Delta

After leaving Stuttgart, we decided to hit a few other neat spots that were nearby. One spot was this old church, in the small town of Humnoke. The church is abandoned, and the walls are beginning to lean in precariously. There's no telling how much longer it will be standing.



South of Humnoke is this silo, which is easy to spot since it is the tallest structure for miles.



We then went by this abandoned church near the town of Scott, which was guarded by a thick congregation of dragonflies and wasps.



We visited another church down the road that was also abandoned and empty. The outside is in rough shape, and it looks like it may also collapse sometime soon. The interior had been gutted, but this old electric organ had been left behind.

Riceland Hotel

At five stories, the Riceland Hotel is still the tallest building in downtown Stuttgart. On a busy Saturday morning, cars cruised down Main Street in front of the hotel, and people visited the shops and stores that sit in the neighboring buildings. But the Riceland Hotel was quiet, it is home now only to stray cats and a few occasional pigeons that fly through the windows that aren't boarded shut.

I was recently given permission to go inside the old hotel and take pictures, so I headed down to Stuttgart earlier this month. The once-grand Riceland Hotel opened way back in 1923, and was for several decades the center of social life in Stuttgart. But the hotel closed in 1970, and has been left empty and abandoned. But through the cracked paint and plaster, you can still find signs of the hotel's former grandeur.



This was taken in what was once the hotel's lobby. When it was open, the hotel hosted several celebrities, including Ernest Hemingway, Joseph Pulitzer and Clark Gable.





This was taken in a room next to the lobby, which was once the hotel's coffee shop.



The hotel was designed by George R. Mann, the same architect who also designed the Arlington Hotel, Little Rock Central High School, the Pines Hotel, the Albert Pike Hotel, the Pulaski County Courthouse and the Arkansas State Capitol.





The building has been victim to a lot of graffiti and vandalism lately, some of which was pretty awful (I tried to avoid as much of it as I could in the pictures).











Most of the windows in the building are boarded up, which made taking pictures difficult since it was very dark in many of the rooms.









Despite being abandoned and left to the elements for so long, the building did seem to be in decent shape. There was, however, some considerable water damage on the fifth floor because of some holes in the roof. It had actually stormed just before we arrived to take pictures, and rain water was percolating throughout the building.





This is part of the old elevator machinery that sat in a room at the very top of the building.



I was a little nervous stepping out onto the roof, since there was so much water damage. But there was this view, looking out towards Stuttgart. Back in the olden days, there was a rooftop garden here that offered dancing on Friday nights and was advertised as being "cool and above the mosquitoes." According to local legend, a party here in the early 1960s got so out of control that a piano was thrown from the roof by a group of drunken revelers.



And one last shot from inside the hotel, looking down from the top of the staircase.



Although it has been empty for decades, the Riceland Hotel still occupies a prominent spot in downtown Stuttgart. There have been talks of renovations to the hotel recently, so hopefully something can happen to help save it from further deterioration. It's a long shot, but the building is well worth preserving.

4th of July

We had some free time during the Independence Day holiday, so we ventured down into Hot Springs. It was hot and sunny, and Central Avenue and Bathhouse Row were busy and crowded with people. I tried to take a few pictures, and ended up with this shot of the Quapaw Bathhouse, which was built way back in 1922.



On the 4th of July, I headed to downtown Little Rock to try to get some pictures of the fireworks show over the Arkansas River. I had planned on taking pictures from the top of a parking deck, but everything there was locked and shut (probably to keep people from going up there to watch the fireworks, I guess). So I ended up heading to the Clinton Park Bridge, which stretches across the river by the Clinton Presidential Library. It wasn't as crowded as I thought it would be, and it was a fairly good spot to see the fireworks.

Lurton

After leaving the Buffalo River, I headed south on Highway 7 towards home. But I made a quick little stop in the small town of Lurton, and got a few pictures of an old abandoned hotel. The hotel was built in the 1930s, but has been abandoned now for several years.



There's no telling how much longer the building will be standing, but I'm guessing it won't be for too much longer.



Just down the road was this church, which was also abandoned and which was slowly being encased in a shroud of vines. Just above the door, the plants had just about covered up where a sign said "Everyone Welcome."

Buffalo River

I've been wanting to do a little camping/photo trip, especially before the heat of the summer settles in and makes it unbearable outside. So I headed up to the Buffalo River for a quick little overnight trip. It rained heavily on the drive up there, with remnants of a tropical storm actually moving across the state. It rained enough for the Illinois Bayou by Dover to get high and muddy, but the rains didn’t really stretch too much further north. The Buffalo River was low when I finally arrived in Boxley Valley.

The Buffalo River is one of the prettiest places in this part of the country, and Boxley Valley might just be the crown jewel of the river. Boxley is a historic district, and it does have a deep and rich history. Native Americans are thought to have lived in or around the valley for centuries. Settlers moved into the Buffalo River area and Boxley sometime around 1830. A few decades later, some small Civil War skirmishes were fought around Boxley. After the war, things quieted down and people living in the valley continued to farm and make do in a remote stretch of land.

One of the first buildings you see when you drive into the Valley is the old Villines cabin, which was built in 1850 by one of the first pioneer families to settle in Boxley Valley. The cabin was converted into a barn many decades ago, but now there were signs advising people to avoid getting too close because the building is unstable. Hopefully the National Park Service will do some work on the building soon to keep it from collapsing.



Boxley Valley is also home to lots of wildlife, including a large herd of elk and also a few trumpeter swans. There were a few elk out grazing in a pasture by the river, but I ended up stopping to get a picture of this donkey that was curiously watching the cars drive by.



I drove across the valley and stopped at one of my favorite spots in Boxley.



The old barn here was built sometime in the 1920s, and was surrounded by a sea of tall grass.





It was getting close to sunset, and golden light was streaming across the valley and hitting the fog-covered hillsides.



I headed over to the Steele Creek campground, and tried to get a few pictures of the river as it flowed past Roark Bluff. I ended up wading into the river (it wasn’t deep but the water was cold) to get this view. It was a peaceful evening. The smell of campfire smoke was drifting through the trees from the nearby campground, and people were swimming and fishing nearby in the river.



After it got dark, I headed back over to Boxley Valley to try to get a few more pictures. It was too cloudy and foggy to get any good star pictures, so instead I tried some lightpainting on this old barn.



And then at the old Beechwoods Church, which was built in 1918. The cemetery in front of the church is the final resting place for many of the first families to settle in Boxley Valley.



I made the short drive back to Steele Creek, and camped there overnight. It was a cool night, with lows down in the 60s. Which is camping weather you can’t really beat in the summer. I set the alarm to go off about an hour before sunrise so that I could do a short hike to an amazing overlook on the top of Roark Bluff. It was still dark when I crossed the river and headed off into the woods. I managed to miss the trail, and ended up hiking the wrong way on another trail for about 15 minutes. I backtracked and eventually found the correct trail, and then panicked because the sun was beginning to rise above the mountain. I had wanted to get to the overlook early enough to get some pictures before sunrise, but now I was running out of time. I hurried up the hill, rushing along the trail that was nearly covered by overgrown grasses that was probably home to all sorts of snakes and ticks.

But eventually I made it to the overlook, which provides a spectacular view of the river and the almost 200 foot tall bluff. Roark Bluff is the longest bluff on the Buffalo River, stretching along for about three-quarters of a mile. Fog drifted over the river, drifting through the trees along the mountains that tower over the water.



It is a pretty spot, but also very dangerous spot since you are standing a few hundred feet above the river. It is definitely not a spot to visit if you’re scared of heights, have kids with you or if you’ve been drinking. There is a narrow sliver of rock that extends even further out over the river from where I was standing, but I wasn’t brave enough to venture out that far. I took a few pictures before hiking back down the hillside to solid ground.



Thick fog still drifted along the river, although the sun was starting to break through. This is the view of the Buffalo River from the spot where Steele Creek flows into the river.



I again made the short drive back into Boxley to get a few shots before the fog burned off.



This old barn sits at the base of Cave Mountain, which does actually have a cave on it. The cave was the site of a small Civil War skirmish, when Union troops attacked some Confederate troops who were mining bat guano in the cave that they had intended to turn into gun powder.



And one lost old barn shot, taken before starting the drive back home. This is a strange little barn that is built directly into the side of a hill.