Very Last Chance

 

Last Chance is the quintessential prairie ghost town, that tiny picture in the back of your mind when you imagine the vast emptiness of the eastern plains, bitter winds rolling through overgrown fields. It has been lucky to be well documented and known while remaining relatively untouched. 

 

My dad pulled into the recently abandoned Dairy King, and I remember just looking around in awe, not because of the abandoned nature of the place, but because it was in such abundance. 

It wasn’t just one building off to the side of the road. This was a whole town, mostly abandoned, on either sides of the road. It was a wonderland of exploration yet to be had.

I headed into the blue house and was greeted by a big white bicycle, sadly dormant in a white room, and I stood there smiling and wondering about the person that had left it behind. Such damn poignancy. In the kitchen the plates were covered in dirt, which reminded me of NH, and how the salt-shakers were still on the dining room table, as well as the paper towel holder. As though they had left after dinner and never returned. Amazing how silverware can coax forth emotions.

 

This explore was another one of the earlier ones that I look back on fondly. I didn’t have to worry about the human element, anyone coming to investigate what I was doing, I was absolutely free. At one point I laughed and ran across the highway that separated one part of the town from the other, without looking, because I felt utterly in control. And of course, there was no one coming. Silence reigned.

 

It was almost overwhelming with all of the things I had to discover, all of the houses and vehicles and little forgotten sheds to investigate. If I’ve ever had a “Silent Hill” moment in any of the big towns I've gone to, this was it.

 

 Once more, I waded through the ever-growing yellow grass and gnarled tree branches, underneath an uncertain cloudy sky, stepping over old nails, dodging washers left behind in the backyard of the blue house, and finding a shed hidden back there, azure words painted on the faded wood door: Stay Out.  

Some quick history for you to swallow:

For a time, the town of Last Chance was considered "Western Vacation Land." It started with a farm, a dream and the humble beginnings of Charlie Harbert. His family founded a homestead on the land in the early 1900s. It was town crowded with cattle and the families who cared for them. 

 

When the national highway system came through in the 1920s, Harbert named his homestead Last Chance. It was, in most cases, the last chance you had at gas or a meal before heading to Kansas. The marketing worked, as travelers stopped at the town, stayed for the night, and spent money at the local car repair shops, gas station, hotels, cafes and restaurants.

 

The homestead became a bona fide booming town built in the wake of one highway. All of those buildings and businesses have since become vestiges because of another highway: Interstate 70.

Source: http://www.9news.com/news/local/article/226743/346/Colorado-Ghost-Towns-Your-Last-Chance-at-gas-food-and-lodging

 

So there you have it: Lives displaced because of a single road. 

 

This house, the white house, was the first house I had been to that had been very recently abandoned, with even the food still left in the kitchen. Every time I find food in these places, I have to wonder how salvageable it is. And I would be the person to pour a bowl of some ten years old, open-to-the-elements nasty Corn Flakes, because I believe that life is too short to not eat flakey cobwebs.

This goddamn doll. Imagine you are me, walking cautiously alone through this poorly-lit house, squinting through the half-darkness, when in the middle of the hallway you see a headless figure standing there. Okay, so maybe my eyesight is pretty poor because it was just a headless doll in a chair, but it made my heart lurch and I froze for a second before laughing. What’s the proper conduct supposed to be when you find someone else in an abandonment, anyways? So far, the “I take pictures” angle has worked pretty well, but in the dark it becomes a lot less clear if that shadowy figure is carrying a tripod or a butcher knife. Still, this isn’t Detroit, and I don’t freeze anymore; I go investigate the creepy noises with boldness. Also because I would be the first person to die in a horror movie. 

 

What I love about Last Chance is its resilience, fifty miles away from salvation. This summer a wildfire started in Last Chance and transformed the pretty yellow fields to black tar. I happened to drive through Last Chance the day after the fire, which was a little nerve wracking, because my mom and I weren’t sure if the fire was still raging or not. By the time we drove through it was near dark and the fire had passed, but you could see the change. Even as the sky darkened, you could still see. It was like driving through hell. The ground was all black and ashen for miles, but fires be damned, the buildings all remained. In the wake of one of the hottest summers on record, surrounded by incendiary grass, in the dry, dry summer air, built out of shoddy wood ready to burn, the tinderbox town escaped unscathed. The fields around the buildings burned, but the fire left the structures untouched. If that is not a damn miracle, I don’t know what is. Last Chance, indeed.