Defining what exactly constitutes a “ghost town” can sometimes be tricky. In our years of exploring North Dakota’s abandoned places, we’ve often encountered former towns where the townsite itself is empty, but there’s a farm about half a mile down the road. Sometimes a former town like Sims, North Dakota has an active church, but nobody actually lives on the town site. And still other times, we will hear objections from people who feel as though we’ve misrepresented their town, or somehow labeled it a ghost town because it appears on this website, in which case we clarify that this site is about ghost towns and abandoned places, like the former First National Bank and Barber Auditorium in Marmarth, North Dakota, a town with a population numbering more than a hundred.

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20 True Ghost Towns: Population Zero

October 30, 2015November 29, 2021Troy Larson 72 Comments

Ten More Lost North Dakota Places

November 3, 2013Troy Larson 16 Comments

Sometimes we photograph a place and find out years later that it’s gone, sometimes the place is gone by the time we get there. But the one constant is that the list of places is growing all the time.

Here’s another list of ten more significant North Dakota places that have unfortunately lost their battle with time. When you’re done with this one, check out 10 Lost North Dakota Places, and 8 More Lost North Dakota Places.

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Eastedge: Six Years Later

May 30, 2011Troy Larson 7 Comments

On our way home from the south-central part of North Dakota, we stopped in Eastedge for a visit — six years to the month after our first trip there. As we mentioned after our first visit, Eastedge has a somewhat haunting history, and the weather was appropriately murky. Is it just a coincidence that when we returned, the weather was again spooky?

Eastedge was almost gone when we visited in 2005, and it’s one step closer today. The white house seems frozen in the middle of a slow motion collapse. Looks like a Dali.

The other house on the site still looks like it’s in pretty good shape. The farmer has blocked the road down into Eastedge with a pile of rocks, and the town site is now very overgrown with grass and weeds.

What do you know about Eastedge? Please leave a comment below.

Photos by Troy Larson and Terry Hinnenkamp, copyright Sonic Tremor Media LLC

The Haunting End of Eastedge, North Dakota

May 30, 2005Troy Larson 24 Comments

Eastedge, ND is in south-central North Dakota, in southern Barnes County, about twenty miles south of Valley City. The railroad construction camp that once existed here was named “Eastedge,” a name descriptive of its location on the east edge of the Sheyenne River Valley. Eastedge is near two other places we’ve photographed — Kathryn and Nome.

It was May 1st when we visited Eastedge, a date that normally prompts visions of spring sunshine and flowers, but on this day, the weather was unusually cold and misty with a blustery wind that chilled us to our bones. We were unsure of what we would find when we arrived at Eastedge.

Some might argue the weather was an appropriate harbinger of what was to come — just as we arrived, snowflakes started to fall, and we shortly discovered Eastedge is a true ghost town with only two homes standing on the former townsite, and an unnerving backstory.

After we posted these photos, Shawn Bjerke recently wrote us to say:

My Grandmother walked to school in the one room school house at Eastedge. I also remember her telling me that the last resident of Eastedge committed suicide in the late 60’s or early 70’s! Maybe its a true ghost town!

The small white home on the Eastedge townsite was moved here from another location, and several people have told us that the person who moved the house to the site was killed in the process when he touched an overhead powerline. This home is going through a slow-motion collapse and was in considerably worse shape when we returned six years later.