A Famous Photographer Captured This Texas Town as It Was Dying

TEXAS -- In 1937, one of America's most famous photographers traveled to a small Texas town that was slowly losing its people. She photographed an abandoned café, an empty house, and signs of a community struggling to survive. Nearly 90 years later, those photographs offer a fascinating glimpse into what happened when changes in farming threatened an entire way of life.

The photographer was Dorothea Lange, best known for her haunting images of Americans during the Great Depression.

The town was Carey, Texas.

And thanks to the Library of Congress collection preserving Lange's photographs, we can still see what was happening in this little Childress County community nearly nine decades ago.

A Texas Town Was Becoming a Ghost Town

Carey is located about eight miles northwest of Childress, along U.S. Highway 287. According to the Texas State Historical Association, the community was originally named Talulah before being renamed Carey in 1898.

By the 1930s, however, the town was facing some serious challenges.

Lange's photographs documented the effects of mechanized cotton farming. As tractors increasingly replaced the need for farm labor, tenant families were being displaced. And when families left, the businesses that depended on them struggled, too.

One of Lange's photographs, titled “Abandoned cafe in Carey, Texas,” carries a striking original caption describing Carey as rapidly becoming a ghost town.

Another image, “Abandoned house in Carey, Texas,” describes how mechanized cotton farming and the displacement of tenant families were contributing to the town's decline.

These weren't just pictures of old buildings. They showed what was happening to a little community as farming changed and families struggled to make a living.

One Man's Words Tell a Simple Story

Lange returned to the area in 1938 and photographed O.O. Mills, Carey's postmaster.

The Library of Congress preserved a particularly revealing observation from Mills:

“The tractors are keeping our families from making a living.”

It's a simple statement, but it says so much about what was happening. New farming technology was changing agriculture, but for some families, those changes meant losing their livelihoods and the places they called home.

And Carey wasn't alone.

Across Childress County and other agricultural communities, the Great Depression, Dust Bowl conditions, and mechanized farming contributed to the loss of small farms and agricultural jobs.

For many families, the changes happening around them weren't just about new technology. They were about figuring out how to survive when the work they'd always depended on was disappearing.

But Carey Didn't Disappear Completely

Despite the grim outlook captured in Lange's photographs, Carey survived.

According to the Texas State Historical Association, the community still had a school, cotton gin, three churches, a general store, and a post office in 1940. By 1980, its reported population was just 57. The community remained small, with approximately 60 residents reported in both 1990 and 2000.

So while Lange photographed a town that appeared to be disappearing, Carey never completely vanished.

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I guess that's one of the things that makes these pictures so remarkable. They capture a moment when an entire way of life was changing forever, and nobody knew exactly what would remain.

Nearly nine decades later, we can still see the abandoned buildings and learn about the people who witnessed that transformation. All thanks to a photographer who happened to be passing through a little Texas town.