Sublunar Photography

Old Crow Distillery was founded in the early 1800's. It seems that it was abandoned in the 1980s, though it was likely not in use for a while before that. It borders an active business, the one that bought it out, and is therefore very difficult to access.

NOTE: For over 10 years, I called this location "Brewery X" to protect its identity online. Some time after we explored it, the site was purchased by Glenns Creek Distillery. I have since updated the site's real name.

This was actually our consolation prize. The reason we came out here was because of something else nearby. But that something else had cars on the property that moved around from time to time. We learned this through our reconnaissance and became disheartened. It was raining heavily all day and so we spent that time getting a feel for the landscape and eye-ing up what we'd be up against. It wasn't pretty.

Considering the rain and the activity on site, we drove off to a different town down the road in hopes of scoring some other consolation prize (one that would be mostly indoors, thus allowing us to continue to be productive even in the rain). We decided to scratch something off the list we had planned for later so that we could come back and re-try this one after the rain. There was some difficulty getting access to WIFI so I could get the coordinates off a map I had made. More lost time. With coordinates finally loaded into the GPS we approached the area on the map, hoping to make something out of this day. We got there but something wasn't right. Driving around thinking we were lost, we compared the coordinates with our location and determined the place had been demolished. A field of grass was all that remained.

So we returned to our objective. The "something else" was still inhabited. These people hadn't left, but their vehicles had moved. Why the fuck are they here anyway?! UGH. Through our research on site, we determined what it would take to return some day, now that we've seen what we're up against. At this point, it wasn't going to happen.

Note 2: The "something else" I'm reffering to here was the Old Taylor distillery just down the road a ways which has also since been purchased and renovated into "Castle and Key".. Even after all these years, I'm EXTREMELY SALTY that we didn't get to explore Old Taylor during its period of abandonment. That place is so damn awesome. I am, however, grateful that the new owners recognized how awesome that site is and have retained most of its character in their new business. I wish more historic locations ended up as fortunate. Maybe one day I'll get a proper tour of Old Taylor.

We headed for Brewery X. This location wasn't inherently any easier. I began to have my doubts of accomplishing anything this day. Some days are like that after all. But faced with that prospect, the thought of turning around in defeat just made us that much more determined to "make it happen, goddamnit!" Our earlier research in the rain had shown us a weakness in the perimeter defenses that could be exploited. But there just wasn't any place to park. The road was a narrow and windy two-lane. The whole area was a small neighborhood. The car would be out of place anywhere around here. After deliberating for some time, we picked the least horrible place to park. This left us with a totally exposed hike to the objective. Next door was an active business with global reach. Surely they had security.

Once inside the fence, we booked it. A car drove by and we ducked in the weeds. Once it was out of sight, we ran for cover and to find an entrance. I hadn't seen any photos of this place online; no-one seemed to know about it, nor consider it to be a do-able location. It was recommended to me that I don't try it. And yet here we were, wondering if we'd regret ignoring the advice.

I didn't know what to expect. It could have been totally gutted and boring. But what we found was a nice surprise and I was relieved to see that it was all that I could hope for. Glorious remnants of the industrial age were scattered all around us. I could spend all day in a place like this. The ground floor was extremely dark and as we got further I noticed the basement was flooded. That is to say that the water was up all the way to the floor I was standing on, within inches of my feet. And the floor I was standing on was a metal grate. So I shined my light down into the terrifyingly murky water and could see strange shapes and contorted rusty objects submerged and motionless. I could think of nothing worse than falling through.. After that, I stepped carefully.

Knowing our car was totally exposed, we had to make it quick. Several cars had passed by in the short amount of time we had been inside already. We ran around frantically trying to see as much as we could in about 20 minutes. Spending much longer than that here was just out of the question. I wished we had more time to see it because it could be gone soon. But we had seen it and the day wasn't a total waste after all. We salvaged an otherwise unproductive day and made it inside a place that no-one else had blabbered about on the internet yet. Still, I won't be the first to brag about it with google searchable text. For all you know, this is Brewery X.