Winsted's Union Pin Company: Highland Lake and Pins Still in the Soil

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Photo courtesy of the Winchester Tax Office Pins in the Brook: The Last Ruins of the Union Pin Company J and I came at it through the trees. No path, just tall standing trees and the kind of undergrowth that swats at your shins and grabs your laces, until the canopy thinned and we found what was left. A turbine, tall and rusted, rising out of the woods beside a brook in Winsted, Connecticut. A small generator sat on top of it, also rusted, also still. Beside that, set back from the tree line and facing the residential houses across Lake Street, a sealed and boarded building held its ground. It was August 2019, midday, the kind of heat that slows everything down. We photographed the turbine carefully, then picked our way downstream along the slippery rocks of the brook that fed toward the Mad River past Boyd Street. What J never mentioned, and what I never thought to look for, was the hydropower outlet tucked behind the thick trees just off the path we'd taken. And neither of us eve...
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Oil Facility Lane #1






Open gate, open invitation in my book.
















Open invitations just scream come right in and explore the place. If open gates give you pause then your thinking wrong because I strolled right in like I owned the place. Entering the doorway I hear the raging waters of a burst pipe filling the basement with drinkable water unknown to the owners and city.












Climbing the stairs to my left were oil meters and switch boxes used to dispense and assess how much petroleum oil was leaving the site and on site. To my right was the thrashed records room by the looks of it due to the huge amount of papers scattered all over the ground. Heading upstairs more office space opened up. Better in appearance then downstairs, the office cubicles contained various old computer equipment and bookkeeping records. Nothing of unique note inside an administrative floor of a fuel facility.




A three-bay garage attachment.














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