Abandoned Building in Fort Smith

Urban exploration in Arkansas
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VBJag
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Abandoned Building in Fort Smith

Post by VBJag »

I was on 540 the other day and a building off of Zero St. in Fort Smith caught my attention.

Looking here I can see the building is completely boarded up and part of the roof is caved in. Does anyone know what might use to be in this building? About 2500 feet to the west in an open field is an indentical rusted water tower. There's two huge open fields with almost nothing in them. I'm thinking there may have been a huge factory back in the day, but I can't find anything. On terraserver's site, it does show some buildings in that open field where just the water tower now stands.
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Fiend
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RE: Abandoned Building in Fort Smith

Post by Fiend »

Could have been any number of things. The water towers are usually a sign of industrial uses, such as steam engines, boilers and so on. However, that building your talking about doesnt have boards on it, rather sheet metal, looks like that building (the 3 story one) is used for storage or something, it looks maintained. The two smaller buildings behind it may be more interesting.

And as for the area to the west. There were definately buildings there (see pic below), as well as RR tracks. Sanborn maps and maybe some old aerials could tell you what they were.
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VBJag
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Re: Abandoned Building in Fort Smith

Post by VBJag »

Interesting thanks. I have to go down to that area tomorrow. I'll take some pictures and dig around to see what I can find.
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Re: Abandoned Building in Fort Smith

Post by VBJag »

Okay, the building was an old coffin manufacturing plant. There's a building right behind it that contains the blast furnace. I got some pictures of what I could.

They have that place locked up tighter than a drum, but I really want to get in now.
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m0ridin
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Re: Abandoned Building in Fort Smith

Post by m0ridin »

Coffin plant sounds ominous, love to see those pictures.
farlo
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RE: Abandoned Building in Fort Smith

Post by farlo »

thats actually just a few miles from my house, its being used as a warehouse nowdays

http://www.fortsmithhistory.org/History ... finco.html
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Re: Abandoned Building in Fort Smith

Post by VBJag »

Thanks. Yeah I can tell it's full of junk inside and we discovered the AC was running.
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