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C. Enzo and I return to the Fire Mill to shoot some more photos and get into harder to reach areas. Even on an overcast day, it's a lot more photogenic than the Google satellites suggest!
01: Fire Building (Middle)
Better view of how little covered area there is left of the turbine building.
02: Floor Hole
Looking through the gaping void in the floor in the previous two photos shows the only raceway and turbine not completely buried under debris.
03: Football Field of Destruction
Shot after climbing up some of the broken beams.
05: Turbine Housing
Using the sketchy stairs C. Enzo discovered in the previous trip, I finally make my way down to the turbine basement, or basement level 1.
06: Standing Room Only
The haphazard debris and damaged equipment limits the intrepid explorer to mostly standing or leaning at awkward angles. The large curved concrete structure at the left is the roof of this turbine's raceway.
07: Turbine Room (Middle)
One large turbine, at your service. There is a large hole rusted through the lower wall but no water was flowing through. I assume the pipe feeding this ruptured or otherwise became blocked later, probably by the collapse. Maybe it's just me, but the turbine housing is a lot longer than what I've seen in other mills.
08: Turbine Room (Right)
Much clearer shot of the ruined dynamo/motor. The frictional surfaces are all rusted to death, so it would need serious work to work again.
09: Mud Tunnel
Clambering down through the holes in the floor gets us one down into basement level 2, which seems exclusively dedicated to the turbines' tailraces. To loosely quote C. Enzo, "the water is only a couple inches deep, but the mud is about a foot". I confirmed his findings; while it looks shallow and easily traversed, you'll need waders to not get wet and someone with a cellphone to call for rescue when you sink down to your knees and get stuck.
This tailrace exits directly into the river.
10: Flooded Catacombs
This strange little area also existed, turning left from the previous photo. From my observations of mismatching wall materials and the weird, curved brick floor that ended in a shallow ledge directly into more quickmud, this area may predate everywhere we've been in before. My own theory is that there was some other form of water power down here which was completely stripped out and replaced with the turbines in the previous photos.
Research later in the day strongly suggests this area are the original foundation and raceways of the mill, whose buildings were all apparently replaced in 1912. The original mill buildings got their power from waterwheels, which were eventually replaced by these turbines. Which were seemingly superceded as well before the whole place shut down.
11: Wreckage From Higher
The building that collapsed ironically has the most intact windows.
12: Second Level
This area is, I believe, above the Great Hall with the vaulted ceilings and block glass windows. Or above something else. It's above something. Still looks like a ground floor anyway.
13: Protocol Violation
There is a lot of material near this door. Directly behind me is the "Second Level" photo.
14: Kaleido
Connected to the Great Hall, a bathroom, of all things, had a large block glass window in it whose blocks differed from the others.
15: Sink No Longer
A communal sink just barely clings to existence.
16: No Fucken Good
I stood the bathroom door up off the floor, and found a little hidden message. I have no idea what this means in the context of this bathroom, especially since it's only visible from inside the room.
17: Diamond in the Rough
Either nature or malicious forces had strewn one window all over the floor.
18: Lonely in Comfort
A recliner sits near the windows.
19: Lost in the Glass
One of the Great Hall's surviving glass blocks.
20: Outside Now
C. Enzo started poking around outside to find the tailraces, which led us down a steep hill to the riverside. It must be spawning season for moths because there were hundreds flitting around; the blurs of some passing by can be seen in this photo.
21: Cove
The water here is too shallow for a boat, but too deep for regular boots. We stayed on the shore while traversing. We encountered a total of five tailraces here, four that were still open and a fifth that was bricked off, but seemingly flooded and water bubbled up through the rocks at the bottom. It started raining around this point.
22: Tailrace
One of the open tailraces, shot from a mass of sediment at in the entrance. The incredible textured ceiling shows off the arch building techniques of the time. If we had waders, we might've been able to follow this tailrace to another area, as there appears to be an open area at the far end of the tunnel.
Epilogue:
I was absolutely drenched in sweat by the end of this due to the humidity of the riverbound locale and the approaching thunderstorm, so after this additional five hours here we took our leave.
[last edit 7/6/2020 6:12 AM by SaladKing - edited 1 times]
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