My fascination with deserted houses is never-ending, a continual source of questions.  As a city girl, I’m intrigued by the fact that houses are left to devolve back into nature in rural areas.  There’s nobody to impress, nobody to come on your property and tell you what to do with the house unless you get lucky and some creative designer or artist wants to buy the weathered wood for a project.

Every state has rural areas, so don’t get all “it’s because you’re an Okie” on me.  I see them everywhere, especially when I’m off the highways.  I want to know the stories, imagine who lived there and when.

Here are four Okie houses…

The first one is in the Oklahoma panhandle.  I wonder if it was deserted during the Dust Bowl?  Did the people who made it a home put cloths in the windows to keep out the dust and finally just have to leave when the crops were dead and they couldn’t make it anymore?  There are so many stories out here…OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThis one is from northeastern Oklahoma.  Tiny home for who?  Or storage?  Or storm shelter?DSC_0012I spotted this one on a dirt road in southwestern Oklahoma.  There’s still a window reflecting the countryside.  Was there a family here?  Or was it for storage? Were the people happy?  What happened?IMG_3487And then, there’s this one in central Oklahoma.  A lot of work to drag all those rocks to build it.  There’s also another structure and rusting oil storage tanks further up the land.  This was oil country.  Did the oil run off the farmers?  Who lived here?  Who planted the Crepe Myrtle?DSC_0002I can’t stop wondering, knowing these houses tell us so much of our history.  Aren’t you curious when you drive by?