Dearth from above: aerial images of a vanishing America – in pictures

Lordstown, Ohio

The General Motors plant in Lordstown, Ohio produced some of the best-selling cars of the 1960s, including the Chevy Impala and the Pontiac Firebird. On a Monday in 2018, GM announced it would close the plant. Some dubbed it the modern ‘Black Monday’ referencing the closure of Youngstown Sheet and Tube a generation earlier. Remains to be Seen by Travis Fox is published by Daylight books. An accompanying exhibition at Wired Gallery runs until 2 May
Salton Sea, California

The Salton Sea was created by accident. In 1905, engineers diverted the Colorado River by mistake and for two years it filled one of the lowest places in America. The ‘sea’ became a popular tourist destination in the 1950s and 1960s — resorts were built and people flocked to the site in the southern California desert. That popularity was short-lived. The increasing salinity of the water and agricultural runoff killed half the sea’s fish, leaving them to wash up on the shores. The resorts were shuttered and most people left
Owens Lake, California

A little more than a century ago, this was a rich, deep blue body of water in the desert. It dried up after 1913 when its source, the Owens River, was diverted to provide water for the growing city of Los Angeles. In the decades since, the dry lake bed has become the single biggest source of dust pollution in the United States, a mixture of carcinogens such as cadmium, nickel, and arsenic. Beginning in the 1990s, courts forced the city of LA to tackle the toxic dust and thus began one of the biggest environmental projects in the US
Baltimore, Maryland

In 1920, Baltimore was booming. With more than 700,000 people, it was one of America’s largest cities. After the Great Depression, the Federal Housing Administration created maps of every American city, and neighbourhoods deemed risky – mostly those with minority populations – were ‘redlined’, meaning they weren’t eligible for new federal-backed mortgages. Thus began a long, slow period of disinvestment. Today, the city is tearing down thousands of abandoned row houses, leaving entire blocks completely empty, and the population has plummeted
Geauga Lake, Ohio

For more than a century, and throughout several name and owner changes, Geauga Lake, Ohio, was the site of an amusement park. The first ride arrived in 1889 and the water park – the last attraction to survive – was shuttered in 2016. The park, situated between Cleveland, Akron, and Youngstown, faced falling attendance numbers and increasing debt
King of Prussia, Pennsylvania

In the 1960s, construction began on the Schuylkill Parkway in an effort to relieve traffic on new suburban highways nearby. The project was halted during the 1970s oil crisis and never completed
California City, California

Cal City is an ambitious planned city 100 miles from Los Angeles. The project was created in 1965 with plans to become one of California’s biggest cities. It has largely failed in the decades since, leaving a mostly intact suburban street grid spreading over 200 square miles in the Mojave desert. Just 14,000 residents remain
Youngstown, Ohio

For decades, Youngstown, Ohio, was an industrial powerhouse, producing materials for the American automobile industry. Youngstown Sheet and Tube’s Campbell Works plant was once among the largest steel mills in the world. The factory was closed in 1977 and 5,000 workers were laid off. ‘Black Monday’, as the closure was known, marked the beginning of large-scale closures in the steel industry, from Youngstown to Pittsburgh. Youngstown’s population has fallen by more than 60% from its peak in 1930
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Pittsburgh’s population has dropped by more than half since 1950. Since then, as the steel mills closed, workers have moved away. Remnants of their culture remain. Saint Peter and Paul Roman Catholic Church, which is on the National Register of Historic Places, was closed in 1992 and has been slowly deteriorating since
Fallsburg, New York

Between the 1930s and 1970s, Jewish families from New York City travelled to the Catskills to new resorts such as The Pines in Fallsburg for summer vacations. With the introduction of affordable air travel, however, and with incomes rising, families went further afield for their holidays, leaving the Borscht Belt almost completely abandoned. The Pines lasted longer than many, but closed its doors for good in 1998
Old Forge, Pennsylvania

The coal region in eastern Pennsylvania is home to the largest deposit of anthracite coal in the western hemisphere. The industry boomed after the civil war but was in decline by the 1950s – more than half a century later the remnants, mountain-sized tailings, are still visible
Linfield, Pennsylvania

The 192-acre Linfield industrial park in Pennsylvania was home to dozens of manufacturing industries in its heyday. Its most famous tenant was the Kinsey Distillery, whose warehouse contained the world’s largest store of ageing whiskeys, some one million barrels