Which is exactly what Pfeil's podcast is all about. All-American Ruins, now in its third season, is a multimedia travelogue in which Pfeil tells the story of his experiences exploring abandoned spaces, reimagining them through multimodal storytelling. The March 13 episode sees Pfeil return to Colorado, exploring the abandoned Byers racetrack that so many Coloradans have noticed while driving east on I-70. It was a dog track, back when that was a more common thing, back when we were able to ignore the abuse of the greyhounds inherent in the gambling spectacle.
The track served other purposes after the dogs stopped chasing the fake rabbit on the roundabout, but by 2010, it gave up the ghost and shut down completely. Now it stands like a tombstone jutting above the southern horizon as drivers head toward Kansas.
The abandoned track outside of Byers is featured in the latest All American Ruins podcast.
Blake Pfeil
Pfeil grew up in Colorado Springs, in a suburban neighborhood nestled in the shadows of Blodgett Peak. It was built around what had been an old tuberculosis sanitorium — a complete campus that was more like a small town, meant to be self-sufficient in a time when isolation was one of the ways society protected itself from disease. "It was modeled after the old health spas in Europe," says Pfeil, "because this was a place that served people with money."
Part of that complex was an old dairy farm, because one of the cutting-edge treatments of the era (perhaps worthy of RFK-level quackery by today's standards) was that protein-packed diets would help cure TB. "The thought at the time was that if they pumped patients full of milk ten times a day, they'd get better faster," Pfell says. "So they built this dairy farm to provide that milk and made people drink tens of glasses of milk daily. The lactose intolerant in me just shudders at that."
Pfeil has a distinct memory of walking down a nearby hill with his father and brother. "I remember looking at the farmhouse, specifically at a door on the back side's corner," Pfeil recalls, "and seeing a space that I was certain I could shimmy through." The very next day, he went back to test his guess, and sure enough, he got through easily.
"I remember standing up," Pfeil says with the wonder of the moment still evident in his voice, "and feeling this wave of something fly over the top of me. Whatever it was, it made feel something — something I knew I was going to want to come back to again and again. That place became a sanctuary for me. The ghosts I talked to became friends of mine."
Eventually, the old farmhouse burned down. There was nothing to go back to, and Pfeil's family moved away soon after. "I forgot about it," Pfeil says.
Life went on: high school, college, an emotional rollercoaster of youth, addiction and sobriety. And then came COVID-19. "It was 2020," Pfeil recalls, "and I had a dream about that dairy farm. When I woke up, I thought, 'Oh, my god." That place was everything to me. And I hadn't thought about it in years."
That dream inspired Pfeil, by then living in the northeastern U.S., to look around and see what other abandoned places might be nearby. He found dozens and began exploring them, too. He eventually took to blogging about his experiences — not only what he saw, but what those visions inspired in his imagination. He saw Shelley Duvall's character from The Shining at a Borscht Belt resort in the Catskills; at a Saugerties motel, he thought of Norman Bates in Psycho; he contemplated Denver's own Gerald Foos and his Voyeur Motel on east Colfax.
So make no mistake: the All-American Ruins podcast — indeed, Pfeil's work overall, even back when it was a blog — isn't just about urban exploration. While urban explorers (sometimes abbreviated to UE or urbex) are doing plenty that's interesting and important — that's not what Pfeil means to present. "When it comes to the urban exploration part of it, I feel very much like an amateur. There are people doing that and pulling stunts that I will never do. I'm too much a scaredy-cat," he laughs, "and I really like being alive."
To that end, Pfeil says he now follows some rules in his exploring. One is that he can only enter through an already-open door or window. Second, in these times of "stand your ground" and the proliferation of gun culture, he never travels alone, won't go into basements, and if he sees any other people in the area, he leaves. And third, no going to second stories unless he can safely stay on the periphery of the rooms. "I fell through a second floor once," Pfeil says. "Not fun."
And really, taking risks like that isn't what Pfeil is there to do. "The real challenge for me is, how creative can I get here without damaging anything?" asks Pfeil, with an emphasis on the creativity. Because aside from feeling that sense of anemoia, there's also the telling of a story that flows from it.
The examination of our nation's fresh-faced past. "And healing," Pfeil says. "Mine, and I hope those that listen to the podcasts. There's something in both the act of exploration and art that opens us up."
As a gay man in today's America, Pfeil understands that there might be some resistance to this celebration of the nation's past — a nation that hasn't usually welcomed diversity in any form and is arguably at its worst at this moment. But Pfeil says there's room for fond recollection, a creative re-imagining and a yearning to do better.
"There's a way to revere American history," asserts Pfeil, "while simultaneously being extremely critical of it. Asking very important questions that have present-day implications. But the history stands separate from that at the same time. When we look at an abandoned place, we're looking at a place that has been raptured, and not that long ago. We're suddenly made aware that we're really not all that far from those ghosts."
Catch up with Blake Pfeil's All-American Ruins on Apple podcasts and other platforms; the latest episode, dropping March 13, is set in his home state of Colorado.
