Butedale

I arrived in Butedale last night and met Lou, the caretaker. Butedale is an old fish cannery. In its heyday, several hundred people lived and worked there during the summer. It even had its own hydroelectric power plant for electricity. Since the cannery shut down it's been inhabited on and off, but for many years the buildings continued to be heated and lit by the endless free electricity. All that ended one winter when someone came in and stripped the generators of all the copper, rendering them useless.

In order to prevent further vandalism, Butedale now has a year-round caretaker. I spent the night in his house, which is in somewhat better shape than those in the picture. He's rigged a car alternator to the water turbine that used to power the generators so he has a teeny bit of power available for lights and the refrigerator, but nothing like what Butedale had back when the power plant was in operation.