are times that this project gets very sad very fast. In Eldorado, we drove up on a friendly old dog sound asleep in the middle of the street. When he saw our car, he slowly stood up to get out of the way and exposed an obviously broken paw.
So many things run through your head when you come across a creature that needs medical attention, but what could we do? It wasn’t like we could have just loaded him into our car (he was very apprehensive to even get close to begin with), but man did we want to. He looked like he’d lived a very full, stressful life and we just wanted to shower him in love for a while. Sadly, we couldn’t get that close to him.
We left him some food and carried on. I still almost wish we would have just pressed pause on the project and taken him home with us. Sadly, it would have just resulted in an eviction notice and both of us knew it. I hope someone else helps the ol’ guy out, though.
St. Lucas was the home of the first chaplain to die in World War II, Father Aloysius Schmitt. On December 7, 1941, he was serving on board the battleship USS Oklahoma during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, when a hit caused the ship to capsize. A number of sailors, including Schmitt, were trapped in a compartment with only a small porthole as the means of escape. Fr. Schmitt helped a number of men through this porthole. When it came his time to leave, he declined and helped more men escape. In total, he helped 12 men escape. (via Wikipedia)
The rain was clearing by the time we reached Waucoma. I was happy to see a generally overcast sky welcome me as we pulled into a vacant parking space (in a quiet town that seemed mostly vacant itself). There is no better weather scenario for this kind of photography. Even lighting, easy to capture, buildings aren’t blotted or overexposed by direct sunlight.
Alpha was a tiny one-neighborhood town that was actually pretty hard to photograph. The few buildings that existed there were generally kept in shape and there wasn’t a lot of historical significance to be found. It generally felt like a newer community wedged and hidden behind thick layers of trees.
Hawkeye reminded me of my hometown of Keokuk. The main street had been almost totally abandoned and the few exposed windows seemed like they were going to give way at any time. It’s always such an eerie feeling to get to a town that doesn’t seem to have a single person living in it. I know this to be a false feeling, but I didn’t see a single human being there or even a stray car on the road beyond our own.
Donnan was the town I was most excited to visit. An official ghost town of Iowa, Donnan was once the smallest incorporated city in the entire state of Iowa. Even at its peak, it had fewer than 100 citizens.
Nowadays, the sheep outnumber the people by a factor of at least 10 to 1.
““The settlement was officially incorporated (as Donnan) in 1922 so that a school could be built. An area of 1-square-mile of land was included within the city limits so the area would meet the state’s 25-person minimum population requirements. By the 1930s, several improvements had been made in the town, including a diagonal road built alongside the Rock Island railroad. This road, named New Donnan Road, became the town’s main thoroughfare.
Gradually, even the small population of Donnan eroded, leaving the town with fewer than 25 residents in 1970, and just 18 in 1972. All businesses except the post office had closed by the early 1970s. County road W-25, a paved highway from nearby Randalia bypassed Donnan’s main street in the early 1970s. By 1977, Donnan consisted of “an abandoned grain elevator, an unused railroad depot, three farms, four occupied houses, and a few empty buildings”. The Rock Island Railroad tracks at Donnan were pulled up in 1977. By 1978, the town’s population had dropped to 13. That year Donnan residents celebrated the city’s 100th anniversary.
Donnan’s few remaining residents fought “long, hard, and unsuccessfully” to keep the post office open. By 1982, however, postal officials prevailed. When the post office closed, on July 23, 1982, commemorative covers prepared by the Iowa Postal History Society gave the town’s population as ten. Residents resisted the closing of the last business in Donnan “because [Donnan] citizens love it and hate to see it die”, Mayor Porter said in 1988. In 1990, the last seven residents made national headlines when they reluctantly voted to disincorporate, ending their town’s status as an officially recognized city.
At the disincorporation hearing Matt Porter, who had served as the town’s mayor for 35 years, stated “Three of us are in our 70s and sooner or later it’s got to come. There’s no one else to carry on”. Donnan ceased to exist in March 1991; the final vote was 6 to 1 in favor of disincorporation. A monument on New Donnan Road pays tribute to the empty community, which lies just two miles north of its nearly empty sister community of Randalia.”
Randalia is Donnan’s sister city and is nearing it’s own ghost town status. I found an old building there that looked to be totally abandoned, but saw an old man sleeping on a dusty bed when I peaked through the windows. It was a good reminder that I should probably never expect a place to be abandoned.
Maynard only had a few buildings left, but they all seemed to be occupied by business (aside from an abandoned restaurant on the edge of the city).
I ran into a mechanic that tried to convince me to buy a scooter. He said it was the perfect thing to travel down the dirt roads of Fayette county. I passed, of course, but I did appreciate his sales pitch.
Westgate was a town with an identity crisis. There were two parks there at one time, but they had been completely uprooted and destroyed by the time we arrived. The only business in town was a local watering hole, and it was packed to the gills with patrons.
The nice overcast conditions gave way to a sun-soaked landscape by the time we reached Oran. I couldn’t help but feel like there was really no way to please me. I was bummed when I woke up to the rain and then I was bummed when it left.
Fairbank was bustling. There was a wedding reception about five feet away from the photo beside this text. Down the road, there were people picnicking and fishing near the city’s access to fresh water. Considering the mostly abandoned circumstances of the day prior to reaching this town, I had a hard time readjusting to a place with commerce and people doing things.
A few people warned me of Oelwein, citing that it was a dumper of a town and that I’d want to get out of it the moment that I drove inside. I didn’t get that at all and honestly felt like it was a pretty nice little community (although in a downturn). We walked through the main street and I was followed by a group of curious teenagers for a few blocks before I ditched them inside of a Goodwill.
I suppose that one of the connections I have to this project is that I am absolutely overwhelmed when there is a large congregation of people. Even being followed for a few blocks made me uncomfortable. Take me back to where there are no people.
Stanley took me back to that. I didn’t see any people there, but there was some really fascinating artwork peppered along the gravel road that connected it to the interstate.
Our last stop of the trip was Arlington. Overall, Fayette county was one of my favorite trips we’ve taken thus far. Next time you are driving through Iowa, make sure to get off of the interstates and explore these communities a little bit. They are intensely interesting.
