There are stretches of busy highway here and elsewhere in coastal North Carolina where dwellings long abandoned stand in various states of ruin; some are so far gone an observer must look closely to find any evidence at all of the built structure nature seems intent to reclaim. Nor is it unusual for glossy new shopping centers or prosperous neighborhoods to pop up on either side of the properties these ancient vernacular structures now seem to melt into, remnants whose days are numbered; I imagine they once stood alone and separated by miles from nearest neighbors.

How does a country house end up in ruins. No heir or quibbling heirs, land tied up in probate? One of the most notorious examples was Grey Gardens, well documented and distinctly higher brow than what I mean. But these days the property, at least, down here on the Carolina coast must be worth a fortune, even if the tumble-down dwellings hold no value. I’d love to photograph some of them before they’re finally gone, but the local road where I see them most often is too perilous for stopping and anyway, I’d be trespassing. (Also, there be snakes.)

Ruins like these first caught my attention on the long trips we made across the state of Tennessee to visit extended family when I was a kid. Dad drove and mom rode shotgun; in the back seat I took the side opposite dad and played cow poker with him, a game that inspired the same questions: Why does nobody do something about that sad, drooping barn—there is a perfectly good house right across the field from it. Or why does nobody just go on and knock it down. I can’t recall an answer that might’ve satisfied my burgeoning curiosity, but I suspect the reason boiled down to simple economics: Sometimes it costs more, in cash or labor, to patch up or flatten an old structure than it does to simply step away from it and build a new one somewhere else.

By the time I reached grad school, in fact, I’d already logged many long hours in the field every semester documenting what was left of the rural built environment in Knox and surrounding counties with my mentor, Dr. Charlie Faulkner. Nothing was off-limits to him, although I am certain he did his due diligence before we trudged miles, seemingly, across fields dotted with frozen cow turds to finally reach a threatened structure. My job was primarily to shut up and listen; I toted the clipboard with the graph paper pad while Charlie measured and then called out dimensions so I could make drawings. It mattered not to him whether it was 20 outside and windy (and yes, standing in an abandoned or derelict structure definitely counts as being outside). One afternoon my digits were so thoroughly numbed after documenting a farmhouse near the Tennessee River, I had to stop at a diner on the way home for an hour or so just to thaw them.

Those structures, mainly homes, had plenty of stories to tell. Most of them had fallen to ruin and at various points obviously served as crude shelter to squatter-vagrants, or as target practice for vandals; anything of value was typically long gone. (There were exceptions: I recall Dr. Faulkner delighting in the relatively good condition of a built-in corner cabinet we found inside a kitchen, in a structure that was all but rubble.) One of these derelict 19^th-century homes in far West Knox County would be burned as a training exercise for the fire department, and then the owners would sell the land to developers, a typical scenario; we were there to get it down on paper before it was lost, Dr. Faulkner and myself and several other archaeology students. On the main level we found filthy mattresses, broken windows, and Christmas wrap strewn about, the standard artifacts. The upstairs was in reasonably good shape; we took wallpaper samples and measurements. The basement was knee-deep in fetid water, but this was no obstacle for Charlie Faulkner, who waded into it without a second thought so he could examine the foundation.

He saw past all the ruination and once back on campus started putting two and two together, ciphering through census records, researching the McClung (historical) Collection downtown for any surviving documentation that would help. If we were lucky enough to find well-preserved hardware on the site—nails, hinges, doorknobs, that kind of thing—and he could scrutinize other building details, for example, evidence of sash-sawn boards—then we could get a fix on a construction date, or at least a date range. We sometimes collected verbal histories from descendants, but always fact-checked them against records. So in that way, a little at a time, Dr. Faulkner and others of his ilk could breathe life back into the historical built environment and give us all a glimpse of the people who lived and worked in it. But also, each one of these buildings represented a data point that would help us understand the entire region’s past, its agriculture, commerce, and industry, making it decidedly less two-dimensional.

I own a copy of Tennessee: A Guide to the Volunteer State, first published in December of 1939 as part of the American Guide Series that grew out of the Works Progress Administration, a Depression-era program that kept laborers and professionals of all sorts employed when jobs were scarce. This edition has no folding map, but the text and “tours” within still make retracing some of the old thoroughfares in the state quite possible, and in fact at various times I’ve driven several of those that remain, or at least their more contemporary renderings.

I’m less steeped in North Carolina’s history and landscape, but recently came across a first edition copy of the North Carolina version (North Carolina: A Guide to the Old North State). This one, claims the seller, still has its folded map in the back jacket and is in excellent condition; happily, it is on its way to me now. Aside from offering a few clues about nearby ruins, I anticipate this volume will lead to new adventures. Chasing the past strikes me as worthy a diversion as any for a new year, the better to understand how we arrived here.