There's something about visiting an abandoned place, but how important to someone can an abandoned mini golf mountain and go kart track be before it's demolished for a highway?
It's been nearly eight years since I started photographing abandoned places. I still don't have a good way of articulating what it is I find alluring or uniquely visually striking about the places I've been. I can go with the standard mantras about how eerie it can be standing in a place that humanity has left behind, what it's like to experience a location's state of decay or any of the other verbiage authors have used to define "urban exploration" as "ruin porn." Sometime's there's a personal connection, visiting somewhere abandoned that I had been to when it was active. More often than not, it's a place I've never been before, I'm experiencing it only in its vacant, ignored and forgotten state as a visitor. You try to picture it in your head - a sense of what that place was like when it was alive with the activity of humanity. A lot of time's you get the picture, take it in and move on to the next place. Sometimes though, a place sticks with you even if you have no prior connection to it. Places like the ornate waiting room of Detroit's
. These places are often breathtaking, unique among the ruins and something that can't be experienced anywhere else.
Then there's the less significant places - the endless stream of abandoned fast food joints in the
. They're quick visits, followed by a few notes - another pin the map, another check on the list. But one place recently stuck with me. Somewhere I'd never been before when it was still open.
On the east side of the metro area, bordering the 275 loop there was this fake mountain littered with putting greens. The "mountain" overlooked a small pond. The pond was bordered by a snack bar inside a faux log cabin, a go kart track and the nearby highway. It's the kind of place you dream about when you're bored growing up in the suburbs.
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| - The shuttered go kart track at Eastgate Adventures. |
I grew up on the opposite corner of Eastgate Adventures, miles away. Where I grew up, go karts were a thing of suburban legend. Kids talked about how awesome they were to drive during their summer vacation to the Smoky Mountains. You heard junior high rumors about go karts in this part of town and that part of town and whoever told you about them was always the best at driving them - but you never went. Go Karts didn't really exist except for in cheesy 90's movies and the tall tales of pre-teens.
Surf Cincinnati had them, I knew it because I had ridden them (and Brett Schindler if you're reading this I totally won that race in the summer of 1999). Surf Cincinnati was long closed though.
Then one day, years later, while lost on the East Side, my friend Jon and I saw them. Just off the highway, circling the mountain were these little cars. Go Karts. They existed. We were just about to leave high school though, could drive real vehicles and by then the appeal of racing your middle school friends was long lost.
I'd pass Eastgate Adventures sometimes, when I'd take 275 to Route 32 on my way back to school at Ohio University. I didn't think much of it, I had better things to do in my limited free time.
Years later I'm having lunch on the east side with my friend Robbie. As I finish an order of cheese fries he mentions: "Hey, I have an abandoned place that might interest you."
"Yeah?" I said back.
"That mini golf course with the go-karts off 32, it's closed. Apparently they're building a new highway ramp through it."
After splitting our checks, he went back to work - I went looking for an abandoned golf mountain. I found it easy enough with the listing still on Google Maps. It was tucked back in this industrial area by a storage unit facility and off this obscure road. Sure enough there it was in the middle of the summer, a place that would seemingly be filled with people at that point in the season sitting there closed, padlocked and quiet.
My camera was in the car, but it was hot. Was it even worth photographing? Maybe some other time I thought, because who really cares anyways? Over time, it had been hard to keep doing the urban exploration thing. Why bother documenting it and staying up till 3 AM to write an article on a place that seems rather insignificant? I left, but scribbled the place down in my notepad as maybe something to come back to.
As the weeks wore on, I knew the wrecking ball would probably be coming for the mini golf mountain soon. For some reason, I kept thinking about the place debating any day when it was nice outside if I should go photograph it. I don't know what it was - the fact that I loved working at an amusement park for so long and was coming to terms with the idea that I'd never work in one again, because it's time to grow up and find a "real" job. But that mountain in Eastgate wasn't an amusement park, it was just some "family entertainment center." Maybe it's because there's days where you really miss being a kid and summer isn't really a break or important anymore. Or maybe I did just need to grow up.
Nevertheless, after one particularly stressful day of working in retail I punched out from work, hopped in the car and just headed straight to Eastgate. I had to go see it, to climb the fake mountain and get it out of my head.
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| - An adjoining property set for demolition. |
The sunlight was beautiful, the sky a crisp blue and spray paint markings littered the ground. Off in the distance, construction vehicles were stationed. Nearby the golf mountain, they had started tearing down trees to make room for the new highway ramps. You could see clear across Route 32 to the nearby Eastgate Mall.
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| - State Route 32 and the nearby Eastgate Mall. |
I stood there, still unsure why a seemingly insignificant abandoned location felt so important. I had never been there before, had no idea what it was like for people to go there, no idea what it was like for someone to work there, how long it had been there, what the history was or if anyone even cared that it was closing. But I stepped over the half demolished fence, clicked the camera on and just took it in.
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| - Go kart station. |
Weeds were growing through cracks in the go kart path. A gas tank that was once used to fill the carts stood at rest. The buildings had been emptied of anything valuable. A pay phone, something that has become a novel concept, still remained on the hook with "vintage" phone books hanging from it. The highway hummed in the distance.
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| - Snack bar and restrooms. |
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| - Fuel pump. |
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| - Go kart track. |
The putting greens of the golf course were water logged and nearby weeds grew onto the walking paths unopposed. Rough graffiti on the "stone" walls depicted the names of wannabe suburban hood rats and their rough depiction of how the male sexual organ works - indications that I wasn't the first person to climb the mountain in its abandoned state.
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| - Ascending the "mountain." |
The mountain's top putting green was the greenest and as you looked to the west you could see the sun setting on the pond, the kart path and the highway that would soon beckon the mountain's destruction.
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| - The "summit." |
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| - Overlooking Eastgate Adventures and the nearby highway. |
After I descended the mountain and left I felt an odd sense of satisfaction. I don't know what it was about Eastgate Adventures. I had no personal connection to it, but I felt it was a place I had to photograph, something I had to see and something I had to do. I like to think that the place meant a lot to someone. Someone out there has a connection to it in the same way that I was connected to places I loved in my past. In a way, I felt connected to it even though I would only see it abandoned, about to disappear from the landscape.
In the weeks following my visit I searched the internet trying to find photographs of the place when it was still open. A YouTube
video showed people feeding the ducks and fish there. And a blog post from
Leppert Weddings showed some wedding shots that had been made there.
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| - A wedding photograph from Leppert Weddings shot on the former go-kart track in 2011. |
The Eastern Corridor Program is an important project in the Cincinnati area. In planning for decades, the project seeks to expand the area's transportation network from the city center to the Eastern areas via highway improvements, expanded roadways, new bus service, rail transit, bikeways and walking paths. Currently though, only the roadway improvements have received any serious funding, planning and execution. Thus was the cause of Eastgate Adventure's demise. I-275 intersects State Route 32 at an incredibly busy intersection in an area of high suburban growth. The golf mountain and several adjoining properties were purchased by the state in order to make room for the highway improvements shown below.
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| - Above: The intersection of I-275 and SR 32 as they appear currently. Below: Orange lines mark where new highway ramps will be constructed. The location of Eastgate Adventures is highlighted in red. |
A few weeks later I was having lunch with Robbie again, telling him about how I had gone out to photograph Eastgate Adventures. Coincidentally, the place was where he had taken his now fiancee on their first date. I went back.
The "mountain" was now just pile of dirt. A few putting greens remained and a backhoe was busy tearing out the last remains of the go kart track.
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| - The "mountain," reduced to rubble as a highway light looms over it. |
There wasn't much left to see, but I was glad that I had visited when I did.
In the debris I found a golf ball. I snapped my last photo, picked it up and left.
