Lake Shore Inn

The Lake Shore Inn in California City, a ghost town north of Los Angeles, was abandoned more than two decades ago but is still standing today, refusing to fall—for now. Still intact are the hotel’s infrastructure; the event hall, which includes a kitchen, lounge, and bar; and a pool and jacuzzi.

The photographs seen above were taken by Hannah Ross during Atlas Obscura Day in March 2010, when a large group of visitors climbed through and over the chain link fence that surrounds the Inn and wandered its dark, empty halls.

The group found that, while some windows and mirrors were shattered on the inside of the hotel and holes had been torn into walls, the outside lacked any graffiti or markings. “The motel had not become a bird refuge or a haven for drug-addled teenagers,” Sandi Hammerlein wrote on her blog, Avoiding Regret, about the visit. “Is it possible that even the birds didn’t care?”