One day at the end of February, 2006 I heard that there was an abandoned brick factory in the tiny town of Medora in Jackson County in southern Indiana. I have wanted to photograph one of these brick plants with the old fashioned beehive kilns for years, because right after I graduated from High School I photographed a wedding in Ohio and found an abandoned brick plant near the town I was in. I was not much of an artist back then, and was disappointed in the photographs I made there. I can't remember where I found the place anymore, so I never went back.

The Medora Brick Company was only about an hour from Louisville so Dee Dee and I drove up there so I could photograph it. We were there a couple hours and it was cold outside so we left before I got to explore the whole place. I stopped back a week later on the way to Fort Wayne, where I was going to visit my son.

A former employee of the brick factory stopped by to talk to us when we were there the first time and he said he worked there ten years until the place closed in 1992. He described to us the process for making bricks in the ancient kilns that were nearly a century old and said that a lot of good people lost their jobs when it closed.

Check out the Medora Brick Plant Site. It's maintained by Steve Graves, a former resident of Jackson County, who hopes to see the brick plant restored someday. Steve discovered the abandoned brick factory while researching his family's history. His great-grandfather was a supervisor at the Medora Brick Plant in 1914.

The Medora Brick Company was founded in 1904 and began producing bricks at the newly-built plant in 1906. The plant closed in 1992 after 88 years in business.