Today’s ride was to explore NE 122nd Street between Anderson Road and Midwest Boulevard, all of this being northwest of Jones and touching Witcher community.
As always, click on a thumbnail image to enlarge.
Just a random sight along Hiwasee in the old Dunjee District, this is Carver Avenue, somewhere between NE 50th and NE 63rd. Google Maps will offer a street view passage, but it didn’t look quite this far gone. Over the past couple of years so little traffic has passed that the canes have just about blocked the road.
While the online mapping services show that you can reach NE 122nd from Anderson Road, it’s not quite true. It was cut off some years ago and turned into a dump. Just as well, as the water treatment plant just over the river offered an overwhelming odor. Despite numerous signs, it was clear that plenty of foot traffic had ignored the closure, and someone had dropped a few shotgun shells. For amusement, I stood them up on the big log there.
What surprised me is how many sights that I found appealing enough to shoot. Some didn’t turn out well, but this abandoned house and cars standing just north of Hefner Road on Anderson came out well enough, despite the overcast conditions. I captured this coming back out from the closed road.
I tried again, riding along Hefner Road to the next section line west, Westminster Road. About half a mile north this place (right) was selling antique farm implements. Eventually I got to NE 122nd and found out what closed the road.
Looking back eastward this (left) is what the entrance to a sand and gravel dump looks like.
I was fascinated by this old shed standing behind an equally old house (right). However, someone is taking care of the house and it has a completely incongruous brand new steel roof. It’s just some of the stuff you can see in areas under long occupation by humans. At this point I was in the old Witcher area, and I am told it had been a thriving farming community at one time. Something like half of the original homes are long gone, so this is a reminder of past glories.
But this sort of thing is rather common along the river valley. This is the rock house standing near my picnic spot at Wilshire and Midwest Boulevard. I have seen pictures indicating that such was the common building style all over this part of the North Canadian Valley. There’s an ancient school house out here somewhere that looks like that, somewhere along NE 63rd, provided it hasn’t been demolished.
That place where the heavy construction is taking place near the enigmatic stone wall along Midwest Boulevard continues apace. There are massive piles of huge stones ready for reinforcing the banks. From the image perhaps you can see that the crews have diked off the north bank (where the river turns sharply south before crossing under Midwest Boulevard) and are pumping out the water. In the background this artificial dike curves around to connect with the natural bank. I’m guessing that they plan to prevent future wandering of the water course so as to reclaim some part of the land. They’ll probably refill the area enclosed by the dike. That is, unless what we are seeing is a temporary move designed to allow digging deep below the natural river bed for some reason.
Who knows?
