Kathryn is a beautiful little town in Barnes county, nestled perfectly into the landscape of the Sheyenne River Valley. It is more of a small town than a near-ghost town with a population of 57, but with an abundance of abandoned places and other photo opportunities.

There’s a nice little bar in Kathryn and one or two more businesses, plus some nicely maintained homes. If you decide to drive the Sheyenne River Valley Scenic Byway, Kathryn is the perfect non-touristy place to stop in for a beer.

The former bank.

If you drive the Sheyenne River Valley Scenic Byway between Valley City and Kathryn, North Dakota, you’ll be treated to a roadside panorama as incredible as nearly any in the state. It is beautiful.

Photos by Troy Larson and Terry Hinnenkamp

Kathryn, North Dakota: Ripped from a Western Movie

July 9, 2012October 6, 2022Troy Larson 85 Comments

King School

July 7, 2012October 19, 2022Troy Larson 10 Comments

This is the former King School, just a few miles south of Valley City along the Sheyenne River Valley Scenic Byway. This building was erected in 1930, but it was preceded by another structure, also known as the King School, which was erected in the 1880’s on a different site.

The plaque on location reads, in part:

When the last students walked out of the King School in 1967, their departure marked the end of an era–the closure of the last operating one room schoolhouse in Barnes County. Once, over 100 of these tiny institutions dotted the prairie, serving every township in the county.

Today, most of the school buildings are gone, and few people remain who can remember life in a frontier school.

Photos by Troy Larson and Terry Hinnenkamp

This forgotten farmstead is nestled in the hills of the Sheyenne River Valley along the Scenic Byway, south of Valley City, near Kathryn. If you’re ever in the area, you should definitely take the opportunity to enjoy this beautiful drive.

This abandoned home was fenced and quite distant from the road, with no obvious vehicular access, so this shot from a distance was the best we could get.

Photos by Troy Larson, copyright Sonic Tremor Media

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Forgotten Farmstead

July 7, 2012Troy Larson 14 Comments

This is the Standing Rock Hill Historic Site, south of Kathryn and west of Enderlin, just up the hill from Little Yellowstone Park, right off Highway 46. It is also just a short drive from Jensen Cabin at Wadeson Park. Standing Rock Hill Historic Site consists of four Native American burial mounds, the largest of which is marked with the small standing rock shown at the bottom of the page.

There is a fairly serious grade up a minimally maintained road to get to the parking lot at the top of the hill, but in dry conditions, you shouldn’t have any trouble in the typical car. And you get treated some some nice scenery on the way up the hill.

Read more about it here.

Standing Rock Hill Historic Site

June 17, 2012Troy Larson 12 Comments

This cabin was built in 1878 by Norwegian immigrant Carl Bjerke Jensen, made from hand-hewn oak. The cabin and the land were donated to the State Historical Society by the Wadeson family in 1957. This cabin was in pretty bad shape until it was restored in 1981.

I stumbled upon this place while taking a drive near Kathryn, North Dakota.

This is the Wadeson Park Spillway, right across the road from the Jensen Cabin.

Jensen Cabin at Wadeson Park

June 16, 2012Troy Larson 11 Comments

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

An Abandoned Farm near Lucca, North Dakota

July 1, 2005Troy Larson 55 Comments

Lucca, North Dakota was founded in 1891 as a Soo Line railroad town, about a mile south of the present town site, and just north of a ghost town known as Binghamton, of which nothing remains today. Lucca was moved north, to be near the Soo Line/Northern Pacific Railroad junction, in the southeast corner of Barnes County, in 1900.

We visited in 2005 and found present-day Lucca looks a lot like a salvage yard these days, with only one or two abandoned buildings, and they were in the middle of some very elaborately posted private property. It was pretty hard to get any good pictures, so we chose to photograph this abandoned farm just north of town.

Whomever occupied this farm left a very long time ago.

There were crumbling outbuildings and fieldstone walls in various states of decay on this old farmstead.

These photos of the cemetery are from the present-day Lucca townsite.

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.