Winona

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Winona was once a thriving little town, one that I remember fondly from my first visits as a child in the 1940s. It was founded around 1870 and by the late 1920s had a population of about 800. When I took my first photographs there in 1971-72, most of the establishments on the main street (actually Highway 155) were abandoned and those that remained seemed to be hanging on by a thread. The flyer for my first photo show in late 1972 stated: "There are few people left in Winona, the population is listed as three hundred but the number is probably less. Virtually every building is abandoned or used to store hay and broken down furniture. Two stores, a part time barber, a couple of gas stations and a brand new post office are all that is left of a once prosperous East Texas town. The railroad, that once brought the prosperity, still runs by the abandoned stores, but the train hasn’t stopped in years and the Greyhound Company chose a different highway long ago." Since those first photographs I've returned time and time again to document how the town is changing. The most recent photographs are from 2009 and I recently discovered a single color image I took in 1963. It doesn't look very different than it does today except for the sign on the side of the building.