A week or two ago I went to check out an abandoned factory I found on Google Maps with a couple friends. The area surrounding it was high traffic due to the presence of an adjacent scrapyard with a watchtower of all things (though it was empty that day), but we were able to get in with a little bit of well timed sneaking.

The first floor was in used by the scrapyard for storage, but the basement and all five upper floors were abandoned since the cargo elevator was nowhere near functional anymore. Most of the floors looked like this.

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Not far from the factory was an abandoned grain elevator, which we unfortunately didn't have time to visit.

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The basement floor was buried under several inches of thick mud, with literally thousands of raccoon tracks covering every inch of it. There was also an abandoned steam tunnel in a side room that I was unable to fully explore, since there were several inches of water on the floor and I didn't want to soak my boots that early in the day in January.

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We ended up taking a group shot on the top floor. I think it turned out nicely.

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The factory was so stripped down that there were almost no evidence as to what it was used for. The only possible clues we found were thick concrete floors and doors wide enough to allow forklifts through, indicating that whatever was made in here was extremely heavy- and extensive fire suppression equipment, ranging from hoses and steel fire doors on every staircase landing to certain sections of the building being made entirely out of specially made fireproof bricks. Whatever was in here was extremely heavy and very flammable. Most peculiarly, despite the extensive level of natural decay, there was almost no sign of vandalism aside from a few spray paint tags on the top floor.

It was a nice find to kick off the new year. So here's to another year of exploring, and another year of new finds and new adventures with friends.

Good work Aran.

Cool. Empty, but still has character.

Great set! These old mills are fun to explore, even when there's not much equipment left; looks like a good time. Love the broken window shot, thanks for sharing!

Nice find! Looks like a fun explore.

nice find

brick arches for the win

Update! Thanks to a tip from another UER member, I finally know what this place was! This is the last remaining building of what was originally a harvesting machine factory built in the 1880s. Fun fact, it was temporarily converted to making artillery shells during WWII, and also was involved in labor unrest during an attempted unionization by the workers. The rest of the complex aside from this building was demolished and the land it occupied is now used as the adjacent scrapyard.

Wish I was able to see this in daylight, Loved it when I saw it though, that and the school weren't so bad.