Every now and then I dig into the archives looking for unseen things we shot but never shared, and I recently discovered these photos from our jaunt through Alfred, North Dakota in 2012. Some of these are alternate angles and shots and some other stuff we haven’t posted before.
Continue reading “Photos from the vault: Alfred, North dakota”
As we ventured toward Minot for a book signing event in 2014, we decided we would try to sneak in some shooting time at a few different locations along the drive, but this particular place was not a place we knew about beforehand — we just happened to drive right by it, on highway 30 in Albert Township, just north of Maddock, North Dakota and couldn’t pass up such a picturesque church. The best places are always the places we discover by accident.
Continue reading “A Second Immanuel Lutheran Church”
Tyner’s derelict pioneer cemetery is all that remains of a rural settlement in Pembina County once known as Tyner. Cemeteries are not something we usually feature as an entity all their own, primarily because there are plenty of websites out there which focus on cemeteries and family history already. However, Terry visited Tyner Cemetery in August of 2012 to photograph the headstones for some of his wife’s family — the McCurdy’s — and was moved by the solitude of the site.
Short Creek Church is in northern Burke County, a short drive southwest of Portal, North Dakota, and just over three miles from the US/Canada border. If I’m not mistaken, it was a Lutheran Church for its entire active life, and served a congregation of many Scandinavian immigrants, and settlers of German ancestry as well.
I’m not sure when they stopped holding regular services in Short Creek Church. If you know, please leave a comment below.
Continue reading “Short Creek Church & Cemetery”
Officially, this church is now known as Susan Webb Hall Memorial Congregational Church. It once served Elbowoods, North Dakota, a town now-submerged under Lake Sakakawea, as part of the Fort Berthold Indian Mission which dates back to the 1870s.
Update: This church was reportedly burned by an arsonist in 2019.
Norway Lutheran Church is in Nelson County, forty-three miles southeast of Devils Lake, not far from the valley where the Sheyenne River carves its way through the North Dakota landscape. Terry and I were on an adventure to photograph old steel automobile bridges, but as always, we were scanning the countryside for other abandoned things and roadside curiosities to shoot. As we traveled down a gravel road, Terry spotted a weathered steeple sticking up above the treeline, and we made a short detour to this place.
Continue reading “Sunday Morning on the Prairie at Norway Lutheran Church”
The majestic and abandoned North Grand Church is in Adams County, ten miles southwest of Hettinger and just a mile north of the South Dakota border. It served this barely-populated part of the county for sixty years, from 1909 to 1969.
I would describe this church as brick, although I’m not sure that’s the correct term. The blocks are Continue reading “The Majestic and Abandoned North Grand Church”
This is Neuburg Congregational Church, in Hettinger County, rural Mott. The church, which is quite remote, nearly 25 miles from the nearest town, was built in 1925 and it was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2007.
We visited Neuburg Congregational Church in July of 2014. The sky was thick with haze from forest fires (in Washington, Oregon, or Canada, depending on who you ask) which lent some weirdness to the look of the sky. The light changed by the minute.
Continue reading “Neuburg Congregational Church”
In 2004, a visitor to our website suggested a list of places we should investigate in the southwest corner of the state, a list I recall mostly from memory — DeSart, Pierce, Shollsmade, Hume, Ranger, Mound, Bessie. Back then, we had very little luck finding much on many of these places. Most of them were rural post offices where no development occurred, and another site visitor told us that nothing remained of DeSart, so we didn’t give it much more thought.
Continue reading “The Last of DeSart, North Dakota”We shot these photos of Sherbrooke Cemetery during a visit to the nearby ghost town and namesake, Sherbrooke, North Dakota, in Steele County in October of 2013.
Continue reading “Sherbrooke Cemetery”
Ghosts of North Dakota 