Join me as I tour around western Oklahoma in search of abandoned places and ghost towns. If there are any places I should have visited please let me know. The building in Alva, OK was a food mill.
Chris, The building in Alva was a flour mill. Also the grain elevators you showed are still in operation. One of them used to be owned by my grandfather.
My grandparents lived in Gate Oklahoma. Seeing it featured on your video brought back many wonderful memories. I remember going to Avery's and Curtis' grocery stores with my Grandma when I was a little girl...
Love to see people document these little towns, they were the Wild West once Sorry to see people have to leave their home places for financial reasons these last 30 yrs and glad people in other parts of the country can see them because you explored them
I'm old enough to remember when these little towns were bustling with life. I even remember the trains with the wooden cars, the transition to steel cars was just beginning.
Gage, with over 400 people, I would not consider a ghost town, though a lot of downtown does seem abandoned. A couple of interesting things about Gage >>> First, the National Weather Service still maintains a weather station here, which has been keeping area weather data for over one hundred years. Second, Gage has an Artesian Park, consisting of a spring-fed, artesian lake the size of five football fields. The Park, located just east of town, functions as a large outdoor swimming pool, with a water depth that ranges from 3 feet to 14 feet. At one time, the park was so popular that is supported a motel nearby. Nice video. There are several additional ghost towns, or ghost towns-in-the making, in western Oklahoma, that I am aware of.
I grew up 7 miles east of Putnam, Oklahoma on the family farm. I attended the Putnam Schools from 1st through 4th grade. I still have the family farms and travel out there and through Putnam almost daily. The first building you showed was the lumber yard and general store.
Don't know how I missed this video when it came out. Many familiar places. Very well done. I'm sure you know, but rural towns lived by the railroads and schools. When trucking killed the minor rail lines and consolidation killed the local schools,.....
@@attrell Apparently the farm trade was not enough to keep them going. Of course, many unused rails were pulled during WW II for their steel to support the war effort. After the war, many of the elevators consolidated but were finally abandoned. There is a rail bed you can still follow on google starting a mile south of Keyes going east to Hooker.
it s incredible the enormous amount of abandoned towns in Usa. I enjoy so much see the users who are dedicated to documenting him. Greetings from Bs As , Arg .-
Hello and I agree! I wish I had 2-3 more days on that trip. Will go back next year. I added Depew to my Route 66 abandoned video I uploaded today. I enjoyed that town.
Really cool video. My grandmother grew up in a dugout on the side of a cliff in rural western Oklahoma in the 1920's. I understand it was somewhere West of Watonga. I have been all through the West there. She ended up in Geary, Oklahoma and even seeing houses there collapsed and boarded up only to realize people still were living in them. It was like going to a different world since I am from Canada.
Love your video!! I grew up in western Oklahoma! I had to chuckle a little when you said town of Gotebo! I think you're the first person to say it correctly. Great job on the video❣
Great video. 😊😊Its always good to see other ghost towns history that can be related to Saskatchewan in some ways. 😊😊Thanks for sharing these moments Chris.👏👏
I recommend trying the Mexican restaurant in Cherokee or "Ingersol" BBQ (on the Hwy from Cherokee and Alva) or if you're in Alva, Taco Village is a long time multi generational local eatery! And a Family Favorite for my wife and her mother!
I hope you go to the other end of Oklahoma when I was a youngster back in 1995 I was young man and we built the movie twister and a lot of the towns. I think it was Enid Oklahoma was one of the places we built I remember going in the back vacant town and putting fake store, friends and building fake homes over the pre-existing homes. The town was 95% deserted. It was right next to Kansas and I believe the story goes that a twister scared everybody out of town. I would love to get back there and see what the town looks like now.
My great grandma who is 94 or 95 was born and raised in Gate Oklahoma. She told me her dad owned a drug store as in the general store back then. And that it caught on fire. That’s all I remember. So interesting
I live about 45 minutes west of Tulsa, so pretty much the northeast of the state. There is a town in south-west creek county, called Depew, and most of the businesses are gone. But some person, group, organization idk, came and painted the windows of the abandoned buildings downtown, so it looks like there still open.
For me it's so sad. Where are the Generation of these people who built all these things, towns and cities? Are they all dead or did they vanish? There should be a cause thanks for your updates
Thanks for escepting my comment. I feel sad because my late father had a farm planted with Rubber, Coffee and Coco ect. In LIBERIA, West Africa but the generation continue to keep it warm thanks again 👍💯🙏
Addington looks like Shattuck, back in the Gage area of the video because of the windmill museum 😊 thanks for your content! Arnett, Oklahoma here… (the armpit of Oklahoma 😂)
I was in that town in 2013 when I was chasing a potential tornado. Had to turn around when I got to Canadian because the storm was moving too fast. I may have even took some photos in Arnett.
I would suspect that the abandoned large building next to the railroad tracks in Alva would have been a flour mill as it is connected to the grain elevators.
I do not know what that building in Alva was used for, BUT my father said they imprisoned high level Nazi's there during WW II. They also made Case Tractors there..
Glad you put this om I can see what I can no longer travel to. From a small town and I know all to well how so many places get Abaddon, glad I could se, sad that they have lost their [people. If I had the money and the health I would try to bring life back to one of tham
WITH THIS ABANDON TOWN, OKLAHOMA COULD HOUSE THOSE THAT WANT TO STOP BEING HOMELESS. There are many homeless people that are Not on drugs or alcoholics that do want to be productive citizens of society
You know it is sad to see this, but in this day in age, could these little towns be revitalized in some way? People are moving out of the US BIG cities, new industries need areas to build, i know it would take a lot to do so but so many want to move out, to repurposing should be pushed into these little towns. I am not sure what that might or would be, but i think and would hope that something could be looked at doing so.
You have a very interesting channel! I have a desire to continue watching it. But the automatic English subtitles are not professional. There are no punctuation marks, the last words in the sentence appear very late. I would really like you to correct these inconveniences. Improvements will help us better understand the content
12:41 - this Cessna Skymaster, trying to pretend it is an O2 Air Force version is interesting 😁 20:03 - don't worry about that, and if somebody try to whine about it, ask them to pronounce "aluminium" 😁 cause they still think it's called "almnum"...
The locals pronounce Gage, OK as “Gay-gee”, not Gage like you would think. Suggestion: when you document towns, ask how the name is pronounced by the locals.
@@attrell Bob Denver has relatives in Corn or did. Originally spelled Korn but name was changed around WW1 since Germans weren’t to popular.. settled in the early 1900s several of the original settlers came up from south Texas after the big hurricane including my grandparents.
It was not the depression that killed those towns ...during and after WWII they were thriving ...I worked for the AT&SF RR all through there and they had most of their populations into the mid 80s ...but that was the beginning of the end ...for it was reaganomics that killed those small towns ...specifically trickle on economics was what put all those middle class wages and jobs in peril. Yet that is STAUNCH Conservative country and they vote for corporate wealth first and are STILL waiting for the wealth to trickle down even today over 35 years later. Somebody should have told them the USA is a "Consumer driven economy" and reaganomics is the worst case scenario for those towns and this video is proof. You missed Waynoka OK once a thriving town of 3500 before and after the war and is now down to 7-800 It has a storied history of WWII troop trains a Harvey House where Chi- LA celebrities stayed over night as that run was 48hrs ...breakneck speed back in the 20s ...even had a major airport where Lindy and Earhart landed for air shows ...and this is the SAD story of my home stomping grounds ...just SAD! See link below ...the US has gone from number one in 1945 to 164 on the world stage ...certainly one of the greatest declines in world history. Not only over the last decade but but the last 4 decades at least. ... www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2020-09-11/a-global-anomaly-the-us-declines-in-annual-quality-of-life-report The Social Progress Index, which considers itself "the most comprehensive measure of a country's social and environmental performance independent of economic factors," determined that out of 163 countries, only the United States, Brazil and Hungary had slid backward over the past decade. And though the declines were small, the U.S. saw the largest reduction in terms of overall score.
