Winona
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. In the early 1970s, the population had fallen to about 150. This was about the time when I began taking these photographs. When I took my first photographs there in 1971-72, most of the establishments on Main Street (actually Highway 155) were abandoned and those that remained seemed to be hanging on by a thread. Since those first photographs I've returned time and time again to document how the town is changing. My most recent photographs are from 2009 and today the population is nearly 600, there are three churches, a thriving school system, but little commercial infrastructure, except for three new liquor stores which were built very hurriedly after the city council voted to allow for the sale of alcohol within the city limits which has led to Winona becoming the alcohol capital of the normally dry Smith County. A few years ago I gave the city forty photographs from the early 1970s and they have been posted on the Winona website. 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.
