Out with the "Off The Beaten Path" Gang - 1

Back on March 12th my friends Chris and Connie from Calgary came up to Edmonton.  Chris and Connie are historians, researchers, explorers and photographers and write a blog called "Off the Beaten Path".  It can be found on line at www.bigdoer.com

Margarit was away for the weekend at a ladies craft retreat out in the foothills and the girls and I were home alone.  On Saturday morning I headed out for the day with Chris and Connie.  Middle daughter Annelise decided to come along, but the other two stayed home.  Our first stop was at an old stone house that I had previously explored.  Chris later did a little research on this place and talked to someone that was familiar with the history of the place.  As we suspected when we visited, this was originally a wood frame house and the masonry was added on the exterior of the walls at a later date.  After taking a few snapshots here and exploring a bit, we headed on to our main destination.

 

Earlier in the spring I had located a stately, mansion-like structure.  It was on private land and at the time I originally found it, was unable to check it out.  In the meantime Chris was able to get permission to go in and do a little research and take some photographs.  Though heavily overgrown with carraganas, being still early in the season there were no leaves yet, and getting to and seeing the structure was not too difficult.  This is one of the most impressive abandoned homes I have ever seen.  The walls of the lower two stories were finished on the exterior with precast concrete blocks that resembled cut marble.  The millwork on the interior was exquisite.  The house was almost completely empty and not full of junk and garbage like so many old structures.  Equally impressive was the fact that it had really not been vandalized or disturbed, though the glass was long gone in all the windows.  The keystone on one side of the house had a date of 1915.  I took a bunch of digital snapshots here, but also set up my view camera and took three more serious photographs.  The digital ones are posted below, and I am still in the midst of processing my film from this outing so those will follow later.  Here is a link to the rather detailed report that Chris has put together since that outing, and posted to his website...

http://www.bigdoer.com/25298/exploring-history/1915-cement-house/