Uncovering an abandoned Tobacco Ghost Town from the early 1900's

[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] welcome to another ghost town exploration here in the southern united states today we're checking out a very old ghost town actually the oldest at least the oldest ghost town that was left abandoned as far as how old it is how old it was a ghost town today we're in the city of union level this is a horse and carriage city and after the railroad boom happened there was a single railroad line that ran through here but basically the place was abandoned by the early 1900s this place did not adapt to modern times and everything's left abandoned here people really started coming here in 1765 that's when it was completely tobacco fields and the tobacco sales in union level made the economy boom and those tobacco sales primarily boom because of enslaved people working on the nearby plantations by the 1800s this would be a very popular horse and carriage line travelers needed accommodations and supplies so stores began to pop up come the 1860s and the civil war things would change a lot in union level when the civil war ended and slavery did also things change a lot here investors offered union level farmers to buy their land for tobacco warehouses forcing tobacco sellers to move elsewhere during this period and forcing the economy to go down with it come the early 1900s the town had a second resurgence there was more than 20 businesses including four general stores two barbers one pharmacy a boarding house a railroad depot a dance hall and a motorcycle dealer it also had a bank the bank of union level which was established by af dumright ashley thompson and cornelius c.p jones in 1915. when a great depression hit in the 1930s one of the first casualties was cp jones bank and the general store other stores the barbershop boarding house would have to close too except for a handful of businesses that survived until the 1970s but by then the town would never look the same no more humans left in this ghost town but we have some cats somebody's coming here and feeding them we have many businesses that line this downtown area cp jones gotta love all the old wood and the detail put into this place like this the porch here and the beams that are supporting it the woodwork is amazing [Music] we have this one that's wide open we have a lot of stuff left behind it looks like too i see a quite a bit of furniture and all these rope and all these stores so we're gonna jump inside this one here maybe we could find some things maybe we can't but i mean look at this place the road is completely out of control we have weeds growing through the sidewalk completely covering this one sprawling little place here got a lot of beer left behind whoa basically i just fell through the floor my first step in the house it's not great i'll walk a little bit in got an old mattress here nice woodwork a lot of children's clothes on the ground but a lot of these children's clothes are actually hiding enormous holes in the ground and um there's not much in here so we're gonna walk out not sure when some of these businesses did close but it looks like some of the things in here are kind of modern maybe to like the 90s the 80s maybe 70s even got a creepy little alleyway we're gonna check out the back of this place a little later not much going on in here a lot of things thrown around some random wood got some molds lights on the ceiling some of which i see in old psychiatric hospitals so these date back to like the mid-century at least it's super creepy i love i love walking around this town right now through all this high grass and this building looks like it's completely collapsing yeah got the roof caving in over here but i got like a yearbook right here that's super cool find here activities freshman i'm trying to find a year here this looks so old duke university 1938 wow cool find got an old baby crib here down here amongst the clutter we have an old pool table barely noticeable but i love that vintage green around the trim beautiful old building the white paint green ceilings the woodwork here dates back 100 years all these buildings are very beautiful this is a pretty old stuart warner radio you could see you could listen to the foreign radio police radio standard broadcast pretty old in here back here looks like we have like a washer kenmore washer we got typewriter too that's a really old one these buildings have had no preservation effort whatsoever used to have a sign up here but i believe this was the auto workshop and next to it we have the gas station we actually still have a very old pump still left here let's take a look inside the gas station here got some random like motor oils here on the shelves got some more rusted cans over there across the street from the main town we even have like an abandoned trailer home door wide open plywood on the windows but maybe it's not even abandoned you really don't know in the south people live in some pretty crazy conditions here but we're going to take another walk down main street here at union level virginia and we're going to maybe jump into the alleyways see if we can go into some of the places from the back get a better idea of how the people here lived this portion of today's video is sponsored by michael schwarz and the people behind the abandoned atlas foundation i've teamed up with them to promote their film forever majestic an abandoned hotel that has gone through many years of different stages neglect city corruption and they've documented it perfectly here's the trailer if you want to see more of this or the team please check out the description as all their links are provided thank you for the abandoned atlas foundation for promoting today's video what is it that makes your city worth living in it's your city's history it's the soul it's the culture my name is michael schwartz my friends and i love exploring and documenting abandoned buildings to tell their stories and the majestic hotel in hot springs arkansas was something that fascinated us from the moment we walked in majestic was one of the great hotels in the south it was this huge sprawling complex full of restaurants drug stores a bath house when this place captured my soul i wanted to help somehow and that's when i met brenda maybe there's a way i can form a movement to actually restore that hotel and save it historic majestic hotel is in some seriously bad shape should have been allowed to get that way that's called demolition by neglect if you allow a roof to be compromised you're you're sentencing that building to death this place is burning to the ground turning this beacon into a den of ashes the red brick was spared from this fire after the fire people from all across the state wanted to make sure hot springs history would be protected what you have there's a building that needs a champion it's pretty obvious the fire did not start internal to the building and that seems really strange the city's plan is to wipe this out we need to polish it we need to bring it back all of the department heads had been banking on getting that property and demolishing it i want to see it gone this city has been mafia for years and if you're not in that loop you're not welcome i will not prohibit them from having a voice some of us want to watch ncis i'm consumed by the history that is in this city could the majestic hotel be saved [Music] all right time to go into this creepy alleyway ooh a frog that startled me hey froggy jumped into that event there we got a bunch of phones here people scaling some phones and dumping them off here okay now we're in the back this is pretty creepy back here this is a really nice old uh glass bottle i don't know if you guys can see it but there's some like imprints designs actually in here in the glass looks a little sketchy but let's uh let's check it out got this whole dresser here beautiful wow so it looks like we have a room here bedroom the bed is completely sinking into the floor we have a nice old bed here inside this one house oh this is actually the one we were already inside of i just didn't recognize it from this other angle got some big spiders guarding these back alleys here i have to go around here we have to look into this building that is almost entirely demolished oh this is insane so we have this old cabinet here almost looks like it has a freemason logo on the side of this thing so that's pretty interesting but we have this once grand i'm sure general store you could see the testament of time on these showcase shelves here beautiful natural decay occurring in this room we actually have a new environment growing complete jungle of what this place once was unlike other ghost towns that i've been to a lot of them have been repurposed fixed revitalized some efforts of restoration have happened to a lot of the ghost towns that have visited this is one of the only ghost towns that is completely untouched by time over a hundred years even though it can't get inside what we can see from this doorway is very impressive and we have a lot more buildings and little huts to go inside and i'm excited to see what else we could find honestly so in the back of this general store is what i really think it is we have this storage oh man the wood in here is so rotted we have a storage bin here it looks like we have a newspaper stand right here a couple of them in fact one we right there magazine we also have a fashion magazine left jc penney's [Applause] standing on the doorway this place is very messed up i mean 100 years to these old structures have not held up well but we have a bunch of old magazines that litter this entire storage space and we can get a better view from that door but this looks like to be the old storage bin for this general store i'm sure if you had a metal detector you could find some really amazing stuff in this old town got the windows all barred off to this this building it's pretty cool maybe that makes that a bank or something pretty sure that was the jp chase building here we have an old barn torn up not much left behind got a random dog here hi buddy hi hi nothing like some ghost town dogs hi buddy he's a nice boy hi is he buddy he doesn't have a doesn't have a anything should we help him do we have a bowl we could leave some water he looks like he's limping a bit so we're gonna give this dog a little bit of water i think it might be a neighbor's i saw a neighbor walking with a dog before maybe he just comes back at night hey buddy come here want some water there you go he looks really skinny so oh well there goes the rest of the water but uh yeah he drank it he wasn't that thirsty he's so cute though and there he goes yeah i mean he came down the road by himself we have this ghost town yard sale and on top of the place it says welcome to union level va the most photographed ghost town in virginia be careful on your visit ghosts walk here at night pretty cool though we have a collection of just random antiques here probably left in some of the buildings they haven't just lined out here on the porch i'm sure nothing of great value considering probably would have been stolen what is this despite only able to get into a handful of buildings here i saw enough history to make me even more interested in this location it's just very sad how this square this these beautiful old 100 year old buildings had to fall to this fate because they're really just all sitting here with no purpose in the world anymore just dilapidating falling apart they're really just going to demolish themselves and this era of american history will be just erased it'll just erase itself so i'm thankful i was able to come here explore this place with my own eyes because it was a really good time hopefully you guys did enjoy this explore also and that's gonna do it peace out guys have a good one and i'll see you in the next video peace [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Dark Exploration Films

Views: 451,161

Keywords: urbex, urban, exploration, ue, exploring, exploringwithjosh, properpeople, danbell

Id: fSTvggNa8iE

Length: 24min 54sec (1494 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 18 2022