My family knows that when it comes to old ruins and abandoned places, I become a tiny bit unhinged. I love exploring old spaces and crumbling buildings, looking for signs of the original inhabitants and speculating on the cause of their absence. Sometimes the ruins are mind-bogglingly old, like Petra in Jordan, or the abbey outside of Villers-a-Ville near Brussels and you gape in awe that the structures are still standing in any state. Others are more recently abandoned spaces like Doel, Belgium, located not far from Antwerp and waiting until its current hold-out residents move out, leaving the town to its scheduled fate (check out Doel here!).
Others suffer irreparable or costly damage from natural and man-made disasters, making rebuilding impossible. St. Stanislaus Kostka Church is one such ruin. Located on along the northern bank of the Patapsco River in the Patapsco State Park in Maryland, the church was struck by lightning in the early 1900’s and left to decay ever since.
After discovering this little gem on Facebook, we loaded up the dog, noted the coordinates of the ruins, and hopped in the car, hoping to combine two of our favorite activities – nature walks and exploring/photographing ruins.
We just about didn’t find the old church. It was located just off the main trail and up a hill. The vegetation is rather dense and, ahem, creepy, so it was easy to miss the old, vine-covered masonry. Once there, the dog was not pleased that we wanted to actually go into the ruins. He was equally unhappy with our decision to explore the overgrown cemetery adjacent to the crumbing building. Are the old residents still hanging about? I dunno, but I bet this place makes a great Halloween haunt for teens in the area!
Adding to the atmosphere of the ruins are the many old cars located there. Crashed? Abandoned? Stolen? Washed in by the many floods? No one may ever know why these cars in various states of decay were left behind.
St. Stanislaus was once part of a small town that shared the same bank of the nearby river. But as the jobs dried up when the main factory shut down many of the residents left for more profitable living conditions. The remaining residents endured several catastrophic floods and eventually the town was abandoned once and for all. There are stone foundations and a couple of other buildings that give evidence that this place was once inhabited. But exploration of those would have to wait until another day.
Arklahoma Muse Photography and Design 