| |
| "And
even the bare-worn common is denied." |
Toyah Revisited
"I guess it is more
about capturing the story rather than the physical buildings.” Stephen
Michaels - Photographer
Captions from Oliver Goldsmith’s
poem "The Deserted Village"
“Even
now the devastation is begun,
And half the business of destruction done;
Even
now, methinks, as pondering here I stand,
I see the rural virtues leave the
land…” |
Photographer’s
Notes:
Toyah now has a very different
look than shown on the current Texas Escapes page.
The images I’m sending now show only Toyah's past. Amazingly, it still has a story
to tell. The truckstop is still there (where I parked) but it looks like it has
been vacant for a good while. |
 |
The
"Toyah Grill" sign looks decent, but I could not tell what building it belonged
to. The Toyah post office, well, I’m not sure they still have one. There is a
building with a mailbox in front, and a few PO boxes inside....but no sign, no
flag, nothing that says it is an active post office.
I wish I had looked
at Texas Escapes coverage of Toyah before I visited
the town so I could have taken better perspective shots. I know I stood on the
corner where the hotel would have been.
TE’s mention of the bank being destroyed
by a tornado in 2004 is correct. All that remains today is a lonely free-standing
wall. The hotel, mercantile, etc. are completely
erased from the block.
The bank is
now just a pile of bricks and debris. The front was overgrown with weeds and trash
cement. |
| "No
more the farmer's news, the barber's tale…" |
“O
luxury! thou cursed by Heaven's decree,
How ill exchanged are things like
these for thee!”
- The Deserted Village by Oliver Goldsmith |
| There
was an old car parked right at what was most likely the corner of the building.
I had to shoot the car very tight to try and keep the "trash" out of the image.
At the west corner of the building there stands a section of wall with stairs
and a window. I took that shot and it shows all that is left of Main street. The
street signs are still in place, but for several blocks there is nothing but empty
lots and weeds. |
| I
did notice
an old sign in the rubble that read "Historic bricks 4 sale. $1.50, your choice."
I wonder if there were any buyers. Even if you had wanted to buy them, who would
you have given the money to? |
| An
East Texas brick finds its way to West Texas |
| I
did take a few house images...all vacant now of course. There
was one church that was vacant, and another had a few cars out front. One building
said "Toyah City Hall" but even that building had its lamp posts torn up out of
the ground and laying in front. I highly doubt that that building has been used
for any purpose recently. The fire department looked the same. |
 |
I
found three Volunteer fire trucks scattered about the town,
parked next to hydrants, but they had not been registered since 2004.
On
the outskirts of town I did see a few houses that could still be habitable. During
my hour long walkabout, I only saw one pickup truck go speeding down a dirt road
off into the distance.
Even Mesquite
Thorn,Texas is closed off.
The
images I took show Toyah as it WAS in its day. The roads are lonely now. Even
Main Street is "gone." But I do feel I captured spirit of Toyah. After all, that
is what Texas Escapes was designed to show. If
we are lucky we can catch a few buildings to show as examples of what had been,
but for cases like this, we are left with a few images that can only capture the
mist of a town before it is totally gone.
I have to admit, it was painful
to photograph this town. I got stung by a bee, backed into a mesquite branch,
kneeled down on a thorn pile, hit my head on the school’s swing set, and almost
stepped on a snake. This may be one of the reasons Toyah is vacant. – Stephen
Michaels, August 10, 2008 |
 |
“Good
Heaven! what sorrows gloomed that parting day
That called them from their native
walks away…” |
| "The
country blooms—a garden, and a grave." |
"…where
birds forget to sing,
but silent bats in drowsy clusters cling…" |
"No
busy steps the grass-grown footway tread,
for all the bloomy flush of life
is fled…" |
"Where
at each step the stranger fears to wake
the rattling terrors of the vengeful
snake…" |
"While
oft in whirls the mad tornado flies,
mingling the ravaged landscape with the
skies." |
“…self-dependent
power can time defy,
as rocks resist the billows and the sky.” |
Editor’s Note:
We were first introduced
to Toyah, by photographer Jason Penney in 2000.
Toyah was one of our first ghost towns, and due
to the limited capabilities of the Internet at that time, we were prevented from
doing Mr. Penney’s photos justice. Although they appeared as mere thumbnails,
their presence gave former Toyahans an opportunity to share their memories via
email. Through the letters received, we learned Toyah’s
history which is a lot like many small Texas towns - only more so. A
fatal train wreck, the 19th Century killing of a fugitive from Pecos,
the Chinese basement school, the filming of a movie and the poignant establishment
of the memorial “town” of Mesquite Thorn.
For its size and its minimal contact with the outside world, Toyah
produced a substantial and well-written history that was once sold at the (now
defunct) truck stop. When a flash flood hit the town in 2004, we were notified
of the incident within hours. When a company moved out of town, we were sent the
happy news that the pressure of several local artesian springs improved. We were
under the happy impression that Toyah was on the
road to recovery. Although no staff members had ever visited the town, we considered
Toyah our “mascot” for several years before bestowing
that honor to Medicine Mound.
We would’ve happily remained ignorant of Toyah’s
continued decline but in early August of 2008, Stephen
Michaels, photographer, trucker and webmaster of www.BigRigTravels.com
spent an hour touring Toyah and recorded the images
you see here.
Today Toyah is truly a “deserted village” and so, for captions,
we chose lines from Oliver Goldsmith’s poem about the lure of wealth and the ruin
of rural life. – Ed.
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