Join fine art photographer Keith Dotson as he captures four abandoned buildings along an old main street in Alabama
I shot these photographs in a ghost town within the tiny, unincorporated community of Seale, Alabama. The population is less than 400 people.
The abandoned row of old storefronts stands in the middle of a nice old neighborhood.
It must once have been a main street, but it’s now abandoned and left to ruins.
I couldn’t find a lot of history on the buildings, but left to right they were:
- A U.S. Post Office that was probably in operation from 1962 until the mid-90s
- A hardware store, at least in the later years
- City Drug Store, that once had a soda fountain inside
- Last on the right was a feed and seed business called Starke’s Farm Supplies. It was on a sign above the awning that’s now just a white patch. The two unpainted brick patches at the left and the right were also signs for Purina brand products.
On the open side of the feed store one can still see the remnants of an old advertisement for Silver Run Corn Meal. Silver Run was the original name of the community from the 1850s until around 1872, when the town was officially renamed to Seale. The name Silver Run refers to a nearby creek.
None of this is listed on the National Register of Historic Places — although the nearby courthouse is listed and one nearby historic home is also listed.
I shot the photographs with the Fujifilm GFX 100S. The final panorama is 40-inches tall by 132-inches wide.
Images of the individual buildings are also available in sizes up 60 x 80 inches.
