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Argusville: School’s Out
We paid a brief visit to Argusville High School today and found things have changed quite a bit since our last visit in 2011. The school was in a terrible state of disrepair and had been thoroughly vandalized when we last saw it, but it has since been secured and made safe. The rusting twin [...]
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Straubville, North Dakota: A True Ghost Town
We visited Straubville, North Dakota on a cloudy day in 2005 and found it totally abandoned. Unfortunately, we arrived a few years too late to capture the major remaining buildings when they were still standing. We’ve been told that things have deteriorated since our last visit, so we’re hoping to go back to Straubville some [...]
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Abandoned Structures: The Stages of Ruin
In our ten years of exploring North Dakota’s ghost towns and abandoned places, we’ve seen structures in all stages of condition. Many places meet an unnatural end due to fire, flood, and the bulldozer. If a building can survive without suffering an unfortunate fate however, it goes through a somewhat predictable process. We’ve learned a [...]
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The Great Fargo Fire of 1893
June 7th, 1893 was a typical Wednesday in Fargo, sunny but windy. Fargo’s six thousand residents were going about their lives, carrying out their business from mostly wooden storefronts and traveling from place to place in horse drawn carriages and wagons. Winds were gusting to 30 miles per hour that day. Even today, if you’ve [...]
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Video: Memorial Weekend Trip 2013
After getting suggestions from several people that we start doing videos again, we decided to ease back into it and we did just a little bit of video on our trip over Memorial Weekend. We stopped doing videos some years ago, mainly because there are only two of us, and when we go on a [...]
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Return to Crystal Springs
We first visited Crystal Springs in 2005, primarily to photograph the abandoned school which is quite visible from the Interstate. We didn’t find out until later that we had neglected to photograph a portion of Crystal Springs which sits just north of the highway. So, on Memorial Weekend of 2013, we returned to Crystal Springs. [...]
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Sanger: No Longer a Ghost Town
Nine years after our first visit to Sanger, North Dakota, we returned to see how things had changed. Imagine our surprise when we discovered Sanger is no longer a true ghost town. There had been no population when we visited in 2004, but today, Sanger is inhabited by two men, Ron and Dan, who moved [...]
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Sterling School No. 2
We’ve seen this school referenced online as Wing School #3, however the sign above the door appears to read Sterling No. 2. The school is located closer to Wing than it is Sterling, so we wonder whether this school originally stood somewhere else and was moved to this spot, about 9 miles north of Wing. [...]
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Arena: Nine Years Later
We first visited Arena in May of 2004. Nine years later, we returned to this rolling spot on the prairie in Burleigh County and found things much the same, if somewhat weathered. St. John’s Lutheran church still stands, though the white paint has weathered considerably over the last nine years. The cinderblock foundation on the [...]
Suggestions Page Update and New Search Box
The Suggestions page has been recently updated in preparation for the summer ghost towning season. Places we’ve photographed have been removed from the list, and dozens of new places suggested by our site visitors have been added to the list. We’ve listed each one by town name, followed by a summary of what we know [...]
The Last Resident of Heaton
North Dakota has dozens of small towns approaching ghost town status. As the population declines, they tend to go through a transition period during which the population fluctuates. Aging residents pass away and young people go off to college. It’s not uncommon for a town to be abandoned, only to be re-inhabited for a time–drawing [...]
Highline Bridge
This is the Highline trestle in Valley City, built between 1906 and 1908. It is still in use today. The Highline is 3,860 feet long and 162 feet high. We are including it on this site in homage to the importance of the railroad in settling North Dakota. Check out our gallery for another of [...]
Arena in 1992
Burleigh County Abandoned as of 2004 Arena was only the second true ghost town we ever visited, back in 2004. At that time, the school had already been torn down and we were never able to locate some large photos of it, until now. Thanks to these photos contributed by Dale Fisher, we can now see Arena [...]
Drive-In Fever
After we posted our photos of Stardust 17 Drive-In in Grafton, it became pretty clear that you got bit by the Drive-In bug like we did… because we got lots of comments, questions, and emails about Drive-In Theaters. As we mentioned in that post, there is only one operating drive-in theater in the state of North [...]
Bartlett… Almost Gone
Ramsey County Inhabited as of 8/11 Bartlett is about as close as you can get to ghost town without actually being totally abandoned… perhaps one occupied property and the remains of several crumbling homes. The former town site is quickly getting overrun by nature, the roads are shaded even on a bright day like this [...]
Passing Through Fordville
Walsh County Fordville just happened to be on our route as we explored a few towns in Walsh and Ramsey counties. It is not a ghost town or a near-ghost town… more like Pleasantville. According to the 2000 Census, Fordville had 266 residents, shrinking to 212 in 2010. The most prominent landmark was the Ford [...]
North Dakota Wind
These photos were taken just north of Nekoma in Cavalier County, but they could have been taken anywhere… wind farms are springing up all over the midwest. The windmill has always been one of Terry’s favorite subjects, but we’ve rarely had the opportunity to capture these modern turbines up close… so we snapped a few shots. [...]
Mondry Elevator in Ardoch
We stopped in Ardoch primarily to photograph the elevator which Terry had been wanting to shoot for some time. We drove into town past the city hall and a little yapper dog promptly ran right in front of Terry’s car and stopped. He just stood there staring at us. So Terry started to back up, [...]
Jailbreak in Conway
Walsh County Inhabited as of 8/11 Conway is a near-ghost town in Walsh County, southwest of Grafton. Conway’s peak population was reported in the 1900 census as 216. Today the population is 23. US Census Data for Conway Total Population by Place 1900 – 216 1910 – 184 1920 – 148 1930 – 100 1940 – [...]
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