Laura Stotts drives thousands of miles between her family’s homes in Utah and North Carolina, and along the way she makes wide detours to feed her pet passion—exploring and photographing old abandoned buildings and ghost towns.
Stotts is certain of one thing: She’s alive for a reason, and that reason is to document forgotten places through her camera. For Stotts, preserving their memory is tied to her former bout with addiction and teetering on the brink of death.
“God has performed a miracle in my life and saved me,” she told The Epoch Times, speaking of a trauma that nearly killed her in 2016.
In encountering abandoned homes across America that date from colonial times to as late as the 1950s, Stotts felt a spiritual connection with past lives “in every fiber of my being,” she said. She’s even bonded with people who had lived here.
This past winter, she explored a cluster of some 30 old log cabins from the 1700s in Idaho, where Mormon pioneers first settled along the Oregon Trail—a long ribbon of ruts cutting westward through the valley. The town, called Chesterfield, began to decline after a Pacific Union railway bypassed the town in the 1880s and made the trail obsolete.
Chesterfield, Idaho. Courtesy of Laura Stotts
Chesterfield, Idaho. Courtesy of Laura Stotts
Chesterfield, Idaho. Courtesy of Laura Stotts
Chesterfield, Idaho. Courtesy of Laura Stotts
Chesterfield, Idaho. Courtesy of Laura Stotts
Toting her camera and fueled by nostalgia for simpler times, Stotts trudged through the snow to photograph the stout red-brick schoolhouse and much older sagging cabins.
“They look the same as the primitive log cabins from the late 1700s on the east coast,“ she said. ”You can very much get a feel of just how hard life was for them, just to be surviving in these very remote towns in these snowy conditions.”
Winter snowdrifts in Chesterfield were said to tower over the houses and bury them, with buildings “snapping” in the cold. As the town began declining, it was also plagued by drought, the Panic of 1907, and the flu epidemic of 1918. Most of the last stragglers fled in the 1970s.
“Chesterfield faded like a photograph left in the sun,” Stotts said. “The creaking of the windmill felt like their final lament.”
She said it’s “a miracle” that the buildings are still standing.
On her journeys, Stotts has visited over a thousand abandoned homes and buildings across dozens of states, including North Carolina where she now lives, in the city of Winston-Salem. Tied to these places, her own story of survival started here nine years ago.
Renewed Sense of Purpose
After a failed suicide attempt, Stotts found a new purpose knocking on doors. Her intention was to ask permission to photograph an abandoned home, but she soon met Mr. Nanney, a 98-year-old living in a tiny shack who owned a vine-covered house nearby. He became her best friend.
An abandoned home in Tennessee. Courtesy of Laura Stotts
A general store in Cleveland County, North Carolina. Courtesy of Laura Stotts
Laura Stotts with Mr. Nanney. Courtesy of Laura Stotts
An abandoned farmhouse at an undisclosed location. Courtesy of Laura Stotts
Laura Stotts poses in an abandoned home. Courtesy of Laura Stotts
“I hear this guy opening up like 10 deadbolts from top to bottom on his door,“ Stotts said. ”He allowed me to come in, and I introduced myself, and I’m like, ‘Hey, I want to know what your story is.’”
Hearing his story lit a fire in Stotts. From then on, she couldn’t find enough doors to knock on to hear more stories that would otherwise die with these folks and their homes.
“It was a new addiction for me,“ she said. ”These homes are disappearing fast.”
In the years since, Stotts’s journey has been punctuated by sublime moments in forsaken places and by friendships with all-but forsaken folks. Sometimes, the feelings of nostalgia she experiences in these abandoned homes are so strong that the visions they conjure from the past are unmistakable. Other times they’re downright haunting, such as an early visit to a mid-1900s house in North Carolina.
“As soon as I set foot on the grounds of this home, outside of my car, it’s almost like a full-body experience,“ she said. She recalled the sensation she felt, both conjured and real: ”The sun shining on my skin. It’s the smell of the flowers, it’s the wind, it’s imagining the mother and the father outside of the home hanging clothes on the line.”
The house, Stotts discovered, was owned by one of two wealthy Italian brothers who both built homes and, in an epic sibling rivalry, tried to outdo each other in lavishness.
This abandoned home in North Carolina was owned by one of two wealthy Italian brothers. Courtesy of Laura Stotts
An undisclosed location. Courtesy of Laura Stotts
A log cabin at an undisclosed location. Courtesy of Laura Stotts
An undisclosed location. Courtesy of Laura Stotts
An old Dodge in Buke County, North Carolina. Courtesy of Laura Stotts
An undisclosed location. Courtesy of Laura Stotts
An undisclosed location. Courtesy of Laura Stotts
An undisclosed location. Courtesy of Laura Stotts
An undisclosed location. Courtesy of Laura Stotts
An undisclosed location. Courtesy of Laura Stotts
There were other times where Stotts says she felt repelled by a house as if by a supernatural force.
“Remember being a kid and trying to take the opposite ends of two magnets and pushing them together and it’s impossible? I started feeling that. That’s the only way I know how to describe the feeling walking into this home,“ she said, speaking of one dilapidated ”oversized” house from the mid-1800s with tall doors and a huge porch with pillars.
She said she found the “negative energy” in the house “overpowering” and decided she'd best make her exit, even though she normally doesn’t “buy into that feeling.”
To tell their story, Stotts has done extensive research on the places she’s been. Using “Find a Grave” and “Ancestry” apps, she uncovered names like Martha Simmons, who was 16 when she got married and moved into the log cabin her husband, Joel Simmons, built in 1870 in Stokes Country, North Carolina.
Stotts paid the cabin a visit.
The Simmons cabin in North Carolina. Courtesy of Laura Stotts
The Simmons cabin in North Carolina. Courtesy of Laura Stotts
Inside the Simmons cabin in North Carolina. Courtesy of Laura Stotts
The Simmons cabin in North Carolina. Courtesy of Laura Stotts
“The 1880 census lists Joel as a farmer, likely growing tobacco or crops to support their growing family,” Stotts said, adding that the couple had 12 children. “As tiny as the cabin is, it was hard to imagine such a large family living in such tight quarters.”
To honor their story, Stotts created a family tree for the Simmonses, listing Martha, Joel, and the children: Rilla, Calvin, Mary, Powell, Fletcher, Frannie, Martha, James, Robert, John, Joel, and Roy.
Stotts, who is now seven years sober, says a miracle saved her life and now she’s repaying the favor.
“At one point I felt like my existence and my story didn’t matter anymore,” she said. “It’s just been a very beautiful thing over the past 10 years to be able to be engaged in this endeavor of photo-documenting history and people’s stories.”
Michael Wing
Editor and Writer
Michael Wing is a writer and editor based in Calgary, Canada, where he was born and educated in the arts. He writes mainly on culture, human interest, and trending news.
