Aug 17 2012
North Texas Road Trip–Anna Texas to Paris Texas
Back in July I had a few days off in a row so I decided to spend one of those days scouting out some new places to shoot. So I started my research on where I could drive and be back before rush hour traffic. Once I figured out where I wanted to go I pulled up Bing Maps and did a bird’s eye view of the area. I was looking at the old farm roads in area to see where they go and if they had abandoned vehicles and abandoned farmhouse/barns that might be worth shooting.
About a week before the trip I still hadn’t figured out where I wanted to go. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to head out Mineral Wells and check out some of the cool places around that area to shoot or if I wanted to go up towards Sulfur Springs and do a little exploring out that way.
Then when I was on Flickr, I noticed that one of my contacts had directions to an abandoned plane near Paris, Texas. This was just my luck, for a couple of years I had been looking for the location of the plane, but all my research came up with was that it was off of HWY 82 west of Paris Texas and I never could find it.
With the new directions I was able to find the plane. When I realized that it was only a few hours a way I decided that would be the direction of my road trip. I decided that I would take HWY 121 East from Anna Texas, up through Bonham, Texas and then shoot over to HWY 82. If I had time, I would stop at a few places in Bonham and in Paris that were favorite abandoned places that the local photographers love to shoot.
The Road Trip
For this trip, I decided to break up the images into several parts. Basically, each article will be a different stop or a stretch of highway. There were simply to many pictures I wanted to share to put them all into one article.
HWY 121 – Anna, Texas to Bonham, Texas
For the first part of the trip there wasn’t much to look at mostly farm land with modern houses and almost no junk parked out front to stop and check out. But there were a few country roads that looked promising and needed further research before exploring them.
The First Stop
But just a few miles out of town, I did come across a hidden field with a bunch of junked cars, trucks and farm equipment. By hidden, I mean the scrub brush and trees along the fence line hide the vehicles from view. If you were looking for them you wouldn’t have seen them. After scouting the area, I found the property had an old burned out farm house a few acres away with a few abandoned mobile homes and travel trailers on it. But where the vehicles were parked, there was nice big land for sale sign up and the gate was open so the property could be visited by potential buyers.
I didn’t really look around much, I looked at a few trucks and tractors. Then took a few pictures with my point-n-shoot camera. These pictures were taken at about noon, so I ended up having to do a lot of processing to make these images look as they do. All images in this collection were edited with Adobe Lightroom 3 and Adobe Photoshop CS4. All images in this collection are copyrighted and can not be used without my permission. 
One of the first trucks I looked at was this old beauty. It’s a mid 60s Chevrolet Custom/10 Deluxe. Judging from the style of license plates and the dry rot on the tires its been here a few years. I am not really sure why the owner abandoned her. She must have had some sort of under the hood issues that made it not worth it to fix. When I see a good looking vehicle like this, I always ask myself, why did they just walk away?
For this image, I decided to convert to black white. I used a blue filter and boosted the contrast. 
I walked around her multiple times and looked in the cab and she is in pretty good shape. I bet if there wasn’t anything wrong with her, I could change out the gas, clean up the plugs and put a new battery in her and it would start right up.
For the longest time, I have liked the look of the C/10 short bed trucks and after looking at this one, I am seriously thinking about calling the number on the land for sale sign and see what’s wrong with the old truck. If there isn’t much wrong with it, I may see if its up for sale.
The next truck I came across was this old international truck. This looks to be a 1955 International Harvester S-Series light duty truck.
I love the lines of the old International Trucks. Even though this one is sitting on blocks, the body looks good and it looks like the owner showed it a little love by adding a little rattle can pain to some of the body panels.
This truck is just waiting for someone to save her. If I had the time, money and space I would grab this truck up and store it away until I had the time to make a custom rat work truck out of her. International Harvester trucks deserve more than this.
This old tractor was parked near the International Harvester. I have no clue what it is or what is was used for. If someone knows, please tell me!
Just a few feet away I came across this old blue Ford Tractor. Out on our farm we have one similar to this one, but a lot bigger and still being used.
The Second Stop
I came across this old Heavy Duty Ford Truck and a few other old cars just a few miles west of Bonham. There really wasn’t one house or property full cars at this stop but, a few houses and businesses that have cars in the front and rear of the property. There is even a body shop nearby were this old truck was parked. Out in front of the body shop there was an old 1955 Bel Air sedan waiting for its turn to be restored.
Just behind the old Ford truck, I found this old truck that has been stripped down and left for dead. Hopefully this truck and the Ford gets their chance to be restored.
Next time I make the trip to Paris, I plan on stopping here and asking if I can check out the other old cars at the back of the properties.
City of Bonham
Once I arrived in Bonham, I notice there really wasn’t anything to see. I know there are a few places worth exploring, I just need to do a little research and find the time to head back that direction.
In a few weeks, I will post up another set of images from the road trip.
James
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