Middletown USA -- The Ghosts of Muncie's Manufacturing Past

Muncie, Indiana -- designated "Middletown USA" by a sociological study in the 1930s.  A blue collar city:  Ball Brothers,  Warner Gear (3 plants), Indiana Steel & Wire, Chevrolet, Delco Battery, Owens-Illinois, Indiana Bridge Company, Marhoefer Meatpacking -- and dozens of smaller foundries and manufacturing plants.  Now not a single major manufacturing facility remains.  All that is left is rust, abandoned buildings, cement pads & the broken American dream of a better life for your children.

Locks gate at abandoned mostly leveled manufacturing site

Long neglected sign of closed plant

Of all these photos, this is the one that struck me the most.  Of a once thriving factory, all that remains is a surviving smokestack rising from a heap of rubble, and a utility pole with no wires, the need for power to the site having long since vanished.

Railroad tracks leading to no where -- just to a gate of a long-closed factory.  Now the siding ends at the gate amidst weeds and abandonment

A certain fragmented beauty in the shattered glass and crumbling walls of deserted watchman's station