Skull Valley Station Picture of the Week

It’s been a while since I pointed my camera at an old building. The last time I did was before we all got locked up last year. I did publish that shot of Oatman’s empty streets last year, but that image spoke about desertion rather than historic buildings. I guess I missed this genre because after I shot the train depot in last week’s photo, I hung around and worked on other Skull Valley buildings.

Shooting architecture is a different discipline than nature photography. That’s because lens distortion is more obvious when you’re shooting boxes. That’s why view cameras have movements that allow the artist to correct for perspective distortions. These days, you can correct that in Photoshop—to a degree. A photographer can use a couple of other secrets to minimize camera distortion that I could reveal to you, but then I’d have to kill you.

As I grow old, history becomes increasingly important to me, so I wish I could tell you the story behind each of the buildings I shoot. However, most of my subjects are ordinary, and they’re only historic because they survived the wrecking ball. If I were a better researcher, I could visit the local museums and city halls to uncover records. Unfortunately, I’m not going to because I’m lazy. If it doesn’t exist on Google, then it never happened.

Skull Valley Station - Located on Iron Springs Road in Skull Valley on the north side of the Peavine tracks.
Skull Valley Station – Located on Iron Springs Road as it winds through Skull Valley just north of the Peavine railroad tracks.

Take this week’s featured image, for example. Up until this year, tenants used this building as a feed store. I guess that the pandemic was bad for their business, and they closed shop early this spring. I don’t know when someone last sold gas here, but the pump is set to 33 cents per gallon. I did find this article from The Daily Courier that suggests that a previous owner—Bob Colbert—didn’t know he owned a service station until he uncovered the original sign under layers of paint. Now someone has slapped more paint over the sign again (I wonder what happened to the other two pumps).

We drive by this building each month on our way to the Prescott Costco. It’s on the right immediately after Iron Springs Road crosses the Peavine tracks I talked about last week. I never stopped to take a picture because of the feed signs, and there were always newer vehicles parked outside. They kinda ruined the old-gas-state motif. This time with the early-morning light in the cottonwoods and dappled on the orange façade, I took time to shoot the station from several angles. This week’s featured image is the version I liked best. I called it Skull Valley Station. What else could I call it?

You can see a larger version of Skull Valley Station on its Web Page by clicking here. We’re going to hang around Skull valley for another couple of weeks, so come back and see what else caught my attention.

Until next time — jw

One thought on “Skull Valley Station Picture of the Week

  1. Great Shot! It looks really good for it’s age. You always find interesting tidbits of info that I love to read.

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