When we started this project in 2003, there were plenty of places where we arrived too late; we showed up to discover there wasn’t much left to see in many cases. Now, years later, we’ve been sad to see many of the places where there were things to see… vanish just the same.
If you didn’t see these places already, a visit now would reveal that you’ve arrived too late. Here are 8 more lost North Dakota places.
Continue reading “8 More Lost North Dakota Places”Freda, North Dakota is a true ghost town in Grant County about 35 miles southwest of Bismarck. Freda started out as a Milwaukee Railroad town, and once had a population of 50 plus its own bank.
Raleigh is a secluded little town in Grant County, just a short drive southwest of Mandan. The population is nine, and there are exactly two businesses in operation. The grain elevator does a brisk business, and the local tavern is called The Dogtooth — named after the hills which cut a ragged swath through the township.
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.
Continue reading “20 True Ghost Towns: Population Zero”
Our journey to Heil, North Dakota, in Grant County, about fifty miles southwest of Mandan, took place on an evening when the forecast said there was a chance of scattered thunderstorms in the area. We got more than we bargained for and ended up driving through a pounding thunderstorm with rain coming down in torrents. By the time we got to Heil, however, the storm had moved through and we were able to get a few shots of Heil for the first time since our initial visit in 2007.
Continue reading “Dodging Thunderstorms in Heil”
We first visited Leith, North Dakota, in Grant County, about fifty miles southwest of Mandan, in May of 2007. We had heard that it was a shrinking rural community with a few abandoned places to photograph, and we found that to be true, but we could not have known that Leith would become a place of conflict just a few years later when a white supremacist would move-in and thrust Leith into a national spotlight. Continue reading “Leith, North Dakota After the Turmoil”
We first visited Leith in May of 2007, and you can see that gallery here (temporarily offline for maintenance). These photos from the Leith area were in in our archive, not previously published. Enjoy!
Photos by Troy Larson and Terry Hinnenkamp, copyright Sonic Tremor Media LLC
Heil is in close proximity to Leith, ND and a site visitor pointed out that we had mistakenly included these photos in the Leith Gallery. So, these photos are officially identified now — Heil, ND.
Heil is listed as a CDP (Census Designated Place) since it is not an officially incorporated town and as of 2010 had a population of 15.
We returned to Heil eight years later, during a crazy thunderstorm that gifted us some amazing, ominous storm cloud photos.
Photos by Troy Larson and Terry Hinnenkamp, copyright Sonic Tremor Media LLC
Ghosts of North Dakota 