Gallery: Ruins of Bordeaux, WA

Gallery (35 images): The Ruins of Bordeaux, WA

Ever since seeing photos of Bordeaux, Washington state, online a number of years ago, I always wanted to visit this crumbling ghost town. Recently, I happened across some new images which suddenly showed a fair bit of graffiti, so I knew I had better visit sooner rather than later! Alas, what remains of Bordeaux, at least where there are no plants getting in the way, already does have quite a bit of graffiti, so I suppose I waited too long.

Bordeaux was a logging town, and the majority of the shots in the gallery are of the old sawmill. Most of what is left of the other buildings are either low, crumbling, overgrown foundations, or rectangular, bunker-like concrete structures. Photos 3 and 4 in the gallery are of the remains of an old smoke stack, but I didn't bother using shots of any of the other building remains since they weren't very interesting to look at. However the mill building is fascinating and I do wish I had gotten there before all the graffiti artists... and before all the slobs that have used the flooded, lower levels as a dumping ground for beer cans, pop bottles and coffee cups.

Due to the sun streaming through the trees and the many deep shadows, the contrast and dynamic range were a challenge on many shots, as was the colour balance since the light coming through the trees became very green tinged. Using PhotoNinja on my Fujifilm X-E2 raw files actually allowed recovery of a fair bit of blue sky through the foliage, however I actually found it distracting and intentionally desaturated and brightened it up to look more or less blown out. I also intentionally left out the GPS metadata on these shots. If you really want to visit Bordeaux, a bit of searching on the Internet will get you directions, but I really don't want to make it too easy for more vandals to find what little is left of this town. Not that my blog has enough readership that I really need to worry about that...

There is an extensively researched article about Bordeaux, on the Dark Roasted Blend website, and if the history of the town interests you, I highly recommend the read.

The photos are actually from my last day of shooting during my California roadtrip from a few weeks back. Despite the graffiti, I find the vegetation encrusted ruins fascinating and decided that it would the first gallery I post from my trip. More from that trip to come soon...

Link: All galleries from this trip...