Michael Satterfield
As I crisscross the state of Texas I often pass through small towns where I just find myself having to pull off, take pictures and read the historic markers. This week I stopped off in a small West-Texas town just south of Oklahoma. In the largely abandoned downtown, I spotted H&H Automotive Service and I had to pull over to take some photos. The building was still being used it seemed to store broken cars and parts, in spite of the roof falling in and covering the Cadillac on jack stands.
Chillicothe, Texas is like a lot of small towns in middle-America, once a stop along the railway between Fort Worth and Denver, today the trains don’t stop and the nearest interstate is over 60 miles away, leaving much of the town abandoned. Even in its heyday in the 1930s the population was just over 1,600 and it has been declining ever since. Today just over 700 people call Chillicothe home and if you wanted to, a three-bedroom house can be bought for just under $15,000.
Sadly fewer people are interested in saving old buildings, old cars, and old communities. Getting back on the road to my own small town, I passed through dozens more sleepy towns just waiting for someone to come in and wake them up.
