Status: Ruins

Admittedly, I don’t know too much about the ruins that surround Stevens Lake. The only things I do know are what the friend who took me here and my father know, since this was one of his haunts when he was about 9 years old. When my friend took me to see Stevens Lake, I did not know this.

It’s quite possible that Stevens Lake was a hopping place once upon a time, given all its ruins of what were probably bungalows or even places for tourists to stay. Walking around the small, overgrown lake, one can see the walls of the remaining structures. Farther back into the woods, old shells of school buses can also be found. We weren’t sure why someone chose to put the old buses back there, but they were interesting to explore.

As we walked even deeper into the woods, my friend told me about the ruins of what he heard was either a hippy commune or a slaughterhouse. Looking at the structure, it was difficult to tell what it was since only one wall of it was standing. Near the those ruins were also the ruins of other structures, one of which still had a partially intact brick chimney.

When I got home and showed my father the pictures, he recognized his old stomping ground right away. He told me an old man used to watch Stevens Lake when he was a kid and if you were really nice to him, he’d let you go fishing. However, you’d still have to throw the fish back when you were done. And the other crumbled structure was neither a hippy commune or a slaughterhouse–it was a German Bund camp. This was something else my father remembered while it was still intact. He said there was a table inside with plates and silverwear set up as if the Germans just up and left one day. To him, this place was also interesting because the walls of the attic were lined with very old newspaper articles from decades passed.

The Bund camp also was watched by a frightening man (I’m unsure if the man was German), and my father recalled a time he was inside the building and the man chased him out.

The structure that still had the brick chimney standing was a garage of some sort that had a car from the 1940s inside. We did find car parts while roaming around, but my father said they were from a 50s model car.

It’s amazing what history you can learn just by asking your elders. At least now I know where I get my love for urban exploration!

- Ember, 2004