Mansion Ruins in the Woods

Added: 2026-05-15

[00:00:02]Back up at Haramman State Park. This is the state park where I went to that uh the old recreation area. This trail used to be a driveway and it leads to the ruins of a mansion built in 1923 by a man named George Buchanan.

[00:00:23]And um when he died in the 1930s, late late 1930s, his family sold the property to the state and then the mansion was most of it was demolished in the 1970s. It was probably completely falling apart and now it's part of the Heramman State Park, but there's still remnants all over of this old estate.

[00:00:56]Um, I haven't even gotten up to the mansion yet, but already seeing this kind of stuff here. A covert, a bridge.

[00:01:07]Pretty cool.

[00:01:10]They obviously damn this up at some point.

[00:01:19]George Buchanan was the vice president of the corn products refining company.

[00:01:25]Uh they made like harrow syrup basically.

[00:01:31]So he was a pretty wealthy guy and there's still remnants of his mansion up here. So we're going to see.

[00:01:39]It's way it's way back in the woods now.

[00:01:42]I mean he definitely likes his privacy.

[00:01:50]Oh yeah, this is the old gate house.

[00:01:57]It's always so interesting to come across this type of stuff. Any kind of old structure in the woods is fascinating to me.

[00:02:13]This was probably a boring job for somebody.

[00:02:16]I mean, how often would somebody come and go from this house?

[00:02:24]I wonder who the last guest to come through was. The last person before this was not used anymore.

[00:02:38]has this little creeper window here.

[00:02:49]Wow, it was actually pretty Oh, this might have been I wonder if this was garages.

[00:02:54]I don't know because there's definitely the house is up there. Unless it was all the house and this was really big.

[00:03:03]I would not be surprised if this was more of like a This was the garage area.

[00:03:12]There's a lot of um pipes. Probably a a water heater was that was down there.

[00:03:18]Yeah, right there.

[00:03:24]Uh probably oil tank.

[00:03:35]So that's nice. You'd come up to what was likely a sizable garage.

[00:03:42]I don't know if old man Buchanan was a car guy, but there's plenty of room for the different cars.

[00:03:55]Looks like signs of uh fire at some point with that framed window or window frame.

[00:04:05]Let's take a closer look down here.

[00:04:13]Look at that old school style with the rivets. Makes me think of an old ship or something.

[00:04:25]I know people always talk about I should uh invest in a uh metal detector. I probably should. I just know that the the really good ones are super expensive.

[00:04:39]But I should because this I'm sure people have done it. But this would be interesting. I think you never know what you'll find in here. some old tools or obviously some old coins.

[00:04:57]Yeah, it goes back even further. I don't know.

[00:05:13]I would say it was a greenhouse.

[00:05:18]I think this was to open up all the windows mechanism that would turn and open up all the windows. Look at the gearing.

[00:05:33]And then it had plumbing for the water.

[00:05:48]By the way, I haven't talked much about it. A little bit here and there, but I'm definitely aware of the tick situation this year. Man, if any of you have taken any hikes or anything this year so far, you would know the ticks are just out.

[00:06:12]All right. So, that is that old Look at the old stonework.

[00:06:16]Yeah, this main wall.

[00:06:19]And then it looks like this was probably an entrance way a walkway to get into the garage. Look at that.

[00:06:34]Didn't even notice that at first.

[00:06:43]And then this kind of stuff still exists.

[00:06:47]There's a kind of a natural trail going up to the house.

[00:06:54]Wow, look at that stonework.

[00:07:00]1920s. Look at that archway.

[00:07:05]That is cool.

[00:07:10]Wow, that is beautiful.

[00:07:20]Look at the old hinges.

[00:07:26]Yeah, this has held up relatively well.

[00:07:29]They obviously use the local rocks.

[00:07:36]Yeah, that's probably at its tallest point.

[00:07:41]Maybe close to 15 feet.

[00:07:56]More walls up here.

[00:08:07]This was paved.

[00:08:14]The road or driveway continues up here.

[00:08:27]Something over here.

[00:08:30]Cool place to have a fire.

[00:08:41]But this is this is a whole landing that we're on.

[00:08:45]A whole stone stone wall built up this area. Flattened out the top of this probably.

[00:08:56]My guess is that the Buchanans were big nature lovers because as you walk through the woods, you see all these stone walls and everything that clearly there was paths or park-like settings that led to all this stuff.

[00:09:17]And uh nice view. You can see the you can see the river way out there. Let me see if I can get a better view of the river.

[00:09:30]Wow.

[00:09:35]Yeah, that's out that's out there. But that's probably five miles away or so.

[00:09:43]But you can see it. Unless this was part of the house. I really don't know.

[00:09:54]kind of has a very specific design. So my guess is it probably was maybe was part of something a structure was here.

[00:10:19]Look at that. These were entrance markers to come off of the I would say this was a a terrace or something like that probably.

[00:10:31]That's probably what that was.

[00:10:37]I think this would be amazing, but it's a little too out of the way for me. It's a little too desolate.

[00:10:44]But I do like that. But I'd like to have some neighbors that are somewhat close in case, you know, there's an emergency or something. But I'm sure I'm sure the Buchanan had hired help. They had servants. They had whoever caretakers at some point.

[00:11:06]Looks like there was a chimney here at some point and it fell.

[00:11:18]Yeah, the house could have been up here.

[00:11:25]I wouldn't be surprised if the house was all through here.

[00:11:32]I mean, obviously, these trees would have grown through the ruins.

[00:11:41]My guess is the house was in ruins from I did check historic aerials.

[00:11:49]It's difficult to see on my phone though.

[00:11:52]And also it's I don't know it it's hit or miss a lot of times. Historic aerials can be really great. You have to get lucky and get a good quality photo and there just isn't any, especially since this was gone by the 70s. So you only have a few opportunities. I believe 1954 and 55 I think is really it for this.

[00:12:34]There's also this walkway. You can see the original door frame.

[00:12:48]This would have been stairs likely and the plumbing.

[00:12:53]What's this? A sink? Be like a shop sink or something.

[00:13:00]I think I've said this in other videos, but it would have been really cool to see this in the in the 70s before they tore it down. Just there probably was so much more or even in the 1950s.

[00:13:12]Um, I'm sure it was amazing. You would have had the garage and then either the main house or this would have been something else. Yeah, this probably was the house, I'm guessing. But unfortunately, I was many, many decades too late for this one.

[00:13:30]There's a couple websites and Facebook pages that have claims of pictures of the house. I don't think that they are correct. Best thing I can do is provide to you uh historic aerials 1950s.

[00:13:44]You can see the garages right here.

[00:13:47]And then you can also see that greenhouse that I was talking about.

[00:13:52]This is the pathway that I walked up.

[00:13:56]You can see the outline of the big giant stone wall.

[00:14:00]And apparently the house was on top right here.

[00:14:06]And then, oh, by the way, this is the guard the guard shack.

[00:14:14]And this is that terrace thing.

[00:14:17]It could have been a guest house or something. This is some of the roads or some of the driveways area.

[00:14:24]I really wish that there were actual photos, but like I said, the ones that you see online, it just doesn't line up with the actual house counting the chimneys and things like that, it just doesn't look right.

[00:14:38]A side note, I want to show you this river that's right near the property of that mansion.

[00:14:49]When I was a kid, I would love something like this where you could kind of just go from rock to rock. Little islands probably full of crayfish.

[00:15:11]So anyway, I'm going to be doing a lot of this type of stuff, like these simpler videos, because I think it's so interesting to find these places online, find them on Google Maps, to do the research and see what the history is and and you know, see what's left.

[00:15:31]It's pretty awesome. So, if you're into that kind of stuff, then obviously you will have a lot of interesting videos coming coming down the pike. So, anyway, all right, I'm getting back on the road.

[00:15:41]I'm going to check out some other stuff in the Haramman State Park area. See you in the next video.