Goatman79

Hello, Vintage West Houston here- I made a recent visit to the country store on 12/27/21 and happened upon two gentlemen working amongst the rubble and tree cutting. They let me snoop around and take some photos. I hope they can save the main building if nothing else. What really made me sick was that Studebaker Champ pickup truck with the roof caved in. It wasn't caved in when I was there in 2013, so it happened recently. These trucks are very rare and this one would have been a prime candidate for restoration if the roof hadn't been smashed in. The orange Ford pickup on the other hand might have a chance, if they don't go to the scrap yard. If anyone knows who holds the title for the trucks, please e-mail goatman1979@hotmail.com.

I can confirm that the 290/Little York location was definitely a Safeway, and later, Apple Tree. I grew up in the area and passed by it often. There was also a Safeway in the Bear Creek area on State Highway 6 at Loch Katrine Dr., which is close to Kieth Harrow Blvd. That Safeway also became an Apple Tree, and a Hobby Lobby, and is now a thrift shop. Those conglomerate rock walls seem to be characteristic of Safeway stores and other late 1970's ventures.

I'll have to check that out next time Im on the seawall. I knew about the gun turret installations in front of the San Luis, and always point it out to my passengers when I ride past it. If any of y'all remember Sea Arama, it also used to be along the seawall near the long fishing pier that got destroyed by Hurricane Ike. Numerically, it would have been located approximately at 89th street, if such a road exists. I managed to get inside and take plenty of photos before it got bulldozed in 2007.

In regards to Addicks Clodine Rd., I finally found a good access point for photos (as well as a good hike). If you head west on Westheimer from HWY-6 South and enter George Bush park, there is a small parking lot directly across from Addicks-Clodine Rd. There is a small gravel path with a gate leading into Addicks-Clodine. The gravel path turns to the right into a bald spot on the reservoir, but the actual road itself is dead ahead, barely discernable unless you notice the trees in a straight line. The road surface is almost totally washed away, but the drainage ditches on either side contain discarded tires and rims, and this sunken path is the best way to explore the old alignment. The abandoned path continues north all the way to the north end of Barker dam, but it's quite a hike. I would recommend going in two vehicles, parking one at the north end, and driving to the south end to begin the hike. Once you reach the north end, drive back to the south access point and retrieve the other vehicle.

I don't remember it personally, but I sure found it on the map. That looked like a pretty nasty dead man's curve. Apparently the curve was bypassed in the 70's at some point, and an apartment complex was built right over it.

While exploring old maps, I discovered an isolated segment of Old North Houston-Rosslyn Rd. on the southeast corner of SH-249 and North Houston Rosslyn Rd. The road appears in photos as far back as 1943, but has been abandoned since approximately the 1970's since the newer road was built to the west. Part of the old road now serves as a parking lot for a church, and the other half, which borders some shady apartments, is almost totally overgrown on both shoulders, but can still be traversed on foot (though I highly recommend not going alone in this part of town). Get your pictures taken now, because urban development trends suggest that this abandoned road, which sits alone in a grassy field, will likely be built over in the near future.

I don't know if these qualify as abandoned, but there were two airfields on my side of town that are now built over. There's Andrau Airpark, which was located on the south side of Westheimer near Kirkwood until it was closed around 1998 and later demolished. Today, the area is all residential, but on the left side of the property when viewed from an aerial map, is a small section of the old drive that led to the airport from Westheimer. Another small airstrip used to be located on the northeast corner of I-10 and Eldridge Parkway back when Eldridge was known as Addicks-Fairbanks Rd. The airstrip appears on photos until 1973 when they ran Dairy Ashford through the north side of I-10 to connect with Eldridge. That added section of Dairy Ashford runs right over where the old airport used to be. On old road maps, it is labeled Crutcher-Rolfs-Cummings.

I remember both the Hockley Oil Ranch, and Physical Whimsical. I got to take a trip out to the oil ranch several times either through school field trips or Cub Scout outings. It was probably the single most awesome rope swing I had ever used. At the top of the barn with the rope swing was also a maze made from hay bails that kids could crawl in and out of. The Physical Whimsical had two locations, the one on 1960 and 249, and another one inside Sharpstown Mall. I tended to visit the Sharpstown location more often, for birthdays and such, but I do recall the FM 1960 location quite well. It had a lot of moonwalks, including one that resembled an old western saloon, and the place smelled like Wild Berry Skittles candy. The Sharpstown location was much better in my opinion. More things to do. There were two stories, and you could climb a giant net to get to the top floor, and ride the spiral slide down. There was also a room that had glow-in-the-dark walls. While the light was on, you held a position, and then the lights would go out, and you could see your shadow still on the wall for a minute or two. There was also lots of jungle gyms, a ball pit, a maze of giant padded-vinyl blocks (that we used to hit eachother with), and those little roller racers you sat on and pivoted the steering handle back and forth to move around the floor. Ah, such fond memories. I think both locations were closed by the early 1990's.

Does anybody remember what the story was on the old hospital building on the southwest corner of Bellaire Blvd. and Wilcrest? Back in 1998, I used to look at it sitting in decay while I had lunch at the nearby Jack in the Box during my lunch hour. It looked like an old insane asylum straight out of Hollywood, but I cant seem to find much information online about it without a name. The building caught fire at some point in 1998, and was later demolished.

I have a couple dozen photos of Sea Arama (but they are from 2006 when the place was badly in ruins. I explored the entire property and got lots of photos of everything inside and out, but am not very savvy with posting them as URL's yet. If they are of interest, I can figure out a way to post them. I also have some older photos of it from the internet.

Interesting, I did some browsing around Google Earth and found a few of those locations. I found Stiles Rd off Dairy Ashford near 59, although the resolution doesn't date back far enough to find out when it was made. I also had some fun touring the Westpark Tollway before and after....so many things have changed down there since the late 90's. Westpark and Hempstead Rd. have a lot in common. I have over 250 photos of Hempstead Highway, just in preparation for when they finally make a tollway out of it. Every time I drive on it, I feel like I am visiting a terminally ill cancer patient in the hospital. I never know when the day will come when the old road, in the blink of an eye, will be overtaken. I didn't find the leveled subdivision off I-45 and Saunders....mainly because I didn't know where to look for Saunders, but I did find some other interesting sights along I-45 using the time travel feature. Northline Mall at I-45 and Crosstimbers before, during, and after its demolition, Landmark Chevrolet before and after it's heyday, and an old apartment complex on I-45 and Gillespie Rd. just inside the Beltway that was demolished in the mid 2000's. The only reason it stuck out in my mind is because I remember driving past it while it was open, thinking how seedy it looked. Dozens of hispanic prostitutes and drifters hanging around like it was some sort of 24 hour bordello.

I began to gain interest in an abandoned section of Addicks Fairbanks Rd. in west Houston (present day Eldridge Parkway) when I visited the TexasFreeways website earlier this year. I had known about the seemingly useless segment of old paved road north of Patterson and parallel with Bear Creek Pioneers Park for years, but never knew what it was for. This spawned a whole new interest in locating other similar abandoned roads on my side of town, because using Historic Aerials and Google Earth, I was able to discover a whole bunch of other roads that have been bypassed, cut off, or re-purposed. I am finding more and more by using the time comparison feature. I thought I would share my information for others with similar interests. 1.)Addicks Fairbanks Rd: (There is a whole thread about this). Find Eldridge Parkway and Patterson Road. Directly north of Patterson and west of the present day Eldridge Parkway is a small portion of the old road pointing north then sharply east. Further south along Eldridge Parkway is another abandoned road that no longer appears on maps called "Lamb Rd." It once led to a farm, but has been closed off for decades. Lamb Rd. will lead you to the mysterious circles cut into the forest, one of which resembles an upside down cross. This used to be some sort of fish farm or other manmade structure, but it is now only a fossil etched into the greenery. 2.)FM 529/Spencer Rd: Before FM 529 intersects the 290 freeway, it takes a slight curve to the south near Golden Gate Drive. If you ignore the curve and follow the map in a straight line, you will see an abandoned segment of the old two-lane Spencer Rd. aiming towards 290. This expansion was done between 1987 & 1989 according to maps, and has been left to decay ever since. FM 529 used to meet up with Hempstead Road until the 290 freeway reached this area of town, and Hempstead Rd. was overrun by the 290 eastbound feeder. The old portion of 529 was barricaded off with concrete guardrail pieces, and has been used as a dumping site for tree branches, and old appliances. You can still see the railroad crossing markings on the pavement, and can still manage to get a car on the old road, although the area has gotten a bit dodgy, and I would not recommend visiting alone. 3.)Little York/Hillcrest: Further along 290 near the Beltway 8 interchange, there is a small asphalt road behind Carpet Texas labeled simply "Little York". It runs east and then turns north, but the freeway bisects the road, which resumes on the other side of the freeway under the name "Hillcrest". The road is barricaded off on both ends, but is still clearly an old two lane blacktop road. The road is pictured as far back as 1944 on Google Earth, long before any freeway reached out into west Houston. 4.)Telge Rd: South of 290, but west of the current Telge Road path, is an older, narrower road that is labeled Cameron Rd. on maps, but it is now off-limits to public traffic. The road, which runs in a straight line, unlike modern Telge Road, is now enclosed within the perimeter fence of the factories there, and is used as an intercompany transit route. The general public cannot get on this road, but it can still be seen in aerial photos. 5.)Cypress North Houston Rd: Between Huffmeister and Eldridge Parkway, Cypress North Houston runs east/west, and then curves smoothly to the northeast near Tall Forest Drive. This was done to bypass a dangerous curve (circa 1970s), but they left the old corner of road intact, which now serves as the entrance to a small private school. If you use the compare feature on Historic Aerials, you will see how the newer alignment plowed through the first line of houses in the nearby subdivision. This also brought a lot of other homes dangerously close to the roadside. 6.)FM 2920: Just west of the intersection of 2920 and Stuebner-Airline Rd., there is an old abandoned segment of 2920 that has been closed off since the mid 1970's. The old road runs parallel with the north fence of Hooks Airport, and on weekends, private vendors use it to sell arts and crafts. Much of the road has been overgrown with greenery, but you can see the clearing in the treeline where 2920 used to meet up with Stuebner Airline. 7.)Ora St: At Hempstead Highway and Dacoma, there is Ora St, a small residential drive that once led to a tract of small houses. The homes were reduced to slabs, and Ora is now closed off, part of the property of the nearby industrial business. 8.)Addicks-Howell Rd.: Not technically abandoned, just without purpose, is the old north/south alignment of Addicks Howell Rd. Before SH6 was constructed, this road was the main artery south of Addicks linking it with Howellville to the south. The old road remains open today, but is not exactly a necessary path, just an alternative. 9.)Jackrabbit Rd: Just south of Hempstead Road, Jackrabbit runs north, and then takes a sharp curve to the left to meet up with Highway 6. Before Highway 6, Jackrabbit ran straight into Hempstead, without a curve. If you keep looking north of this curve, you will see a small section of exposed asphalt & gravel that used to be Jackrabbit's old path directly to Hempstead Road. I imagine the railroad crossing was also moved. I would love to post pictures of these roads, but cannot figure out how. It only gives me a blank to fill in a URL code, but I don't know how to obtain this code information from my picture files.

I found some other abandoned roads in the west Houston area, thanks to some tedious work comparing new and old aerial photographs of the city layout. 1.)Cypress North Houston Rd.: West of Eldridge Parkway is a bend in C.N.H. road that was the result of a bypassing, probably in the early 1980's. Today, Galson Auto Repair is at the apex of this turn, and directly across the street is the old "dead man's curve" of C.N.H. Road, which now serves as an entrance to a small private school. The old yellow lane dividers are still there as well. 2.)Telge Rd: South of 290: The segment of Telge Rd. between 290 and West Road was constructed in the very early 1980's to the east of the original road, which ran directly north/south and ended at a power station near present day Tuckerton Rd. When Telge Rd was expanded south of 290 to link with West Rd, the old two lane asphalt road was swallowed up by the nearby factories to serve as a transit route between factories, and became known as Cameron Rd., after Cameron Iron Works. Most of this road is off limits to non-employees, but a small offshoot road near the train crossing will give you a view of the old road surface. 3.) Spencer Rd./FM 529: North of the present intersection of FM 529 and 290 (which dips below grade), there is a small remaining abandoned segment of the original FM 529 where it intersected with Hempstead Rd. This road is still accessible by a small driveway immediately east of the train crossing (see Google maps), but it is heavily overgrown, and littered with discarded tree limbs, tires, and hot tub shells. Not the most welcoming place to go exploring, but a fascinating abandoned pathway.

I think that old house is just one of the many random old houses along Hempstead Rd. in the old days that managed to survive (if you can call it that) to today. The house is obviously a genuinely aged home, and not a forced job by the haunted house attraction. It looks ready to collapse on itself. On another note, I was reading about another abandoned road called Addicks Clodine, which was abandoned around the time the barker reservoir was built. I think I can find an overgrown path within the dam, but am not sure if it's Addicks Clodine Road or not. Are there any remnants of the road left today? And how would one go about accessing it for photos?

After I spent enough time on Historicaerials.com, I figured out how to use the "compare" feature, which allows you to slide back and forth between the new and old aerial photos. This makes it much easier to identify landmarks and roads that have remained the same through the years, and to determine exactly how a road was re-aligned. I was a little in the dark about how exactly Addicks Fairbanks road was re-aligned until I saw the old photos from 1957 and 1964. The new Eldridge Parkway was built to the west of Addicks-Fairbanks Rd. starting at I-10 and moving north. The section of land that once was occupied by an airstrip is now home to a recently constructed series of office buildings. Prior to their construction, another small strip of the old Addicks Fairbanks road could be seen in the "frontyard" of that construction site in the 2002 & 2004 aerial photos. Obviously, construction eliminated this visible portion, but it helped give some perspective on just how much of the old road one would expect to find. The small stretch bordering the east side of Bear Creek park is pretty much all there is left today. On another note, I found some other interesting abandoned road sections while browsing the old aerial shots. Cypress North Houston was apparently realigned sometime in the 70's or early 80's just east of the Barwood bend subdivision. The old rural road used to have a corner in it, and today this corner serves as an entrance/exit road to the Mackel Private School. Huffmeister and Old Huffmeister Rd. are a little more well-known, because the old section of Huffmeister just north of Cypress N. Houston was still open to traffic until about ten years ago. Even with the new alignment of Huffmeister built, the old section was still a viable passage with many business entrances. At some point, Old Huffmeister was cut off from New Huffmeister, and became a dead-end road. But it was once a classic example of rural road designs...stopping and then resuming several blocks away in a separate location. Telge Rd. also has an interesting past to it (not very old but still...), sometime in the late 1970's, Telge Road was expanded between West Road and 290. It originally sat several block to the west, serving the many factories there, and was much narrower. This old passage can be seen in old aerial photos as the only route north and south in this region. After Telge was realigned to the east, this small stretch of road became Cameron Rd., an industrial road for the factories to use that is apparently private now. I have not yet tried to get in.