Spring Hope, North Carolina. By Paul Goldfinger from the Spring Hope Series. March, 2013 © Click once to enlarge.
By Paul Goldfinger, MD. Editor, Blogfinger.net
This photograph is from a series of images taken in Spring Hope, North Carolina.
We got off route 95 and discovered what appeared to be an abandoned rural community. We met a man who ran a gas station where the one pump wasn’t working very well.
The whole place was decrepit, but the buildings, although deteriorating due to time and weather, seemed to have a strong sense of home for people long gone. There were broken-down houses and out-buildings.
Many of the structures had bright colors, as if to say, “We’re not dead yet.” There was a sort of sad elegance and loneliness. I think the name refers to the hopes which the settling farmers had for water.
We pulled over to the side of the road and got out to walk around and take some photos.
It didn’t seem like we should stay long, so we got back on 95 and continued our journey north.
Later we looked up the town and found that it had a population of about 1,200 13 years ago. The census showed that the racial breakdown was about half white and half African-American. You can do a BF search at the top of the home page by typing “Spring Hope” into the box. Here is a 2016 post about Spring Hope:
NORAH JONES, WILLIE NELSON AND WYNTON MARSALIS. From the album “Celebrating the Genius of Ray Charles.”