Elegant Decay

I admit, I'm strange in a lot of ways. There's the weird politics, the dinosaur fixation, the thing where I write SF and fantasy. But those are shared with a lot of people, including at least a few I know. My fascination with decaying and abandoned human structures doesn't seem to be that widely shared.

So I was excited to find the featured entry on Wikipedia today is about Dogpatch USA, an abandoned theme park in Arkansas. It was based on the Lil Abner cartoon characters, opened in the late 1960s and initially did well. It started struggling soon, went through ownership changes, bad management, and eventually was killed off by competition and the fact that kids don't know about Lil Abner anymore.

There's something really beautiful about nature reclaiming human structures. The dead buildings are haunting as they slowly merge back into the landscape. Check out these pics, apparently taken by a couple of urban explorers who braved the terrifying No Trespassing signs to take a look.

I've never explored abandoned places, beyond a few empty lots near my home. I'd like to someday.