Meet the guy photographing California’s abandoned places before they’re gone forever

Photographer Kevin Lacy of Long Beach has a fascination with abandoned places. Growing up in Buffalo, New York, the obsession began with forgotten grain silos and dilapidated factories.

“If I drove past an abandoned place on the side of the road, I had the desire -- always -- to stop and check it out,” Lacy said.

Since moving to the West Coast about 10 years ago and founding The Abandoned Project, Lacy has criss-crossed California getting shots of some of the most secret and hard-to-reach places that lay in beautiful decay.

“I think everybody -- at least some part of them -- has a little bit of morbid curiosity [about] these places... It’s the same thing with people loving zombie movies,” Lacy told LAist.

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This year Lacy released a book of his travels in the California desert that covers mining ghost towns, massive wooden railway bridges, a deserted waterpark and more.

'Unique desert decay'

“Deserted Dreams: California’s Abandoned Oasis” captures about 10 years of Lacy’s work in California, including photographing Lake Dolores Waterpark (later called Rock-A-Hoola Waterpark), an abandoned attraction off of the 15 Freeway in the Mojave Desert. Originally opened in the 1960s, it’s said to have been one of America’s first waterparks.

The abandoned Rock-A-Hoola Waterpark

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Kevin Lacy

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But it’s been closed for more than two decades now, after injuries, lawsuits and bankruptcy led to its demise.

Now it’s home to rusting signs covered in graffiti and massive pools overtaken by skaters.

“The way that things deteriorate in the desert is just incredible,” Lacy said. “With the sand and the sun and the wind and the way that rain hits that area, it’s really unique.”

Lacy said one of his favorite chapters in the book covers The Impossible Railroad, a deserted rail line that leads to the largest wooden trestle bridge ever made. That’s if you can manage a roughly 18-mile roundtrip hike through the desert. It’s a trek Lacy said has been deadly for some and he doesn’t recommend trying it if you’re an inexperienced hiker or unprepared.

The Goat Canyon Trestle Bridge

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Kevin Lacy

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The Goat Canyon Trestle bridge, at a length of around 700 feet, is widely considered the world’s largest wooden trestle bridge.

Lacy said, while it may sound a bit cheesy, he lives by the motto of “Take only pictures, leave only footprints.” And he doesn’t typically share exact locations of some of the sites he visits, which he said take countless hours of research and travel to find.

“You have to be really careful of the intentions of people,” Lacy said. “A lot of people will go there just to destroy things, or they want to rip the copper pipes out of the wall to make some money. Or they like to burn things.”

An abandoned locomotive on The Impossible Railroad

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Kevin Lacy

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A lot of places Lacy has visited -- in the California desert especially -- are gone forever, either through natural decay or human involvement.

Lacy, who works in social media in the travel and tourism space, lamented the loss of one of his favorite motels in the California desert that he said he’d visited a dozen times.

He said he saw it go through a fire, different stages of decay and it eventually was torn down.

“That was kind of an emotional thing because I had almost grown with this place over 10 years and loved to document it, loved to photograph, loved to visit it and see how it had changed. And it’s gone now,” Lacy said.

“I think it’s important to see these places and to document them before they’re gone completely.”